Chapter 11 Keeley #2
“Whoa. Easy.” His voice sounds like it’s underwater. Or maybe it’s my ears that are wrong. My vision fractures again as the air traps in my lungs. “Keeley?”
I shake my head. It’s the only part of me I still have control over. “Can’t—breathe.”
His expression shifts in a beat. Gone is the calm, calculating president. Instead, I’m looking at a man who is afraid.
For me.
Nic wraps an arm around me, warm and solid, steadying the tremor in my legs. My knees want to buckle, but he takes my weight, keeping me on my feet.
Fuck. I can’t get air past the boulder in my throat. Panic claws at me, sharp and fuzzy all at once. I’m not dying. Logically I know that, but my body doesn’t care. Dread sits on my chest like a weight and my pulse hammers under my sternum.
I lean into Nic without meaning to. My legs are liquid, my head is spinning, and the air sticks in my chest like a knife.
He doesn’t let me fall or stumble. And he doesn’t let me go, not even when he pushes open a locked side door I didn’t even know existed.
Fresh air instantly rushes into my lungs, the bright morning light stinging my eyes as he guides me out into a small courtyard. It’s enclosed by the walls of the clubhouse, but there’s sky above, grey and stormy, but real. I haven’t seen it without glass in the way for the last ten fucking days.
I don’t protest as Nic leads me over to a picnic table and lowers me onto the bench. I ignore the ache in my hip, focusing on the way he handles me like I’m glass he’s scared might break if he touches me wrong.
He might.
This isn’t just about Nic’s absence. It’s everything. My brother. The cage. My life imploding. Losing my freedom. Handing my safety to someone else.
Feeling too much and yet not enough.
All of it hit me like a tsunami when he wasn’t there to anchor me.
I sink down like there are no bones left in my body. Nic’s hand hovers, then settles at my nape when I curl forward, desperately trying to fill my lungs.
“Hey, sunshine, lift your chest for me.” He gently pushes my shoulders until I’m sitting tall. My body instinctively tries to fold again, but he doesn’t let me. “Stay upright. Gives your lungs more space.”
He crouches in front of me then, his hand closing gently over my knee. His touch is soft and real, grounding and calm.
“Breathe with me,” he orders and even through the fog, I comply.
In. Out.
Like glass in my throat.
Like I haven’t done this every day of my life.
“Slow breaths.” His eyes are hard, not with anger but worry. And something else I’m trying not to see.
I can’t. It’s easier to think he doesn’t give a shit.
I focus on his mouth, how it forms the words I can’t hear in my panic. The cupid bow that moves slowly, or maybe I’m the one in reverse motion.
I don’t know how long I sit there, locked on him, dragging in air that feels like razor blades in my throat. Time stops meaning anything. Minutes slip past as I focus on doing something my body is supposed to do automatically.
“Yeah, like that,” he encourages. “Good. In for five, out for seven.”
Somehow I drag in another shaky breath, but it gets stuck in my chest for a second before it loosens.
I repeat the motion over and over until my blood stops roaring in my ears and the world comes back into focus.
The whole time, Nic keeps talking to me in that grounded, soft voice I barely recognise from him.
“Slow, deep breaths,” he murmurs. “You got this.”
I latch onto his voice, let it tether me, guide me back into my body. In and out until the shaking stops and my vision clears.
When the panic finally releases the bands around my ribcage, he’s still there, crouched in front of me, holding my crumbling pieces together.
My heart skips, but this time not in panic. He stayed with me. He helped me.
I didn’t imagine that.
“Fuck.” The word scrapes out of me through trembling lips. “I don’t know what happened. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t.” That’s all he says, but the weight of it carries, anyway.
Don’t apologise for letting the cracks show.
I exhale low and long. “If I’m not allowed to say sorry, can I at least say thank you?” I sound small and I hate that he hears it.
“I don’t need you to thank me, Keeley. All I need you to do is keep breathin’ slow and steady.”
“I’m trying.”
