Chapter 6 The Breakdown
DIMITRI
The roads were icy, the winds whipping the barren trees back and forth until it looked like a choreographed dance routine.
Branches bowed and snapped upright again, their shadows flickering across the windshield like restless hands.
He would have found it funny, if Arlo wasn’t sitting next to him, body tensed, eyes narrowed, trying to peer into the darkness like he was the one driving.
There was a crash out coming.
Dimitri could feel it. Not emotionally—he didn’t work that way—but instinctively.
Something pinged his lizard brain when Arlo’s emotions began to run high, when the world was starting to get too loud for him.
Arlo’s breathing had changed ten minutes ago.
Too shallow. Too fast. His shoulders hadn’t dropped once since they’d merged onto the highway.
Dimitri could see fine. The weather sucked but between the GPS, his familiarity with the highway, and his inability to feel fear, he was fully confident in his abilities.
Fear was noise. This was math. The city had done all the things.
They had plowed and salted the roads, had all the warning signs and alerts.
They were going to be fine. Statistically. Logistically. Objectively.
Dimitri chalked it up to Arlo’s worry about Java.
The German Shepherd slept all the way in the back of Dimitri’s vintage Land Cruiser, snoring loudly as the anesthesia from her minor procedure wore off.
Each breath puffed softly against the crate, a steady rhythm Dimitri kept half an ear tuned to.
It was the only reason they were on the highway this time of night.
They’d had to pick her up from the vet before heading to the mansion.
But, again, he wasn’t worried. His SUV was a tank.
Solid, rugged, built for almost anything.
That’s why he’d bought it. It wasn’t as sleek and modern as the new ones, but he’d enjoyed helping Jericho rebuild it.
Grease under his nails, the quiet satisfaction of putting something broken back together.
With the new parts, it would probably run for another ten years, maybe more.
Even in weather like this.
When he pressed on the gas, the car surged, then hesitated, the acceleration sluggish, hesitant almost. The vibration under his foot felt…
off. He didn’t hear anything unusual at first but the storm dampened even roaring engines.
It wasn’t a loud bang that finally got his attention, but the Toyota’s final wet cough.
A sound more tired than catastrophic. The moment he’d heard it, both the brakes and steering wheel grew heavy and useless, causing the SUV to accelerate slightly on the downward slope of the road ahead.
“What’s happening?” Arlo asked, voice taking on that sharp panicked tone Dimitri rarely heard anymore. The one that cut, clean and bright, straight through Dimitri’s chest.
Dimitri wanted to answer but needed to concentrate.
Words could wait. Control couldn’t. With effort, he turned the SUV into the snowbank.
The impact was so minimal it barely disturbed the ice.
Snow sighed around the tires, swallowing the movement whole.
He killed the engine, hit the hazards, and finally turned to face Arlo.
“First, I need you to know that we’re okay. We are not in any danger. Okay?” He said it slowly, evenly.
Arlo gave a stilted nod, eyes still wide, pupils blown.
Dimitri took his hands. They were icy despite the heat that had been blasting moments ago.
Cold enough to register even through Dimitri’s gloves, which was saying something.
He rubbed his thumbs over Arlo’s knuckles, grounding pressure, familiar and deliberate.
“Baby? Did you, by any chance, forget to stop for gas on the way to work this morning?” he asked, keeping his voice as upbeat as possible. Light. Non-accusatory.
Arlo’s face contorted into a horrified expression that was far more serious than the situation itself. “Oh, god. Are we broken down? Are we out of gas? We’re in the middle of nowhere. Did I do this?”
His breath hitched at the end, the words tumbling over each other like they were all trying to escape at once.
“Hey, look at me,” Dimitri said, gently redirecting Arlo’s gaze back to his.
He waited until Arlo’s eyes finally snagged on his, instead of skittering away.
“We are not in the middle of nowhere. We have plenty of supplies in the emergency kit in the back. I’m gonna call Mom and she and Lola will come get us and we’ll all be at Thomas’s before midnight. Okay? No big deal.”
Arlo’s whole body was stiff as his eyes flitted across Dimitri’s face.
