Chapter 21
Twenty-One
THEO
It was quite possible I was about to upchuck my four whisky sours all over the table in front of these people.
Sarah had left with Scott.
I’d pushed her to him.
Now my heart wouldn’t stop fucking racing and my chest felt tight. The faces of my companions, including Alice, a costume designer I’d worked with but never slept with despite her flirtations, were blurry. Their voices, their words, became muddled noise.
It had been an hour since Sarah had left the bar with another man, and every time I thought about how I’d treated her, or how Scott might have his hands on her … how he might be inside her … fuck, I was going to be sick.
I couldn’t breathe.
Pushing out of the booth, uncaring if I looked like a madman, I hurried toward the restroom, feeling the room tilt not from drunkenness … with panic.
I burst into the loos and hurried over to the sink.
I couldn’t catch my breath.
Fuck.
I was having a panic attack.
Trying to loosen shirt buttons that were already loose, my fingers felt numb and useless. When was the last time I’d had a panic attack?
Mum. When Mum died.
For Christ’s sake.
Fumbling with the cold water tap, I tried to bury my head under it.
“You all right, mate?” a bloke to my left asked.
I didn’t answer, and he departed the restroom while I rubbed the cold water into my face and stared into the mirror.
Breathe, just breathe, I heard Sarah’s soft imaginary voice coax.
“Theo, you all right?” A hand slapped my back and I straightened, trying to focus.
Scott stared at me in concern.
Scott.
He was here?
“Where’s Sarah?” I practically barked.
Scott grimaced. “Your little cocktease changed her mind as soon as we got back to my flat. I put her in a cab. Next time you tell me a woman is up for it, make sure she’s actually up for it, mate. It’s not like you to pick the prudes.”
Rage filled me and I grabbed him by the shirt front and slammed him into the wall. “Did you touch her?”
Scott shoved me away angrily. “I don’t touch women who don’t want to be touched. Why do you give a shit? You passed her to me like she was a toy you got bored with. Doesn’t exactly scream that you care, mate.” He cut me a dirty look before marching out of the restroom.
Guilt tightened in my chest, but the panic receded.
I needed to get to her. To apologize. To explain.
Yanking my phone out, I tried calling Sarah, but she didn’t pick up.
I called and called the entire way out of the bar and out in the city as I tried to flag down a cab.
The cab ride was a torturous forty minutes back to my place.
I must have called Sarah forty times and she didn’t pick up.
Worry cut through my shame. What if something had happened to her? Women weren’t supposed to be out alone. What if the serial killer was a fucking cab driver?
My melodrama and fears became monstrous things over the next forty minutes, and I rushed up the stairs to my flat like I’d lost my damn mind.
I burst into it, shouting Sarah’s name as my eyes drifted over the living room.
Rushing into the bedroom, I skidded to a halt at the sight of her missing luggage.
“No, no, no.” I threw open the wardrobe where I’d made space for her, and my heart sank. The hangers were empty.
That’s when I finally noticed the paper on my pillow.
Fingers shaking, I lifted it reluctantly and felt my panic build again at the words she’d scrawled in her pretty cursive.
If you need to discuss the adaptation, please do it through my agent.
Don’t call me again.
Goodbye.
Sarah
My legs gave out on me as I slid down the side of the bed, landing on the floor with a thump. She’d warned me. “But next time you tell me to go like I don’t matter … I will go.”
I’d acted like a swine.
The way I’d treated her tonight …
All because I’d let my fucking brother get in my head.
And now Sarah was gone.
Black spots covered my vision as I struggled to breathe, hyper-fucking-ventilating.
I curled up, head pressed to my bedside table, trying to survive every second of feeling like I might die.
As a boy, I’d suffered from panic attacks that my father dismissed as weakness and my mother tried to coax me through. They’d dissipated with adulthood, the last one being the day I buried my mother. There was nothing for it but to endure the absolute certainty that I was about to die.
Of course, I did not die.
I came out of it only to face the clusterfuck that had caused the panic attack in the first place.
Eventually, I got through the Sarah-induced attack, but by the time it was over, I was drenched in sweat and utterly exhausted.
I crawled onto the bed, turning my face into Sarah’s pillow and inhaling her perfume.
Squeezing my eyes closed, I felt an overwhelming sense of self-loathing I wasn’t sure I could come back from.
Why did I let Sebastian’s words get to me? He had Sarah all wrong. He thought she was some kind of charity case I’d picked up and was using.
She wasn’t, and I wasn’t using her.
Why did I let my damn fears win?
“It’s not too late,” I whispered gruffly, practically burrowing myself into her scent. I could explain. I could … I could get her back.
I had to.
Because as mortifyingly scary as giving myself to her was … it was nothing like this terror that swept over me at the thought that I might have lost her forever.