I make it there on legs that feel borrowed. Cooler air hits my bare chest, and I grasp the edges of the sink, forcing my head down. I crank the faucet as I shove my face under it. Water hits my skin and my brain shorts out because suddenly it’s not water, it’s blood, warm and thick and seeping into places you can’t reach, and Iknow what that’s like.
Not in theory.
In my hands. Under my fingernails. On my face while I’m breathing hard and someone else isn’t breathing at all.
“Fuck.” I grip the porcelain until my knuckles go white. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
Back in the room. Pacing. Window to door, door to window. The hardwood is cool and gritty with tracked-in sand under my bare feet. My lungs won’t open all the way. Every breath feels like sucking air through a wet rag and I know, clinically, that this is a panic response, adrenaline and cortisol and my nervous system overreacting.
Yet knowing that helps exactly zero percent.
Four steps to the window. Four steps to the door.
“Are you okay?”
I stop mid-stride.
Natalia’s in the doorway. Hallway light behind her soft and yellow. She’s wearing an oversized t-shirt that stops at mid-thigh, and her hair is wrecked from sleep, chestnut tangles falling across one shoulder. She looks?—
Okay, no. I’m not doing that right now.
I’m in the middle of a psychological meltdown about the fact that I might be a murderer. This is not the time to notice that her legs go on for approximately forever, or that the shirt is slipping off one shoulder. I notice all of it anyway, because apparently my brain has priorities and they’re fucked.
“Peachy.” I tell her. “Never better. Just doing some light cardio at three in the morning. Really committed to the routine.”
She ignores that completely. Just walks across the room, calm and steady, no hesitation, like approaching a man who’s pacing and shaking and shirtless and sweating is something she’s got experience with. That thought snags somewhere in my head. Files itself away.
She takes my hand. Her fingers are cool and dry and sure, and she leads me to the edge of the bed and sits me down.
“Look at me.” She holds my eyes and takes a slow breath. In through her nose, measured, counted. Out through her mouth. “Match me.”
My first attempt sounds like a death rattle.
“Again.” No frustration. Just steady. “Breathe into your belly, not your chest. Let your diaphragm do the work.”
She puts her hand flat on my sternum. Palm over my heart. Warm and steady against bare skin, and the contact is so grounding that my heart rate starts to settle before I even take the next breath.
I breathe. Match her. In, out. In, out.
Slowly, the vise around my ribs loosens. The walls stop their slow inhale. My hands unclench.
We stay like that. I don’t know how long. Just our breathing and the waves outside and the occasional creak of the house settling. Her hand rises and falls with my chest, and I can’t ignore how near she is. The warmth coming off her skin. The smell of her, which isn’t perfume but clean cotton and salt air and something underneath that’s just her. The way the moonlight catches the curve of her cheek.
I should not be thinking about any of this. I am thinking about all of it.
“Are you sure I don’t know you?”
My hand is already moving before I can stop it, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear. My fingers graze her cheek and stay there, and she’s not pulling away. Her skin is so soft it makes me stupid.
“No.” Barely a whisper. “Why?”
“Because nothing in my head makes sense except you. Everything’s static and broken and wrong, and then you show up and it all just...” I trail off. Breathe. “Maybe I just want to know you. Maybe that’s all it is.”
Something shifts in her face. A crack in the composure. And then it seals over, fast, and she’s off the bed and across the room before I can register the loss of her hand.
“You can’t say things like that.” Arms crossed. Chin up. Five feet of distance that feels like fifty. “What if you have someone? A girlfriend, a wife? You have no idea, Johnny. You could be hurting someone right now and you wouldn’t even know it.”
The smart move is to agree. Be the reasonable, responsible guy with a head injury. But the idea of having someone, of belonging to a person who isn’t here, doesn’t land anywhere inside me. It bounces off like a stone hitting glass.
