Chapter 5
Loreena
I shut off the podcast I was trying to focus on, set my phone on the nightstand, and turn out the lamp.
It’s been four days since Maverick was here and since he was gone. I’ve never had any amount of time pass so slowly. I feel like I’ve lived four separate lifetimes.
I haven’t texted him. Haven’t called. I’ve picked up my pen a thousand times to sit down and write to him, but I don’t have his exact address. After that, I tried putting a text together, but all I did was type and delete. Type and delete.
It just feels so horribly hollow and so achingly wrong that I tried to push him away and might have succeeded.
He seemed so adamant that he wanted to help, but he could have changed his mind.
He could have decided that I’m not worth the effort, or that a person so silly that they can’t even step outside without freaking the fuck out and shutting down completely, isn’t a person worth knowing.
My family pushed endless therapists, doctors, and self-help materials my way, but when they’d judged a sufficient amount of time to have passed after the trauma, they stopped.
My mom told me plainly that if I couldn’t help myself, then they couldn’t either.
I knew she was right. I don’t blame her.
She wasn’t being cruel. She just didn’t know how to deal with a daughter who’d transformed overnight into a different person completely. It was traumatic for them too.
I don’t want to give up hope. I want to believe that one day, all of this will end, and I’ll be able to find my way not just back to my family, but to the person I was before. Have I changed irrevocably?
The sad thoughts fill my head, the memories echoing through the gaping hole in my chest that won’t heal no matter how much time passes, or how much effort I put in.
After my shoulder gets sore from being on my side for so long, I flip over and stare at the ceiling. I leave the blinds slightly open. I like the play of lights and shadows. It doesn’t feel ominous or threatening to me. It’s a connection, however small, to the people out there.
I’ll survive it if Maverick doesn’t come back.
Yeah. Fucking. Right. I feel half dead just thinking about it. Like last night, and the night before, and the night before that, I know I’m not going to get much sleep.
I’m wide awake when I hear a click sound through the apartment. A rasp and a rattle, and one more softer click.
I freeze in my bed, heart hammering. I immediately reach for my blanket and pull it up to my nose. I gulp in hot air from underneath it, my heart hammering in fear.
There’s a lot of noise in an apartment building. People, families, other lives being lived. I’ve been here for the past five and a half years, and I’ve never heard that sound before.
I know what it was.
It sounded like locks disengaging from the door. That’s impossible, given that I didn’t unlock them. The building manager has a key, but he wouldn’t come in here. He’d call first. The chain lock is on. Is it really that easy just to open the door and swish it aside?
I grasp my phone and try to punch in the digits to call the police. I want to race to my bedroom door and shut it, but it doesn’t lock. Even if it did, whoever is in here just picked three locks on the main door. A fourth might buy me a few seconds, but it won’t save me.
There’s no staying calm. Terror dumps into my bloodstream, icy cold and boiling hot.
I’m instantly drenched in sweat. My thumb works woodenly across the phone screen, punching in a nine, then the one, and another one.
I put the call through and grab the lamp off the nightstand, yanking the cord out of the wall.
It’s not much, but at least I can say that I didn’t go down without a fight.
This time.
Surprisingly, that only spurs me on. For once, what happened to me doesn’t narrow the world down to nothing. I’m not going to pass out. If anything, I’m too rational. I’m right here, alert in my body, waiting. Waiting. Why won’t the damn police come on the damn line?
Finally, though it feels like a million years later, a woman’s nasal tone blasts across the phone. “911, what’s your emergency?”
I’m about to tell her that there’s someone in my apartment, when a hulking black shadow rounds the corner of my room. A big hand snakes around the doorframe and flicks on the light.
Maverick.
I almost can’t believe that I’m not dreaming all of this, but no.
He’s really here. I can smell him—fresh air, cedar, leather, even though he’s not wearing a jacket, and burnt oil.
He’s dressed in black cargo pants, a black t-shirt, and those black shitkicker boots.
He leans against the doorframe, arms crossed, muscles popping out all over, shoulders so damn broad, the whole bit testing that t-shirt’s limits to the max.
Very slowly, a cocky, lopsided grin slides across his beautiful lips.
He takes my breath away.
Not with fear.
With sheer disbelief.
