“I need you to breathe, honey.”
She couldn’t. The room was getting smaller by the second, and she was ninety percent sure she was going to pass out.
“Polly, youneedtobreathe.” His deep voice should have been calming, but it was coming in waves.
Her breaths grew sharp, like desperate gasps.
There was no way out. She was stuck. Just like she’d been stuck as a kid. “I can’t…I c-can’t?—”
He cupped her cheek.
A string of words were said, but she couldn’t pull them together into sentences.
His thumb swiped her cheek, and he spoke again. This time she forced herself to make them make sense.
“Look at me, Polly. Look at my eyes. What color are they?”
“My…my chest hurts!”
“I know. But right now, I need you to focus on me. What color are my eyes?”
She scanned them, pleading with the spinning to slow down. “I can’t really see them in the dark. But they’re usually brown. Sometimes they look green.”
“Yeah, I’ve been told that before. It’s confusing, isn’t it?” Another swipe of his thumb. “Can you feel my palm on your cheek?”
“Yes.”
“Is it cold or hot?”
She let the warmth sink into her skin. “Hot. You’re always hot.”
He chuckled, and the sound punched through the wall of her fear. “Yeah, I don’t run cold very often. I’m going to take a deep breath, and I want you to do it with me. Can you do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you can.” His chest rose on an inhale, and she tried to do the same.
The black dots started to disintegrate. Air filled her lungs.
But she didn’t take her eyes off his. She couldn’t if she’d tried. He was the only stable thing in a world that was still tilting beneath her feet.
Joel watchedPolly’s wide eyes.
She was coming back to him.
He pulled in another long, exaggerated breath. Again, she copied him, a vulnerable trust in her gaze.
“This cellar is…it’s too small,” she whispered, that unfamiliar shake in her voice.
“I bet with me in here it feels even smaller.”
She scoffed. “With your head in here it certainly does.”
Thereshe was. He stroked her cheek again. “Connor’s close. He won’t be long.”
She nodded but it was jerky. Her gaze began to drift around the cellar again, that focus slipping.
“Hey.”
