“Lots of reasons.”
I narrow my eyes. “Tell me three.”
“Three? You don’t play fair at all.”
“Ryker.”
“Okay, okay,” he breathes. “One, your stuff is at ours now, so you’ll have to come over soon. Two, you’re spared having to walk back into that bedroom. Three, Liam doesn’t lose his shit over the thought of you going there and being seduced by Keegan.”
“I’d never go back,” I say.
My words sound cold to my own ears.
“I’ve told him that, but you know Liam. He’s a pessimistic bastar—ouch!”
“You deserve that pinch,” Liam murmurs.
Ryker tuts. “That’s going to bruise.”
I touch the ones he left on my skin, then stroke the fading rash from Liam. They both marked me. With everything that’s happened with us the past few days, I hadn’t thought much about Keegan. The hurt and shock are still there, but I realise they’d been there before I’d walked in on her with her stepbrother. Ever since my dad, things had changed. Not only the way she saw me, but the way I saw her. I reverted back to my childlike self, but instead of doing everything in my power to make my mum happy after my dad left, it was Keegan I wanted to please. It was Keegan who kept saying it was fine with a tight smile that didn’t reach her eyes and resumed texting on her phone, shutting me out.
And in a last-ditch effort to save what we were, I opened up to her in a way I never have with anyone else, but rather than comfort me, she belittled my experience, explained it away and made me feel like a pathetic attention seeker, just like he had.
“Freddie . . . Keegan told me about your dad. I’m so sorry. And I’m sorry we weren’t there for you—”
“I wasn’t expecting it.” The words leap from my mouth. “I walked in and he was sitting at the table grinning at me.” I close my eyes and old memories fill my mind. “It took me back. It was like Keegan was my mum, under his spell. I told him I never wanted to see him again at Mum’s funeral, and I meant it, but he was there . . . in my kitchen, smiling at Keegan, complimenting her cooking, bad-mouthing you. I lost my mum to him a hundred times. Even when she was dying, she kept asking me to make sure he was at her funeral, to not let mygrudgestop him being there.”
A belt wraps around my lungs. It slithers as it tightens, every constricting notch clicking into place with a jolt that accelerates my heart. It flutters at my throat, and it shakes my stomach. But it’s not the worst of it. The worst is the way my diaphragm spasms. A deep ache grows in the centre of my chest, and I try to breathe around it, but it’s squashing my lungs. My lips part, and I desperately want to tell them where I am. I need them to come get to me before I’m unable to breathe, but all that escapes is a gasp.
“Freddie?”
I’m going to suffocate. My lungs suck and stick together. They won’t fill at all. I see flashes in my eyes, and my vision darkens at the edges, tunnelling, it’s tunnelling, and I search for the soup stain as I clutch the back of a chair.
Ryker shushes down the phone, and it helps. I drag in a breath, but it’s shallow.
“It’s okay,” Ryker says. “You’re safe. We’re here.”
I wish they were, but I tricked them. It was stupid. Now I’m alone, and it feels like . . . it feels like I’mdying. I’m dying and there’s no one here. The canteen stretches and the door seems so far away.
A fat hot tear rolls down my cheek.
“Deep breaths.”
I can’t. I can’t take them. The air only gets as far as the lump in my throat.
“You can do it, babe. Slow it down for me, listen to me, do as I do.”
Ryker breathes down the phone for me, and I try my best to copy him. My eyes stream, and my face feels too hot and too full of blood. This has happened before, a long time ago, and I was okay, but I don’t think I will be this time. I think I’m going to—
“Easy,” Liam says. “Do as Ryker does.”
Ryker’s still exaggerating his breathing as Liam talks. They’re both there.
I take in a breath, and the burn in my lungs eases a little.
Ryker must hear the change, and he says, “That’s it, babe. You’re doing great.”
I take another gulp of air, then another. My lungs open, the walls unstick as more air gets through, forcing them to inflate. I match Ryker breath for breath, and then I’m breathing normally again. Still shaky, still fearful, but I’m breathing. I wipe the wet trails on my face. It’s more slapping that wiping, and of course they hear the harsh way I clean myself up.
