My chest constricted hard as if someone had reached inside and squeezed. I tried to breathe and the air wouldn't go down, just sat in my throat. My heart stuttered.
I needed to turn off the stove, but my hands weren't responding.
The alarm kept screaming. Sweat broke out across my back, my face, my palms. I grabbed the counter to stay upright, and my fingers were tingling.
In my head was my father's voice, clear as if he were standing beside me:Coffeys don't do this.
I'd been eight years old, on the bathroom floor with my heart trying to escape through my ribs, and he'd stood in the doorway and told me to get up. So I'd gotten up. I'd learned to feel the edges of it coming and clamp down before it could take hold. Eighteen years of catching myself before I fell, and now I was falling anyway, in a kitchen full of smoke, because I'd wanted to prove I could do one normal thing without help.
The noise stopped.
Silence hit like a slap. I blinked and Red was at the stove, a dish towel in his hand, the window open behind him. Smoke was drifting out into the evening air. The pan was off the burner.
I was still gripping the counter, my knuckles white.
"Hey," Red said. "It's okay. It's just salmon. You're okay."
I opened my mouth to tell him I was fine, that I didn't need him to manage me. What came out instead was a sound I didn't recognize, something broken and wet, and then my face was wet too.
I was crying. In front of him. Over salmon.
I swiped at my face, but the tears kept coming and my breath was still hitching. I turned away from him, hunching over the counter like I could hide what was happening if I just made myself small enough.
"Don't," I said. My voice cracked. "Don't look at me."
Red didn't listen. He never listened.
He stepped closer, his hand landing on my shoulder, and I flinched, but I also turned into him like my body knew something my brain hadn't caught up to yet. My forehead hithis shoulder, and I stayed there, face hidden against his shirt, shoulders shaking.
"Leave me alone." I was still crying. "Red, I said—"
"I heard you." His arms came around me, pulling me in tighter. "I'm not going anywhere."
I tried to pull away. He tightened his grip, not enough to hurt, just enough to make clear that leaving wasn't an option. His hand came up and smoothed over my hair, a slow stroke from my forehead to the back of my skull.
I stopped fighting. The tears didn't stop, but the force behind them guttered out, leaving me empty and wrung out. Red kept holding me. He kept stroking my hair. His lips brushed my temple, not a kiss exactly, just contact, just proof that he was there.
I don't know how long we stood like that. Long enough for my breathing to slow. Long enough for the shaking to stop.
"Sorry," I said finally. My voice sounded like gravel.
"Don't be."
I pulled back, just enough to wipe my face with the back of my hand. Red let me go but stayed close, his hand still resting on my hip.
"That was—" I didn't have a word for what that was. The kind of thing I'd spent my whole life making sure no one ever saw.
"You okay?" Red's voice was careful, and I hated him for it almost as much as I loved him for it.
I wasn't okay. I didn't know if I'd ever been okay. But the panic had passed and Red was still here and he wasn't looking at me like I was broken.
"Yeah," I said. "I think so."
"Good." He pressed a kiss to my temple. "How do you feel about sushi?"
We ordered sushi. Red handled it while I sat on the couch and tried to remember how to be a person. When the food arrived, we ate it on the living room floor, and Red told me about the time Murphy got banned from a restaurant in Denver for taking "all you can eat" too literally. I laughed in the right places. By the time we finished, the tight thing in my chest had loosened enough that I could breathe without thinking about it.
Red put on a movie. He was lying between my legs now, his back against my chest, his head tucked under my chin. My arms were wrapped around him, one hand splayed across his stomach, the other resting on his thigh. He fit there like the space had been waiting for him.
