Just me. A half-drunk mug of coffee. And a cat who’s already pretending I don’t exist. Although that’s preferable to JJ sticking himself all up in my business.
The basement hums with fluorescent lights and the faint buzz of the old treadmill in standby mode. The air smells like sweat and rubber and something metallic underneath.
Dev’s already warming up. He doesn’t look up when I walk in. Just nods once, the silent acknowledgment of two people who know what this space is for.
I set my water bottle down and start stretching. We don’t talk. We don’t have to.
I lift. He spots. Then we switch.
It’s the kind of repetitive motion I crave. Steady, predictable, dependable. There’s something about matching someone else’s breath that tricks your brain into thinking everything’s okay.
“You good?” he asks.
I don’t look at him. “Yeah.”
He doesn’t respond. Just keeps taping his wrist, slow and tight. He’s as efficient with his exercises as he is with his words.
“Just tired,” I add.
“Uh-huh.” The sound is too flat to be agreement. “You’ve been tired since Chicago.”
The clang of the barbell hitting the floor rings through the room as I set it down harder than necessary.
Dev glances at me, expression unreadable. “You bolted after the game. JJ said he thought you were gonna puke.”
“Thanks for the medical update.”
He waits again. He’s too patient. It makes it worse.
“You ever talk to anyone?” he asks eventually. “About... everything?”
I pause mid-reach for a kettlebell. “Like a therapist?”
He nods. “Started back up last spring. Took me a while to find someone who didn’t drive me crazier with their chatter, but it helped.”
I grip the handle tighter. “You’re just now telling me this?”
“I wasn’t hiding it. It just... wasn’t relevant until now.”
His tone’s neutral, but I hear it anyway. The not-so-subtle suggestion that now it is relevant. That I’m unraveling a little and he sees it.
“I’m fine,” I say. “I’ve got routines.”
“You also have panic attacks in equipment closets.”
The sentence hits harder than I expect. Not because it’s cruel. Because it’s true. And clearly, I haven’t been hiding my spiral as well as I’d imagined.
I sit down on the bench, elbows on knees, sweat cooling against my skin.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” I admit. “It’s like... things get loud. Even when there’s no sound. And my body just quits. I can’t breathe, I can’t talk.”
Dev nods slowly, like he gets it. Because he probably does.
“You can’t logic your way out of it,” he says. “Believe me, I tried. What you’ve got, Whitaker, is a toolbox of coping mechanisms. But they’re just temporary patches. If you don’t learn proper techniques to deal with your issues, they’ll spring too many leaks to control.”
I rub a hand over my face, the faint stubble catching against my palm. I need to shave. “I should be able to deal with my problems on my own.” Something driven into me since my childhood. Don’t let the world see you crumble. Don’t let the public into your private life. Rules I’ve been flaunting dangerously of late.
“No,” he says firmly. “It’s pressure. And your brain thinks the only way to keep breathing is to shut everything else down.”
