AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It’s not really the outdoors I’m afraid of. It’s more like I’m afraid of the panic attacks that happen when I go outside. I started having them after…”
She looked down. She didn’t want to get into all that. “I started having them when I was sixteen. I’d always been an anxious kid but that was when it got really bad.” After the accident. But God, she couldn’t be expected to share every dark and horrible secret all at once, could she? So she glossed over what her doctors always called the catalyst.
“It started with cars. I couldn’t ride in cars without freaking out. Then it was buses. On the school bus I freaked out so bad one time that they had to detour to the hospital.” She winced even remembering it.
She’d moved in with her grandparents by that point and they were at their wits end knowing what to do with her. She stayed in the hospital for a while—a psychiatric hospital.
“Nothing really helped. I’d remember what the panic attack had felt like, how I’d been so sure I was going to die—like I was freaking out so hard I really believed my heart would stop or I’d have a heart attack. I was just convinced of it. So then even the thought of getting in another car or going anywhere would make me anxious. We lived close enough to town that I could still walk to some stores. But then I had an attack in a grocery store and an ambulance had to be called. That was when I just stopped leaving the house.”
“This house?” he asked.
She shook her head. “My grandma and grandpa’s house in Florida. But they were old and had their own health problems.” And after losing their daughter in the car accident, they weren’t in great shape to look after her anyway. Her grandpa especially took it so hard, some days he just wouldn’t come out of his room. “So I came up here to live with my great Aunt Trish. Grandpa’s younger sister. But she died a few years ago.”
Nicholas blinked. “So it’s just been you all alone ever since?”
God it sounded pathetic when he put it like that. She shrugged and tried for a wan smile. “There’s so much available online these days, it’s not a big deal. I found a job I could do from home. I get groceries and anything else I could need delivered. I get along just fine.”
His brows furrowed. “But don’t you get… lonely?”
She shrugged again. “I spend all day talking to people for my job. And then I got Ramona a while ago. It’s fine. Good, I mean. Really good. I don’t need much to be happy. I have everything I could ever need right here.”
It was what she always told herself, but the platitude rang hollow saying it out loud. Especially when she only saw the compassion in Nicholas’s eyes deepen.
She wanted to tell him she was thinking about working with a doctor again. That next time she’d beat it. For real.
But she barely believed it herself, and at the moment it seemed as far away as the moon.
She pushed her chair back and stood up. “Look, I didn’t say all this so you’d feel sorry for me. I just wanted to explain why I can’t—” She broke off again, looking toward the window. “You know.”
She expected him to press further. Ask more questions. Instead he just stood up. He didn’t come close to her though.
“Like I said. I had a wonderful time this afternoon. I hope we can do it again soon. Maybe I could come back sometime? Maybe next week?”
Wait, what???
Just like that? Did he miss the part where she was a crazy shut-in who curled up into a freakosaurus wreck if she took a single step outside?
“S-sure,” she stuttered.
He smiled easy, his beautiful eyes bright. “What day is good for you? If you feed me again, I’ll bring my toolbox. If you’re anything like my mama, there’s probably a million other things around the house you been putting off that I could see to. I haven’t earned my handyman badge for the year so maybe you could help me out with that.”
She blinked at him. Was this some pity thing? He wanted to do a good deed by helping out the poor crazy woman who lived all alone? To like, get karma points?
“How about next Wednesday? It’s my day off and I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than spend it with you.” His smile seemed so genuine. “Wanna see me to the door?”
“Sure,” she said again, following him as he headed back through the den to the front door. He leaned down to give Ramona a head scratch as he went by and she rubbed herself against his calves. He’d even charmed Ramona and she was famously picky. The few times she’d seen Tom at the door, she’d fled the other direction and hid underneath the couch.
