“Ack! It’s okay. Went fine. You knew the agenda anyway.”
I lean back to look at him, his face content and relieved for some reason. “You really resigned, huh?”
He grins softly, wiggling his brows. “So… when is my interview with the Wentworth Group?”
I snort, poking at his sides before pulling us both toward his parked car. Even this small, insignificant touch seems like a thought-out master plan to my brain. Every movement of my muscles is trained on control these days.
I think my parents’ words got to me. And I find myself actually believing that I’ve lost control of myself. That the difficult circumstanceshave caused my behavior to no longer align with theWentworth values.
God knows what those ‘values’ are. But I do know I’m no longer contained within them.
It almost feels like a choice. A decision I made by myself. An assertion of some deluded, self-proclaimed bravado that I’m embracing my diagnosis instead of suppressing it.
But all I think I’m doing is giving the world moreof my vulnerable self. A self I’m yet to understand. And becoming an embarrassing mess while I’m at it.
Shaking off the morose train of thought, I look at Levi, a small, teasing smile on my face. “I think you botched it before it could even happen, Mr. Astor. Samuel Wentworth will never hire you now.”
“Fuck. Why did I forget he’s still the chairman?”
I giggle softly because his voice is still light with amusement. There’s no worry lacing his tone. I wonder if it’s because this was truly what he wanted, or if he’s stupidly confident about being voted back in.
He rambles on about the press conference on our way back home. About the invasive questions he ‘expertly answered’.
I was going to watch it myself later anyway.
But there was a different lilt to his voice today. A palpable sense of relief in every word he uttered.
That’s when it hits me.
It wasn’t as though I didn’t know the outcome of his resignation—I obviously did. He’d said it a dozen times in the past few weeks.
But I hadn’t let myself actually think about the consequences until right at that moment.
“The clause,” I whisper. “It’s—”
“Gone, baby. The clause is gone.”
My mind starts running faster than the speed of this caging, metal machine I’m in. There’s a rapid, rhythmic sound pulsing near my ear, and I realize it’s simply my heart trying to beat out of my body.
Questions—so many questions—clang against my skull, obliterating seconds before my throat can even create the sounds. My lips twitch, contorting into words I want to force out. But nothing comes.
No sound.
No words.
No thought.
Panic attack. That’s what this is. Or at least a start of one. With an alarming frequency of at least once a day, I can easily recognize the signs now.
But this one is oddly silent. I think I can even breathe through the throbbing burn in my chest. I realize that I haven’t been surviving through them for years. I’ve just been becoming accustomed to them.
And since living with Levi for the past few weeks, I’ve even trained my muscles to remain numb while my insides scream through the searing pain of terror.
He’s still talking like nothing is happening. Like I’m not floundering to escape the chaotic labyrinth of questions still forming and dissipating before I can grasp at any one of them.
Ask him.
How? Ask him what?
