Page 155 of Falling for the Enemy

Did she honestly think a move like this would endear him in any way?

What must Jocelyn have felt when she saw that picture? Hurt. Betrayed. Deceived.

It was all bullshit. But without context, she wouldn’t know that.

He pressed a hand to his chest. “I think…” He couldn’t breathe. “I think I’m…” He swallowed. “I think I’m having a heart attack.”

“What?” Logan was on his feet and rounding the counter, at his side in seconds flat. “Shit, Soren, you’re turning red. What should I do?”

Soren lowered to the floor. The air thickened until he could no longer draw breath into his lungs. Each shallow and insufficient gasp crushed his chest cavity like a hollow tin can, collapsing inward as though his ribs were closing like a fist.

His vision tunneled, the edges of the kitchen softening into grey static. His heart beat in forceful punches that slammed through his chest from the inside out.

Sweat broke over his skin in rivers.

Logan spoke, but he sounded too far away.

Soren reached for his brother. Scared. His depth perception was off, and his hand cut through the air, unanchored and falling, as he gasped for breath that refused to meet his lungs.

Pain exploded in his chest, and he shook violently, wondering if this was it.

Logan shouted. Words were muffled and far away. Something about an ambulance.

He couldn’t die. He needed to fix things with Jocelyn. He needed her to know he hadn’t cheated on her. That he loved her.

“Lie back.” Logan cradled him on his lap, his face a distorted twist of terror.

“Logan.” Soren gripped his little brother’s shirt, his fear reflecting his own. “Don’t let me die.”

“You’re not gonna die.”

Pain burst in his chest. His hand flattened over his heart as it punched like a wrecking ball trying to break out of his chest.

“Soren!”

His throat constricted, burning as if a white-hot poker blocked his airways. Black bled into his line of vision. “I can’t…” The fractured words came out silent.

He reached for Logan again, holding onto him for dear life as his vision swam.

“Soren! Soren, look at me. Breathe! You have to breathe⁠—”

The sound of his voice siphoned away as the world swallowed him in one painful wave.

“You’ve always been a drama queen.”

Soren scowled at his brother from under the ice pack the EMT had offered. “Fuck you,” he rasped, embarrassed to high hell and back.

“Okay, Mr. Hawthorne.” The paramedic approached with a clipboard tucked under one arm, her severe scrubs starched, and her movements as economical and precise as her tone. The fluorescent overhead light spilling from inside the ambulance caught the edge of her jawline as she stood in front of him. “Your vitals are stable, and your heart’s doing its job. No cardiac event, no stroke, no impending doom despite what your body tried to convince you of.”

“It wasn’t a heart attack?”

“At your age? I should hope not.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “What you experienced was a panic attack, something brought on by anxiety.”

“I don’t have anxiety.”

She arched a brow. “Are you sure?”

Rather than answer, he explained, “It felt like I was having a heart attack.”