His hugs.
The way he holds onto me all night long and never lets go.
The way he knows me. Gets me. Loves me exactly as I am.
“Sorry,” I say, shaking my head. “I didn’t mean to turn this little get together into a therapy session.”
Luke chuckles. “It’s probably mostly my fault. I’m excited to go home. I miss my girls.”
“They’re lucky to have you.”
He smiles a little. “I’m the lucky one. And I think you are, too. Which means you’ve got a tough decision to make.”
I give him a hopeful smile. “You sure you don’t want to make it for me?”
“Wish I could, Sophie, but this one’s all you. Remember, right and right.”
Right and right.
As Luke’s words tumble around my head, I can’t help but think I already know which right is right for me. And I smile, thinking I’m ready to get the rest of my life started.
Right fucking now.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
TYLER
“Fuck,” I mutter as the muscles in my right arm lock up and I lose my grip on the dumbbell I’ve been using in my very halfhearted attempt at bicep curls. It goes clattering to the padded floor, just narrowly missing my foot.
The sweat currently dripping into my eyes is baffling, considering the fact that even though I’ve been in the gym in my parents’ basement for at least an hour trying to exercise away how much I miss Sophie, all I’ve managed to do is a run on the treadmill that I had to stop after five minutes because my chest was so tight it felt like I couldn’t get a full breath of air, and two sets of bicep curls that felt like I was dragging the dumbbell through mud even though I was only lifting half the weight I normally do.
Bending down, I try to pick up the dumbbell from the floor, but my hand is shaking and so slick with sweat I can’t get a good grip, so it goes crashing right back to the floor.
Everything is fine.
I repeat the words over and over in my head like a prayer, as if I’m asking for it to be true, even knowing it’s the biggest lieI’ve ever told, and I’ve never been much of a liar. My hands keep shaking, and the raw edge of panic that cuts me off at the knees is somehow both inevitable and surprising.
Fuck. Not now. Not here.
Opening and closing my hands and shifting my weight from one foot from the other, I try to calm down so I can go home and fall apart in the privacy of my house. But the hitch in my breath when I try to take in air, the way static buzzes in my ears and makes it hard to hear anything except my own panting, and the unrelenting gallop of my heart all tell me I’m not going anywhere and everything is absolutely not fine.
I am not fine.
Bending at the waist with my hands planted on my thighs, I try to force myself to breathe, but with every shuddering inhale, the band around my chest tightens. My vision darkens at the edges, and I slam a hand down on the weight bench in front of me when my legs start to give out.
Kneeling on the padded floor, I bend over until my forehead is on the bench, trying, unsuccessfully, to force air into my lungs. I rip my hat off my head and toss it to the ground as if that might help me feel less like I’m inhaling through shards of glass, and I wonder dimly if this is how I go. Having a fucking panic attack in my parents’ gym, covered in sweat from a workout I didn’t even actually do, the woman I love more than two thousand miles away on her birthday and the day before mine.
The birthdays we always spend together.
It’s the thought of the birthday night we’re missing that shoves me off the edge I’ve been riding straight into full-blown panic attack territory. An oily curl of nausea snakes into my gut, and I grit my teeth against it as I collapse backwards, laying flat on my back, my hands flying up to grip my suddenly pounding head, as if holding on will keep me from exploding apart.
“Tyler.”
My dad’s voice filters into the edges of my consciousness, somehow piercing my spiraling thoughts, but as I fight throughmy lungs’ partial shutdown, all I can do is lay there, my chest heaving as it searches for air.
“Ty, I need you to listen to my voice right now.” My dad speaks firmly, somehow pulling me up into a sitting position, slotting in behind me and wrapping his arms around my chest. “Breathe with me, okay? Just feel me breathe and do what I do.”
“Can’t,” I manage, my head dropping forward as my dad’s arms tighten across my shuddering chest.
