Chapter 13
Harper
It takes what feels like ages for the fog in my head to clear.
The sound of explosions keep ripping through the daze I’m in, sending me curling tighter into myself, like I can disappear and not hear it anymore. My heart pounds so hard I can taste it, and my jaw aches from how hard I’m clenching it.
There’s a voice, low and soothing in the distance, but I can’t make it out. I can’t hear anything but the loud booms that have me flinching back each time.
But then slowly, slowly, the fear and panic start to recede. Slowly, things start filtering in. The smell of sweat and leather. The sounds of low, deep voices. The scents I’ve become used to and not all at the same time, cutting through the last of my haziness and bringing me back to reality.
The last thing I remember is being at the festival and listening to Cash and Lincoln bicker good naturedly. I remember Cora laughing as she sat on Lincoln’s shoulders.
Now I’m… I blink, looking around to try to figure out where I am.
I’m in a truck. Lincoln’s truck, I realize, from the color of the leather seats. I’m in the back seat, and Cash is next to me, his hand wrapped tightly around mine.
When I lift my head, Everett and Lincoln are in the front, turned to look at me, concern written into the lines of their handsome features.
“Hey,” Cash says softly, and I turn to look at him. “Are you with us?”
I nod, my head aching from the force of whatever just happened to me. Every muscle feels tight and overworked, and my chest hurts. My body still trembles with the aftershocks of the panic, and I have to take deep, steadying breaths to try to center myself.
Of course, as I come down more and more, the embarrassment hits.
I did that in front of them. In front of everyone who was nearby when we were at the festival. They all saw, and they probably all think I’m some kind of basket case who can’t keep her shit together.
My cheeks burn at the thought of that.
“I’m sorry,” I say immediately. “I didn’t mean—”
“Of course you didn’t,” Cash jumps in. “No one means to have a panic attack. You don’t have anything to apologize for.”
A panic attack. That sounds right. My body was locked up, practically paralyzed by fear and adrenaline in that moment.
“It happens to a lot of people,” Lincoln says softly.
“And even if it didn’t, there’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Everett adds. He wasn’t even there when it happened, but apparently the other two called him or something, so here he is.
“It’s not a big deal,” I try to say. “It’s—”
“It’s as big a deal as you want it to be,” Cash says. “If you don’t want to talk about it, we don’t have to. We only care that you’re okay.”
The other two nod.
“How do you feel?” Lincoln wants to know. He passes back a bottle of water, and I chug from it gratefully. My mouth feels like sandpaper right now.
“Like I got hit by a bus,” I tell him honestly. Then a thought hits me, and I’m immediately ashamed for not thinking of it as soon as I came to. “Where’s Cora?”
Lincoln leans back so I can see my niece curled up in his lap asleep. One hand is fisted in his shirt, and the other clutches the stuffed cow she won tonight.
Relief crashes into me hard and instant. Thank fuck. Thank fuck she’s okay.
“We calmed her down,” Lincoln says. “And she went right to sleep.”
“Been a big day for her,” Cash offers, and his smile says he doesn’t mean that she had to watch her guardian break down in front of her.
“Yeah,” I mutter back, feeling hollow. “I guess so.”
“Home?” Everett asks.
I just nod.
There’s some shuffling, since all the men arrived separately for the festival. Lincoln straps Cora in beside me in the back, and I smooth her hair back from her face, whispering to her as she sleeps.
As soon as we get back to the house, I take Cora upstairs and help her get ready for bed. She wakes up as I help her change into pajamas and throws her arms around me, holding on tight.
I rub my hand down her back and cling to her a little bit too.
“Are you okay?” I ask her, pulling back to see her face.
She nods and then reaches up to pat at my cheeks.
“I’m fine, baby. Don’t worry about me.”
I can only imagine how she must have felt. Her mother is dead, and all she has is me. I have to be strong for her, but there I was, falling apart in a public place. She had to rely on the three Alphas, who are still essentially strangers in a way, and that never should have happened.
Cora pats my cheeks again, and I find a smile for her. “Are you okay to sleep by yourself tonight? It’s okay if you want to sleep with me, if you’re scared.”
She seems to think about it, and then goes to climb into her own bed. There was a time when she would have clung to me and refused to let go, so this is a good thing, and I try not to feel worried about it.