There’s a flex of his fingers around my knee, as if he’s not sure whether to hold tighter or give me space. I don’t want him to pull away and I don’t have the right to ask that of him, even if he’s the only thing keeping me grounded right now.
So I curl my hands around the edge of the bench to hide the tremble running through me.
“Better?” he asks.
A shudder rips through me even as I say, “I think so.”
Nic’s brows draw together at the contradiction between my words and my body. “You don’t have to soften it for me.”
“I’m not.”
Lie.
I close my eyes briefly, letting the breeze kiss over my face. One at a time, my thoughts drip back into place, leaving a messy, exhausted fog behind.
Nic called me sunshine. My brain keeps replaying it like a glitch I can’t fix. Did he actually say that or was I hallucinating while oxygen deprived?
Was it a slip of the tongue? A club thing? A Nic thing?
He’s never called you that before.
No one has ever spoken to me like that before. Not with soft care and focused warmth. Not with a gentle touch and fear anything more might hurt me.
It smooths the edges I’ve always kept sharp.
Why do I want it to mean something?
And why does that terrify me more than the panic attack did?
Tears burn my eyes as my body sags. Nic grips my shoulders as I curl forward, so tired that my spine feels boneless.
“You’re okay,” he soothes.
I don’t feel okay. I feel wrung out.
I freeze as he swipes his thumb over my cheek. He’s not looking at me, just my face as he catches the tear I didn’t know I’d let fall. “Better?” he asks.
I shake my head. Then nod. Then shake again. “I’m embarrassed.” I wish I could swallow it down the second it leaves my mouth. I sound fucking pathetic.
His brows come together. “You don’t do that. You don’t feel bad for bein’ human.”
How does he always know what to say?
I force the death grip I have on the bench to loosen. My fingers ache, feeling stiff and clumsy. Nic shifts, and for a horrifying moment, I panic that he’s going to leave.
I reach out without thinking, snagging the leather stretched over his back. “Don’t go.” It comes out hoarse and small. Heat burns along the back of my neck and through my cheeks.
He’s the president of an MC. Not your emotional support biker, Keeley.
His eyes soften. “Ain’t goin’ anywhere,” he assures me. “Was just gonna sit next to you.”
I unfurl my fingers so he can stand. His shoulder brushes mine as he drops next to me, his thigh lightly pressing against mine. I feel better with him there, even if I’m aware of every shift and movement he makes.
“You okay?” He glances at me as he says it, like he’s trying to see the truth when I speak.
“I think so.” I stare at a spot on the wall until my eyes blur. “I don’t know what happened,” I admit. “I was just standing in the bar and everything was running through my head.” And Nic wasn’t in the room to lock onto. “I felt like there was a house sitting on my chest and I couldn’t breathe.”
“You’ve had to deal with more in the last few days than most people deal with in a lifetime. Doesn’t make you weak for feelin’ it, sunshine.”
There it is again. Sunshine.
Warmth spreads through me, a little giddiness too. There’s something about a tattooed man with shoulders as big as a wall using an endearment like that which makes my knees weak.
“You don’t seem to get overwhelmed by anything.”
“I get overwhelmed by everythin’, Keeley. I got a whole buildin’ full of people to take care of.”
Including me and my issue.
I look at him. Really look at him maybe for the first time. The way his shoulders are tight, heavy. The tiredness around his eyes. How he fixes everything without anyone fixing him.
“And who takes care of you?” It slips out before I can think about the weight of the words.
He stills for a second and I wish I could take it back. Why the hell did I ask that?
“I’m used to carryin’ weight.”
That’s not an answer. It’s a survival tactic. Carrying something isn’t the same as managing something.
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Don’t worry about me,” he says. “You feelin’ okay now?”
I let him deflect this time. “It’s easing down.”
“You wanna go back inside?”
I shake my head. “Not yet.”
I expect him to get up and head in without me. But he doesn’t move. Just stays there with me.
And when I lean a shoulder against his, he doesn’t say anything either. He just lets me rest there, like we’ve always done it.