I ignore that. Maybe I really am crazy, like my sister once said to me in the heat of an argument a few years ago. This isn’t how a sane person would react to someone breaking into herapartment. I should be terrified. I shouldn’t have hung up on the cops. I should be telling myself that exchanging letters with a person doesn’t mean that you really know them at all.
I’ve known dangerous men. I was hurt by one of them.
Maverick is a big man with a big frame. He’s powerfully built, but he doesn’t have that menace in him. There’s nothing but an urgent kindness and a whole lot of concern shining in his eyes.
“I meant time as in, time apart,” I squeak. “This isn’t healthy. I’m going to repeat, you can’t just show up here.” I slide the lamp slowly back onto the nightstand.
As I think past what Maverick did to get in here and the fact of his presence, looming so fucking large there in the doorway, his words really hit hard.
He’s big enough just to carry me off. Take me out of my apartment, take me all the way outside. He thinks that he’d be helping, but he wouldn’t be. He could do it to me and there’s nothing that I could do to stop him. What’s left of my calm façade crumbles. The panic breaks in and now there’s only ice water.
“I know you aren’t going to go willingly. You say you can’t leave here. You believe that’s true. Your brain isn’t going to change unless it’s forced to change. You just have to trust me.”
He still doesn’t understand. Even specialists really don’t. Not unless they’ve been through this themselves. “I’ll have a panic attack. I won’t be able to breathe. I’ll asphyxiate. I’ll have a heart attack. You think this isn’t real. You think it’s a game or some stupid challenge, but it’s not.”
“You won’t have a heart attack or asphyxiate. It’s just the fear talking, telling you that’s going to happen.”
He steps into the room, but I quickly hold my phone up. “If you take one more step anywhere other than out that door, I’m calling the cops. You have five seconds to get out of here.” My voice is shrill. “I don’t want to see you again. I don’t want you to write to me. You call, write, text, or show up anywhere near here, I’m calling the police. I’m dead serious about that.”
He does step back, like my words knocked him off balance. Hurt twists his hard features. It doesn’t look right on him. I hate that sudden sadness. “You’d send me back to jail just to keep this fear alive?”
“I’d send you back to jail if you refuse to respect my wishes, stalk me, and make real threats about breaking in here to do me bodily harm.”
He holds out his hands, the way people do when they’re trying to convince someone they’re harmless. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Everything you just said would hurt me very much.” I raise a hand of my own. “Five. Four. Three—”
He charges at me.
Just shoots straight from the door like a crazed psycho. I want to scream, but it chokes off in my throat the second his hands lock around my upper arms. He hauls me up off the bed and sets me on my feet. He doesn’t let go of my wrists as he turns me around. I could kick him. Break free. Struggle. Fight. I can’t do any of that. I can’t make my body work. My limbs are dead weights. I might as well be in water, sinking all the way downto the bottom, hands tied, concrete blocks or rocks tugging me down, down, down.
Maverick holds my wrists with one hand while he pulls something out of one of the pockets of his cargo pants.
Ties. Fucking zip ties.
My brain goes haywire. I don’t even need to leave this apartment to have a panic attack. I try to jack forward, but he’s holding my wrists too tightly. I can only bend from the neck. My stomach twists and rams straight up into my throat. The back of my tongue burns with bile. I cough and choke, spluttering, gasping, trying to breathe past the blockage. He might as well have gagged me. All I can do is hiss for breath, but it won’t come. He might as well have shoved a wad of cotton into my throat. It’s choking me. Silencing me. Killing me.
I can’t swallow it down. No matter how many times I try. The saliva in my mouth goes nowhere. The acid gets worse. I’m going to throw up. I’m going to throw up all over myself and all over him. He’ll deserve it. Every bit. If only I could breathe. I can’t throw up unless I can breathe. Black spots start to crowd in, faintly at first, little pinpricks, but they grow to fist sized clumps.
My legs start to shake. My whole body trembles. The tremors are brutal. They’ll tear me apart. It’s worse than any cramping, though my stomach does that. It spasms and clenches, tighter than the hold Maverick has on me. Tighter than he’s securing those bonds while all I can do is gulp and gulp and try to suck in oxygen.
I’m not dead.
If I truly couldn’t breathe, I’d be dead by now. He’s taking his time with me.
I need to scream. I need to cry out for help. I can’t make a sound. He doesn’t even have to gag me. I can’t say anything. I can’t do anything. My legs are going to buckle.
I need to fight. I can’t just stand here, paralyzed, and let him drag me outside. If he gets me out there, out where it’s endlessly open, there will be nothing to protect me. Nothing to save me.
No. No, no, no.
I’m slick with sweat, burning up in my own skin. Frigid. Sweltering. Soaking wet. My clothes cling damply to my body, outlining the shape of me. The darkness closes in, the terror so real that it’s all I can see, all I can think, all that I know. It’s all I feel. Terror, crawling through my limbs like a toxic slime. Like venom. My muscles will turn black. My limbs. They’ll fall off. I’ll drown inside myself. My lungs will liquify. I’ll become nothing but a ball of fire. It’s in my throat now. It’s not cotton. It’s flames.
“You need to feel the panic. You can’t truly do that if you keep running back here for shelter. You can’t get better if you keep choosing the sickness.”
He sounds like my parents. I want to tell him to go to hell. I want to hurt him like he’s hurting me. I want to kill him before he can kill me. He’s cold. Unfeeling. Devoid of mercy. Just another person who doesn’t understand. Who won’t even try to understand. I’d do anything to be free of this, but this isn’t the way.
I was never meant to live through it.
