Page 44 of In Somnis

Her brows pull together. “What? Why?”

“Because I said so.” It’s all I can manage without setting fire to every nerve in my body. I can’t explain why her wearing my mother’s crystal makes panic claw up my throat, or why the crystal means neglect. I can’t explain how it feels to see it on someone else, as if it’s nothing but aesthetic.

“I just wanted to help,” she says quietly. “I can give it back.”

“No thanks,” I bite out. “Leave. Please.”

The please comes out wrong. Not polite. Barely human.

Something flickers across her face like hurt or confusion, but she doesn’t argue. She grabs her bag and walks out without looking back.

I stand alone in the spotless kitchen, breathing in fast pants and hands trembling, wondering how the day imploded even more.

Breathe, Nevan.

I try a breath, but fuck. The kitchen smells like lemonade.

Is that her scent?

She came in here, fixed my kitchen, fed my guests, cleaned up after herself, and I kicked her out over a necklace.

She deserved better. I know that. I’ll know it worse in twenty minutes when the adrenaline drops, and the guilt moves in.

Right now, though, my chest is doing the thing it does when a panic attack is coming up. The too-tight feeling. The thoughts that won’t stop looping about the trailer, the hunger, the crystal.

Breathe, Nevan.

There’s a bottle of lemonade in the walk-in. I know because I put it there this morning, the same brand I’ve kept in every refrigerator I’ve had access to since I was old enough to buy my own groceries. I don’t know when that started, probably around the time I figured out that the sourness helped, a physical way of something cutting through the static.

I go and grab it, crack it open, and take a long pull. The sourness hits the back of my throat like a slap, and for a few seconds, there is nothing in my head but the taste of it.

My shoulders drop, my breath slows, and the loop quiets.

I take another pull.

Still shaky, but better.

The kitchen smells like lemonade now. Her lemonade, whatever the hell she smells like mixed with the smell of the bottle in my hand. I can’t quite separate them.

I stand there with my back against the walk-in refrigerator door and breathe until the panic finishes receding wherever it goes.

She’s gone. The kitchen is clean. The guests got fed. Everything is under control.

None of it feels under control.

“What did you do?”

Jasper barrels through the kitchen doors, and something in me snaps sideways again.

“What did I do?” I straighten and set the almost empty lemonade bottle on the counter. “Why did you bring her here? And why did you give her that fucking crystal?”

His confusion hardens into defensiveness. “You literally told me last week I can give away as many crystals as I want so we can get rid of all that shit.”

“Because it is shit,” I mutter, shaking my apron out harder than necessary.

“It is not shit,” he shoots back, clutching his tarot pouch like I might snatch it out of his hands and set them on fire.

I might.