“Should I get Dad?” Elliot asked.
I gasped for air, but my lungs were burning and no oxygen seemed to make it inside of my body. I could feel my heart pound inside of my chest, and still, with every breath Itook, I took another one a second later because nothing was filling my lungs.
Tears were rolling down my face and I had no control over it. My head filled with unidentifiable voices, as always.
Every thought of mine screamed at me at a volume that nobody should ever have to hear, and yet while one thought yelled, another did, too. And another. And another. It got so much that I couldn’t hear a single one of these thoughts because they all shouted at the same time as though they were fighting for my attention.
While everything was so loud inside my head, I still couldn’t hear a single thing. All I did was feel.
I felt how my heart was beating at the speed of lightning. I felt how my lungs were burning. I felt how the tears dripped down from the tip of my nose, and how my hands were shaking.
“DAD!” Elliot yelled, and the only reason I heard it was because he was a tad too close to my ears. It shut up the voices in my head for a hot second. “DAD! BROOKE IS?—”
Two hands lay on my jaw a moment later, and blue, comforting eyes met mine.
“Brooke?” My father swiped his thumbs underneath my eyes, not being put off by the way my eyes kept rolling back when I felt exhaustion creep up on me.
People back in high school made fun of me because of it a lot, but I had Reece there… he always made sure I was okay. He wasthere. Always.
Dad took my hand and laid it flat on his chest. I could feel his heartbeat against my palm, and because this wasn’t the first time he had done this, I knew he wanted me to focus on the beats. It was too fast for me to count, or maybe I just wasn’t in the right headspace to really count this time, but it definitely served as a distraction.
“Come on. Take a deep breath with me, Brooke.” He breathed in, and I felt his chest rise beneath my palm.
It usually worked for me, but not this time, it seemed.
I tried to mimic him as best as I could, but while he managed to hold his breath for a while, mine drew out of me within a second.
We tried again and again, and probably a couple more times, until my lungs finally accepted the oxygen. Despite that, they were still burning.
“You’re okay, baby. Nothing’s going to happen to you, okay?” Dad looked right into my eyes, conviction was in his while I was sure all he saw in mine was doubt.
Nothing about this was ever going to be okay.
I had been struggling with anxiety for as long as I could remember, and while I was glad my father could never understand how I felt, I sometimes just felt… alone.
Lily was the only other person close to me who knew what it was like, but I didn’t want to bother her with any of my silly problems. She promised she’d never think I was disturbing her when I decided to seek out her help, but I just couldn’t take it.
2
REECE
Guilt washed over me as I watched Brooke gasping for air, her body trembling.
I had memorized all of her triggers and knew exactly what pushed her to the edge of a panic attack. And yet here we were… and I just couldn’t help but feel as if this was all my fault.
I knew crowds scared her, and when we were still together, I’d always make her walk through them with her eyes set on me. She trusted me enough to guide her, enough to know that I never would’ve let anything happen to her. She could’ve closed her eyes, walked through a mall by my side, and knew she would’ve never bumped into a single person or object.
I knew that keeping secrets from her father made her anxious, and she never disobeyed him either. It was because Brooke feared losing him if he found out she did something she shouldn’t have. Miles would’ve never pushed Brooke away, but I understood where her thoughts were coming from.
There hadn’t been a single person I knew better than Brooke Desrosiers-King, and there would never be a personI’d know better than I did her. Which was why I felt as though I was to blame for everything that was happening to her.
Brooke kept a secret from her dad, and then I showed up as well. Of course, she was freaking out.
If I hadn’t lived with my brother then perhaps I wouldn’t have had to show up this early in the morning, but I had no other choice.
Colin was already suspicious when I told him I wasn’t going to stay over at Brooke’s last night. He thought it was strange, especially since it was her birthday. And he got even more worried when he found out I wasn’t going to stay over tonight either.
Last year, I took Brooke on a birthday trip. Granted, our families followed because she wanted her family with her on her birthday. But my point is, we’d spent three whole days in one cabin together—separated from everyone else. The year before, I slept over at her place for the entire weekend. As I did all the birthdays before.
