AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You’re white as a sheet. What’s wrong?” He repeats, touching my forehead.
Chills roll through my body as I start to shake. I breathe steadily in through my nose and out through my mouth, trying to regulate my heart rate.
“N-nothing.” I tell him, ashamed.
I hate this part of me. The part that’s weak, not strong.
My claustrophobia isn’t a regular problem – case in point, I was able to sit in a flying sardine can for nine hours to come to Switzerland – but when it crops up, it always cuts me off at the knees.
“Thayer.” He warns.
“I’m fine. Really.” I say, shaking my face out of his hold.
Or at least attempting to because his hand moves down to grip my jaw, pinning me in place.
“Tell me.” He commands, then softer, “Tell me what’s wrong, love.”
He’s not helping. The way he calls me ‘love’ has my heartbeat bursting to life just when I’ve worked on stabilizing it.
My palms are sweaty and hold the bunched fabric of my shorts in a death grip.
“I had to hide sometimes.” I start, “From my mom’s boyfriends, I mean. When they’d start screaming, start throwing things, I’d just go hide in my closet and I’d stay there for hours until the noises stopped.”
I swallow around the ball in my throat and his thumb starts stroking the line of my jaw, the gesture reassuring.
It has a calming effect on me, muffling the panic from before.
“They never hurt me. I just… don’t like being trapped in confined spaces with no escape because of it.” I finish with a careless shrug. “I’m fine, I really am, I’m just having a very dramatic reaction to this elevator, that’s all.”
If eyes could burn people alive, I think all they’d find of me in this elevator is a burn mark of my ass on the carpet beneath me.
He stares at me unblinkingly, the eye contact so powerful, so enthralling, I feel like he’s looking into the depths of my soul.
He cuts it off abruptly, reaching into the pocket of his shorts and taking out his phone.
He types away for a few moments before bringing the phone up to his ear, watching me as it rings.
Finally, someone picks up and that’s when I discover that Rhys speaks flawless French because he has a minute-long conversation in the language before he hangs up and puts the phone back in his pocket.
“That was Fred, the mayor. He’s going to send firefighters to get us as a matter of priority, we should be out of here in ten minutes.”
“You called the mayor?”
“If I could cut these doors open and get you out myself, I would.” He says, the coldness of his tone at odds with his heated words.
I’m not sure what to say to that, so I settle for something safe.
“Don’t worry, I can wait.”
He scoffs at that and drops backwards from his knees to sit in front of me. His hands come up to wrap around my arms reassuringly.
“I turned around and you were on the floor, shaking, covered in sweat, and pale as a ghost. Worse, you looked so fucking small and terrified. You almost gave me a heart attack.” He says, placing a hand on his chest. “Don’t tell me that ‘you’re fine’ or ‘you can wait’ after that, because I’m not going to have you sitting in here a second longer than you need to be.”
I blink at him silently, unsure what to say. He speaks with barely controlled ire, like it’s physically costing him to know that being trapped here is my worst nightmare.
His aura is dark and threatening around him and in this moment, I know he would slay my every demon if presented with the opportunity.
He rubs my arms back and forth in a comforting gesture.