He knew he was reading every micro-expression in an attempt to gauge whether Dimitri was hiding how angry he was.
He wasn’t. He was never angry with Arlo.
Still, he did his best to school his resting angry face into something placid.
Neutral mouth. Soft eyes. No tension in his jaw.
Dimitri had learned, the hard way, what Arlo needed to see.
It really was no big deal. He didn’t want Arlo to—
Arlo burst into tears. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I was in a hurry and Nancy called from the shop and asked me to come in early ’cause we had a callout and she was swamped and I was still in line getting breakfast and then I spilled my water on my sweater and it was so cold—”
Just like before, the words came out in a rush, stacking on top of each other, each one another weight added to the pile he was already drowning under.
Arlo had learned the hard way that every wrong decision came with swift retribution and sometimes, the only way out, was to apologize and beg for mercy.
No matter how many times Dimitri tried to assure him that he wasn’t mad, Arlo apologized, explained, begged for understanding even when he’d done nothing to cause the situation. All Dimitri could do was reassure him as many times as he needed.
Dimitri pulled him into his arms, wrapping them around him and squeezing tightly. “It’s okay. It’s my fault. I’m usually the one who fills the tank. I’m the one who forgot last night and I’m the one who didn’t even bother to check when we got in the car to leave. This is on me.”
He continued to hold him in a bear hug. It wasn’t about intimacy.
It was about emotional regulation. About resetting his parasympathetic nervous system.
When the panic set in, he needed pressure.
Sometimes Java laid across him, but Arlo said he always preferred Dimitri’s hugs.
They were Arlo’s hard reset button. A physical reminder that he was contained.
He was stiff in Dimitri’s arms, his breathing wet and ragged against his ear as he sobbed and hiccuped. Each breath juddered like it was catching on broken glass.
Dimitri closed his eyes, making soothing noises as he continued to crush him in his grip. Low, repetitive sounds. Predictable. Familiar. He kept his heartbeat slow on purpose.
“I can’t believe this is happening. And with Java in the back. What if she has a complication from her surgery because of this? Because of me. And it’s all my fault.”
Dimitri continued to hold him. He didn’t contradict him yet.
Panic didn’t listen to logic. Arlo was deep into his EMDR therapy and his therapist, Jennifer, had warned that it would stir up old memories, reopen old wounds, make things from the past float to the surface.
Arlo was so strong but some days he just needed to fracture a little.
Arlo had far more good days than bad. He had a job he loved, teachers who accommodated his anxiety, allowed him to take tests alone, didn’t enforce time limits without time limits, knew not to call on him in class unless he raised his hand.
He had friends who knew to avoid pranks, loud noises and play fighting.
Friends who would protect him with their lives.
Dimitri had worked hard to learn Arlo’s triggers and minimize them as best he could.
He handled all the mundane tasks that might throw Arlo into a panic attack.
Things that most people merely found annoying, Arlo often found overwhelming or triggering.
Forms. Appointments. Deadlines. Unexpected changes.
Dimitri took those on without complaint, without ever framing it as a burden.
Because it wasn’t.
Dimitri did the dishes because Arlo had once been beaten so badly he’d ended up in the hospital over a broken glass.
Last Christmas, Arlo had tried to do the dishes and a simple glass slipping from the sink into soapy water had almost sent him into a panic attack.
Seeing that panic on Arlo’s face, took Dimitri back to their childhood, the way Arlo would huddle beside him, would beg not to go home.
He never wanted to be the reason Arlo didn’t want to go home.
He would take on every task if he had to.
He handled phone calls because Arlo couldn’t read people’s micro-expressions and always assumed they were angry or annoyed with him when he stammered his way through the call.
Silence felt like rejection to him. Pauses felt like judgment.
Dimitri ordered at restaurants because people asking Arlo to make decisions while staring him down caused him to shut down entirely, his mind going blank as panic flooded in.
And Dimitri handled going to the gas station because Arlo felt like he was being watched.
He overthought every move, every gesture, every facial expression.
If his card didn’t work or he dropped something, he would often just leave rather than deal with the consequences he made up in his head.
The imagined fallout was always louder than his reality.