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Ivy sat next to him, wrapping herself around him, whispering in his ear, but his sobs didn’t stop. Words spilled from his lips that I couldn’t understand as his breathing grew ragged. For the first time since I’d met him, I feared for him. I feared for how broken he was, how on the edge of something dark he’d balanced himself, and for what part we might have played in it. I mean, we knew about his fear, his worries, and his OCD and we saw him leaving as a personal insult, but maybe it was his only way to cope.
God, what have we done to him?
Ivy looked up at me desperately. Wide-eyed, begging for my help. I sat down, wrapping my arms around them both, feeling whole for the first time since he'd left.
“Gray, I need you to breathe for me. You’re freaking us out. Just breathe,” I whispered as I ran my knuckles along his jaw.
“Breathe, Grayson. Please. In and out. Slowly,” Ivy begged.
I laid a kiss on his cheek as Ivy kissed his neck. I hoped that our mouths on him would shake him from whatever was happening, but nothing changed.
I kissed him harder, pressing an open mouthed kiss to his lips, but I couldn’t get him to focus and the extent of his breakdown was starting to scare me. Glazed eyes, blue lips, and rapid breaths. I could see he was knee deep in a panic attack and nothing was helping.
“Find me his phone, princess. Fast. And something to stop this bleeding in his hand.”
Ivy pushed up from the floor and returned moments later with his phone and a towel. She wrapped his bleeding hand in the towel, avoiding the damage he’d done to his hand that had landed him in hospital. I unlocked the phone, using the code I knew he used for everything, finding the number I needed.
“Addison. My name is Ethan Tate. I’m a friend of Gray’s and he’s here right now. He’s having some sort of panic attack. It’s been going on for about fifteen minutes. I don’t know what to do. I need your help.”
“Lori. Call his mum. She’ll be able to get through to him. Can I expect to see this as a headline tomorrow?”
“Not everyone wants to sell him out, so no, never.” I barked out, furious that it would be her first concern.
“Kay. Call me once you’ve spoken to Lori and let me know how he is.”
“Hey baby boy, I need you to listen to me. Find something to focus on. Something in the room that you can see, touch, feel. Now I want you to breathe. In for 3, out for 5. Nice and slowly. No rush. Take your time. Breathe, baby boy. Listen to me. Just hear my voice. You don’t need to do anything else.”
I watched as the minutes passed and she kept talking to him. His breathing shifted, his face relaxed, eyes refocused, and he responded to the sound of his mum’s voice.
“Mum? Where did you come from?”
“Hey, Grayson. It’s nice to hear your voice. What’s going on?”
“Fuck, I don’t know.”
“Your friends called me.”
“They did?” He looked between Ivy and me, confused, and I couldn’t help but skim my knuckles along his scruff covered jaw as a way of explaining that we were trying to help him. The familiar feel of his face under my fingers made my stomach pull.
“They seem to really care about you.”
He closed his eyes, rubbing his hand over his exhausted face. “Mum, I messed up. I’m in love with them. In love with both of them. Ivy and Ethan. They are my whole world.”
“Was today about them?”
“I’ve ruined everything. I don’t know how to fix it.”
“Have you been hiding how you feel about them, Grayson?”
“I was scared. I ran from them. I ruined everything.”
“Why?”
I watched him struggle to answer.
“It’s not normal. What if people don’t like it? The band, the fans, you and dad? I got scared about people having yet another opinion about me.”
“Grayson, you could love a football team who wants to take you all at once and post it on the internet each week and I would still love you.”
