33. Holy. Fucking. Shit.
Ron
Fuck.
The dull, metallic clack of the padlock snapping shut, sealing us in from the outside, echoes in my skull and it is the only thing I can think about.
Up until ten seconds ago, the idea of being locked inside a solid wooden coffin, with Selene Dusk's body crushed against mine, sounded like the pinnacle of heaven. The prelude to a delicious torture.
But now that the light is completely gone... something breaks.
It starts in my chest.
A pang. Thin, cold. As if someone just wrapped a steel band around my ribs and is starting to squeeze.
I try to take a breath, to fill my lungs and maybe crack a joke to lighten the mood, but the air is gone. The air in this box is suddenly stale, thick, solid. It smells like old pine, dust, and damp earth. It smells trapped.
I swallow. My throat is dry as sandpaper.
It's just a game, Ron, I tell myself mentally, trying to summon my optimism. A stupid wooden box in a cellar.
But my body isn't listening. My brain is screaming.
What the fuck is happening?
I feel the rough wood against my shoulders, the back of my head, my calves. The walls of the crate seem to be moving. They are shrinking. They are collapsing in on me, a millimeter at a time. I have no room to move my arms, which are pinned to my sides.
My heart starts hammering against my sternum. It's a frantic, crazy rhythm. A drum beating out of control.
A cold, stinging sweat breaks out on my forehead and the back of my neck. The muscles in my legs twitch involuntarily.
I don't understand what the fuck is happening to me. I'm not afraid of anything. I've faced down bucking broncos, lived on the streets, broken bones, been completely alone in the world. I am big, I am tall, I am strong. But now... now I feel like I'm about to die. Like I'm being buried alive.
I open my mouth in the dark, desperately gasping for oxygen, but all that comes out is a harsh wheeze, a strangled sound that doesn't even seem to come from me.
My hands shoot upward, driven by a blind instinct for survival, slamming against the wooden side panels.
I want to push. I want to smash it all to pieces. I need to get out. I have to get out.
"Ron?"
Selene's voice is a breath away from my face. Up until this moment, I hadn't even realized our chests were pressed flush against each other.
"Ron, what's wrong?"
I feel her hands, hesitant at first, flatten against my chest. Through my t-shirt, she has to feel my heart trying to bust through my ribcage.
I pant. The words won't form. Everything is spinning, even though I can't see a fucking thing. The panic is eating me alive, swallowing me whole in its black grip.
"Ron." Selene's tone changes instantly. Her voice becomes a beacon in the dark. Firm, low, absolute.
Her hands slide off my chest and move up, cupping my face. Her cold fingertips press against my sweaty temples.
"Look at me," she orders.
"I... I can't see anything, Selene, I-I..." I stammer, my head spinning nauseatingly.
"Look at me anyway," she commands. Her fingers grip my jaw with a firmness that anchors me to reality. "Can you feel my hands? I'm right here. I'm right here in front of you."
I take a jagged breath. The smell of rotting wood is suddenly pierced by her scent. Orchids and cold rain. It fills my nostrils.
"You're having a panic attack," she explains, her voice soft but unyielding. "You're hyperventilating. The walls aren't moving, Ron. It's in your head. Are you claustrophobic?"
Claustrophobic?
The realization hits me like a punch, but I don't even have time to process it because the terror grips my throat again.
"I can't breathe," I wheeze, trying to pull my head back, only to knock it against the hard wood.
"Yes, you are." Selene moves her hands. She slides one behind my neck, tangling her fingers in my hair to hold me steady. With the other, she takes my hand and places it exactly in the center of her sternum, between her breasts.
"Can you feel my breath?" she whispers in the dark. "Can you feel how it rises and falls?"
I focus on that sensation. The cotton of her t-shirt. The steady, calm, vital beat of her heart beneath my palm. The rhythmic movement of her ribcage.
"Do it with me," she orders me gently. I feel her hot breath brush my parted lips. "Breathe in. One, two, three..."
Her chest expands beneath my hand. My body, desperate, tries to mimic her. The air scrapes my throat.
"Hold it," she murmurs, resting her forehead against mine. "And now breathe out. Slow. With me."
Her chest falls. I exhale. A violent tremor shakes my shoulders.
"Good boy. Like that. Again."
We stay in that suffocating darkness, but the coffin isn't a coffin anymore. It's just the space containing me and her.
I follow the rhythm of her body. I inhale her scent, exhale my fear. Her fingertips keep massaging the nape of my neck with a touch so intimate, so protective, that a thick, unexpected emotion mixes with the receding terror.