Instead, I tuck her in and kiss her forehead, waiting until she goes back to sleep before I leave the room.
In my own room, I close the door and drop onto the bed hard. I still feel shaky after what happened, and even though it’s not as bad as it was at the festival, there’s a pit in my gut that won’t let up.
I put my head in my hands and try to focus on my breathing. In and out, in and out. It sounds too loud in my ears. My heart isn’t pounding as hard as it was before, but it’s not a steady, even beat either. I just feel bad. Wrong. Mortified.
I’m supposed to be better than this. I’m supposed to be strong, independent, and capable.
I’m supposed to at the very fucking least be able to take care of myself and Cora, but I fucking lost it so bad that she had to rely on others to get her to safety.
What if they hadn’t been there? What if it had just been the two of us, and she was alone with strangers and—
Fuck. Fuck.
It’s so easy to start spiraling like this, and I have to force myself to breathe all over again. Nothing terrible happened, unless you count three powerful Alphas seeing me like that, so it definitely could have been worse.
But it fucking sucks that it happened like that. That I fell apart at the first loud noise. I was supposed to be better, but that’s pretty fucking concrete proof that I’m still broken from the things I’m running from. They still have power over me, if they can make me react like that.
There are voices in my head, voices that I’m usually better at shutting out, that whisper I shouldn’t be surprised this happened.
You’ve always been too much trouble. Too damaged. Too much. Why did you think you would be different here?
I drag my hands through my hair, clenching tight in the strands to try to force myself to stop thinking like this.
Maybe I need a shower and to go the fuck to bed.
Maybe in the morning, this will feel less like a massive setback.
Before I can get up to go grab clothes, there’s a soft knock on the door. Thinking it might be Cora, I go to answer it.
Instead, Lincoln is standing in the hall. He’s dressed down in sweatpants and a t-shirt, and holding a tray with a steaming cup of tea and some cut up fruit and cheese on it.
“Hi,” he says. “It’s all right if you’d rather be alone, but I brought you this. Can I sit with you for a while?”
It’s my first instinct to say no, to keep hiding from him and the others, but after all they did, that feels too ungrateful to even consider. So I nod and let him in.
He settles on the bed and I sit down next to him. He passes me the tea, and I wrap my fingers around it, letting the heat from the cup seep into my hand. It’s just this side of too hot, and it smells comfortingly of chamomile, honey, and lemon.
“I know how you’re probably feeling right now,” he says after a bit.
I glance at him sidelong, doubtful. “You do?”
“Embarrassed. Worn out. Those little voices in the back of your mind telling you that you’re supposed to be better than this. Stronger than this.”
Okay, so maybe he does know. “The thing about panic is that it’s a learned response,” he continues.
“It doesn’t come from nowhere. Something conditioned you into those patterns of fear, and the brain and the body remember.
Like muscle memory, you know? Something reminds you of that fear, of the things that make you panic, and the muscle memory takes over before you can think past it. ”
“Yeah,” I murmur. “That—that sounds right.”
“It’s happened to me more than a few times,” he admits.
“Because of the fire?”
He looks at me. “Lainey told you?”
I nod.
Lincoln drags in a breath, and I wonder if he’s going to be upset that his sister told me that. He doesn’t seem like he is, though. Instead he just nods and keeps going. “Yeah, because of the fire. Because of what happened to my coworker. My friend. I struggled pretty hard with anxiety after that.”
“Can I ask… what happened? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, of course.”
“No, it’s okay. It was just supposed to be another routine call.
The thing about being a firefighter is you know you’re walking into danger every time.
Sometimes it’s something small, like someone burning leaves in their backyard and letting it get too high, and sometimes it’s a school on fire and trying to get kids out.
You have to be ready for anything.” He takes another breath.
“We got called to a house fire on the edge of town. Not a big house, but the whole thing was burning when we got there. I remembered that there was an older woman who lived there, and none of her neighbors had seen her come out of the house. Taylor—my friend—went in to look for her while I tried to get the fire under control and keep it from spreading. He radioed that he found her, passed out upstairs, and then there was this crash, and I knew.”
“Knew what?” I whisper, gripped by the story.
“Knew the house was going to come down. Or at least part of it. I watched part of the upper story come down from outside, and Taylor didn’t respond on the radio. So I went in to get him. Or I tried to. The fire was too hot and too big, and I didn’t make it. I never even found his body.”