“Sorry,” I tell the dispatcher, though it might be a mistake. “I thought I heard someone in my apartment, but it’s nothing. There’s no one here. I panicked. I’m so sorry again.”
She grumbles out something and hangs up. I clasp the phone and my lamp tightly, not willing to surrender either potential projectile.
“Loreena.”
I do a doubletake at the way my name rolls off his tongue. It’s exactly like the first time. I’m magnetized. I thought everything about him was beautiful, from the way he looked, to the way he spoke.
I know that Maverick is not a stupid man, so what on earth is he doing here?
“Breaking and entering is illegal. Trusting me not to call the cops right now and send you back to jail isn’t a good game plan.”
“You said that if I could find a way to help you, that you’d try.”
I gape at him. “You broke into this building and then into my apartment to tell me something you could have just texted?”
“I’m not here to tell you. I’m here to show you.”
My stomach flips inside out with how ominous that sounds. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re going to come with me. I can help you.”
Uh, what the actual fuck? “I’m not going anywhere with you. If I leave here, I’ll die.”
“You won’t die.”
“You have no real idea about me.” I shake my head frantically and scoot up the bed.
I perch atop my pillows, squashing them down while I ram my back against the headboard.
“You just found out about me a few days ago. Don’t tell me that you’ve done years’ worth of revolutionary research since then.
You can’t accomplish what other doctors have failed to do.
These are people with twenty and thirty years of experience working with agoraphobic people!
” I’m starting to grow frantic. It’s in my voice and the way the words slur together.
“You need to leave. I’m not going to phone the police, but this can’t happen again.
Maybe it would be a good idea if we took some time. ”
“We’re not taking time. You’ve had enough of that already. We’re doing this tonight. I’m getting you out of here.”
I ignore that. Maybe I really am crazy, like my sister once said to me in the heat of an argument a few years ago.
This isn’t how a sane person would react to someone breaking into her apartment.
I should be terrified. I shouldn’t have hung up on the cops.
I should be telling myself that exchanging letters with a person doesn’t mean that you really know them at all.
I’ve known dangerous men. I was hurt by one of them.
Maverick is a big man with a big frame. He’s powerfully built, but he doesn’t have that menace in him. There’s nothing but an urgent kindness and a whole lot of concern shining in his eyes.
“I meant time as in, time apart,” I squeak. “This isn’t healthy. I’m going to repeat, you can’t just show up here.” I slide the lamp slowly back onto the nightstand.
As I think past what Maverick did to get in here and the fact of his presence, looming so fucking large there in the doorway, his words really hit hard.
He’s big enough just to carry me off. Take me out of my apartment, take me all the way outside.
He thinks that he’d be helping, but he wouldn’t be.
He could do it to me and there’s nothing that I could do to stop him.
What’s left of my calm facade crumbles. The panic breaks in and now there’s only ice water.
“I know you aren’t going to go willingly. You say you can’t leave here. You believe that’s true. Your brain isn’t going to change unless it’s forced to change. You just have to trust me.”
He still doesn’t understand. Even specialists really don’t. Not unless they’ve been through this themselves. “I’ll have a panic attack. I won’t be able to breathe. I’ll asphyxiate. I’ll have a heart attack. You think this isn’t real. You think it’s a game or some stupid challenge, but it’s not.”
“You won’t have a heart attack or asphyxiate. It’s just the fear talking, telling you that’s going to happen.”
He steps into the room, but I quickly hold my phone up.
“If you take one more step anywhere other than out that door, I’m calling the cops.
You have five seconds to get out of here.
” My voice is shrill. “I don’t want to see you again.
I don’t want you to write to me. You call, write, text, or show up anywhere near here, I’m calling the police. I’m dead serious about that.”
He does step back, like my words knocked him off balance. Hurt twists his hard features. It doesn’t look right on him. I hate that sudden sadness. “You’d send me back to jail just to keep this fear alive?”
“I’d send you back to jail if you refuse to respect my wishes, stalk me, and make real threats about breaking in here to do me bodily harm.”
He holds out his hands, the way people do when they’re trying to convince someone they’re harmless. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Everything you just said would hurt me very much.” I raise a hand of my own. “Five. Four. Three—”
He charges at me.