She calmed when his hand brushed over her butt and patted her there, like he knew she was fretting. “Go to sleep. We can deal with this in the morning.”
Deal with thisdidn’t sound romantic and lovely, now, didit? But she was too exhausted to think about it and dissect it and take it personally. Sleep crashed over her, and she welcomed it.
WHENKATRINA WOKEup from a dark dream in which she was running, running through an endless tunnel with no light at the end, struggling to breathe, she knew she wasn’t going to be sleeping for the rest of the night.
Katrina was dimly aware Jas was lying next to her, but cuddling wouldn’t help her right now. She slipped from the bed to sit on the floor, the rug and the plank floors underneath grounding her. She crawled away to brace herself against the wall. Her brain buzzed like a million bees had set up residence inside it. Her breathing grew short, sweat beaded on her forehead, her chest tightened with pain. The dark room spun around her.
Heart attack!
No. It wasn’t a heart attack. She inhaled and exhaled, letting the panic wash over her. For her, anxiety was like a rip current. The harder she fought it, the more it dragged her out to sea.
In a real rip current, you got out of it by swimming perpendicular to the current. Here, she just had to tread water. Eventually it would pass.
It would pass.
It would pass.
Everything passed. Nothing felt the same forever.
More sweat, more tears. She doubled over, the pain in her chest becoming too intense. A light touch moved overher hair, but even a light touch felt too sharp. She shook her head, rejecting it, and it vanished.
Katrina let the storm thunder and rage, and slowly her heart rate began to slow, the pain growing less intense. She inhaled deep, dragging the oxygen into her lungs in greedy gulps.
When the attack had mostly passed, she tipped her head back against the wall and opened her eyes. Jas sat across from her on the floor, holding an orange prescription bottle. He lifted it up in question.
She shook her head. The anti-anxiety meds were on an as-needed basis, and other than her lingering nausea, she no longer needed them tonight.
Jas didn’t ask her what had happened, for which she was grateful. She hated that question, because she rarely had a response. “You okay?” he asked quietly.
“Yes,” she whispered.
He studied her, as if confirming that she was telling the truth. He placed the bottle between them. “Do you want a hug?”
Katrina wrapped her arms around herself. “I would very much like that, thank you.”
He sat next to her and pulled her into his arms. She rested her head on his chest.
His naked chest.
Oh right, they were both naked.
She snuggled closer. That was fine with her. This was the stuff of dreams, naked-cuddling with Jas.
The zings were muted now, satisfied by physical exhaustion, but still there, comfortably hovering under the surface. These weren’t the electric lustful zings from before, but cozy zings. The zings that invited cookies in front of a fire.
“Are you cold?” he asked.
“Yes, but I like the cold.”
He shifted. “The winters here were my favorites. It can get over a hundred in the summer, but the winters make up for it.”
“Yikes. Does it ever snow?”
“Once, when I was a kid. So not really.”
“I miss the snow.”
“Tahoe’s not far from here. Do you want to go? The car’s gassed.”