Her, the woman who hates human contact. Her, who pushes everyone away. She is holding me together. She is acting as a shield between me and the dark.
"You're safe," she whispers, a millimeter from my mouth. "I'm right here, Ron. I won't let you go."
I'm right here. I won't let you go.
My heartbeat begins, slowly, painfully, to decelerate. The trembling in my legs subsides. I let my forehead drop against her shoulder, exhaling a long, exhausted breath.
"I'm sorry," I whisper against her shoulder, my voice still cracked, scraped raw by a vulnerability that leaves me feeling stripped bare.
"Don't you dare." Selene's response is immediate, sharp, but laced with a fierce sweetness.
Her hands don't let me go for a single second.
I feel her fingers slide through my sweat-drenched hair at the base of my neck, anchoring me to her.
"Do not apologize for something like this. Ever. If you want, I'll start screaming right now. I'll stop this challenge, I'll make them open the crate, I don't give a fuck about the game—"
"No."
I cut her off, holding her even tighter against me. My arms wrap around her; my entire being, for the first time in my life, is desperately clinging to someone else.
It is a terrifying feeling. All-consuming.
I am the one who holds others up, I am the one who smiles and doesn't need anything.
The idea of depending physically and emotionally on someone like this should terrify me almost as much as this wooden box.
But, strangely... her presence is the only thing keeping me whole.
The wood around me vanishes. All that remains is the silk of her skin, the beat of her heart, and the warmth of her breath.
"No," I repeat, my voice slowly regaining some of its weight. "We're staying. Ask me... ask me your question of the day, Selene. And let's start looking for these goddamn padlocks."
I feel her chest rise and fall against mine. Her hand stops on the nape of my neck, her thumb stroking my skin. I hear her swallow in the darkness.
"O-okay," she murmurs. "T-tell me... how many serious relationships have you had?"
The absurdity of the question, asked in the middle of a panic attack inside a fake coffin, pulls a half-amused huff from me that scrapes my oxygen-starved lungs. "What? Why that, of all things?"
"I don't know, Ron, it's... it's the first thing that popped into my head."
The vaguely embarrassed and defensive tone she uses pulls a fragment of a real smile from me. "I'm definitely glad to know you think about my love life."
"I notice you're feeling much better, new-cowboy," she shoots back, her voice colored with her usual, wonderful biting sarcasm.
Yeah. It's true. I'm breathing again, and I know with absolute certainty that it is entirely thanks to her.
I slide my hands down her sides, blindly feeling the wood behind her back, searching for the buckles, as I let the words flow out.
"Not as many as you'd think, actually." I take a deep breath, syncing it exactly with hers, and continue, my voice dropping low, intimate in the dark. "I'm not the type to share or have fuck buddies, like I told you... but I haven't had any lasting relationships either. I..."
I inhale again, feeling a lump rise in my throat.
"Fuck, I sound pathetic. But the truth is, I'm not used to things that last. I'm not used to being chosen. Everything in my life has always had an expiration date. But..."
I find a cold leather buckle and unfasten it.
"I'd like a forever to happen to me too, at least once."
I can't see her face, but I feel every single shift in her body.
I feel her breath catch in her lungs. The fingers she was running through my hair curl into fists, gripping the strands as if to hold onto me, while she gently rests her forehead against my chest. A feather-light shiver, almost a tremor, runs down her spine.
"What about you?" I ask her in a whisper, my fingers finding the cold metal of the first combination padlock.
I hear a bitter huff against my t-shirt. "One. And... well, let's just say it wasn't a great experience."
"Something tells me he's a fucking asshole," I growl under my breath, the mere thought of someone hurting her lighting a fire in my stomach.
"That's an understatement," she sighs, and the tired pain in her voice makes me clench my jaw. "Jim... always made a point of making me feel inadequate. Or maybe he didn't even try, you know? I think it just came naturally to him. Or..."
Jim.
So that's who the asshole in the internet comments was. An ex. A piece of shit.
"Or maybe I was the one encouraging him, maybe I was the one who didn't..."
"Don't even finish that fucking sentence, Selene."
I already know exactly where that self-destructive spiral is heading, and fuck that. Not on my watch.
I grab the padlock and unlock it with blind violence, slamming it against the wood out of pure rage toward a man I've never even met.
"You are gorgeous," I enunciate clearly, feeling for the second padlock. "Special. Smart. Unique. So fucking sexy you—"
"What else?" she interrupts me. I feel the warmth of her smile blooming in the dark against my skin. "Don't you think you're exaggerating a bit, Willers?"
"I could go on forever, Selly."