Chapter 8 #2
The sight of the smoke hits me first, but the smell hits me harder.
Something burning . . . acrid. My heart was already pumping hard and now I can hear it over the sound of the alarm.
My hands—why can’t I feel my hands? A blurry red shape zooms through my line of sight. The kitchen window whines open.
“Sorry!” I hear Bea call. “Your smoke detector is sensitive!”
I think my heart is pumping too hard. I can feel it in my temples. I can’t get a full breath. Nothing is computing, other than that smell.
“What’s burning?” I manage. My voice is an unrecognizable roar.
Bea stops fanning the detector and comes closer. The smell intensifies at the same time and I realize, with soul-sickening horror, that I recognize what it is. “Are you hurt?!” I grab her arms and look her over, manhandling her and forcing her to turn around. “Where are you burning?”
She spins out of my grasp and looks at me like she’s terrified and a little perturbed. “Silas, what the hell! I’m okay.”
“Something is burning,” I growl out between gasps.
Her lips pinch. “I singed the end of my hair,” she says.
“I’m not used to your gas stove yet and got distracted on my phone cooking a grilled cheese.
It started smoking. I then tried to light a candle to help with the smell and my hair fell forward and caught that flame when the smoke detector scared the shit out of me. ”
She’s fine. I’m okay. She’s fine. I try shaking out my hands. It feels like all my organs are fighting for space in my chest cavity.
“Yes,” I hear Bea say soothingly. “She’s fine. You’re okay.”
Fuck.
She’s guiding me over to my couch and encouraging me to sit. The backs of my knees cave sharply, my ass hitting the seat hard enough to bounce. “It was the smell,” I say dumbly.
“Shh, I know. I get it,” she soothes. “I think you’re having a panic attack. How can I help you?” Her voice is gentler than I’ve ever heard.
“Justneedaminute,” I say between breaths, eyes screwed shut. It comes out like one single word. I tuck my hands into my ribs, but it restricts my lungs from expanding. Bea flattens them to my thighs under her palms.
“Why don’t you count all the red things in the room?” she says.
I open my eyes again and let them settle on her hair, first. “One.” I give a half-hearted attempt at finding anything else in the room, but she remains the boldest thing.
God, I feel pitiful in comparison. I spot the roses on her tank top next.
“Two.” Then, the last thing closest to red that I can see, her mouth. “Three.”
“What can you hear?” she says, her delicate throat bobbing.
“Just heard you swallow,” I mumble. “Hear my music playing out in the garage.” I pause. “Hear us both breathing.”
“Good,” she says. “And all I can smell now is you . . . your sweat and deodorant. No more smoke.” No more burnt hair.
No burning skin.
I brace for a fresh wave of panic to hit me when I realize how much of my scars are exposed. “I need to go change.”
“Silas, no,” she urges. “Be comfortable in your own house.” When I focus on her mouth again, it tilts into a smile that is both snarky and encouraging. “It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”
“I look way better now,” I joke with a surprised snort. We typically give that part of our history a very wide berth. In that we have never ever discussed it. I’m surprised she’s willing to acknowledge it.
“There he is,” she says, grin spreading while her eyes rove across my face. “Getting better?”
“Yeah. Getting there.”
“Let me get you some water.”
When she returns, she doesn’t kneel beside my feet again. She sets the water on the end table next to me and sits herself down on the ottoman across from my lap.
“Sorry. Think my heart rate was already high from working out and the combination of the alarm and the smell. . . . It all got away from me,” I explain.
“Are they all like that?” she asks.
“No. No, not quite,” I say. Then, “Kinda. Yeah.” The attacks I’ve had at work have all had obvious triggers, too, other than fire and smoke.
The loud pop of a snag, the unexpected thud of a falling tree.
The ground giving in a bit too steeply under my foot.
This one hit me hard and fast, but it also felt like it was over fairly quickly.
Time always seems to flatten and compress when I’m stuck in that space.
I have no idea how long or short that was.
I whisper a curse. “I gotta do something about that.”
“Hey,” Bea says. She grabs one of my hands and waits for me to look at her. “There is nothing wrong with you.”
I take in her stern face and don’t have the heart or balls to tell her she’s wrong. That I’m expecting a call from the Fast & Furious franchise after the way I fled that group meeting and that I threw myself into a crisis wondering if she liked my window treatments.
Christ.
I feel the tips of her nails in my palm, her fingers curling up as she holds my hand harder. I really should pull it back for what it’s doing to my heart rate.
I clear my throat when I eventually do. “How’d you know about the counting thing?” I ask. “Counting the red things in the room during an attack?”
“Merritt had a few,” she says. She slides her hands under her thighs and rocks slightly. “And I looked up what to do after you told me about them. After the wedding.”
I don’t know why this makes me flush all over. Part embarrassment, part gratitude. I stand, plucking my shirt away from my chest and fanning myself.
“Well. Thank you. I appreciate it,” I tell her. We fall into an awkward silence, each shifting in place like we want to shift the subject.
“You busy right now?” she asks. “Now that I’ve burned my grilled cheese—” She gestures wildly at the room and then at me.
“And you look hot”—her eyes immediately clench shut—“like, sweaty. Like it’s actually a nice, semi-hot day outside.
Maybe we could go somewhere and get out for a bit.
” She says the last words like they irritate her, and I have to bite back a laugh.
I look down at my clothes and let myself think it’s the lack of them that’s got her ruffled.
Some old cutoff and a pair of shorts I should probably retire.
I have to wrestle with myself to not think it’s that she’s seeing more of my scars than she’s seen before.
“What did you have in mind?”