I moved.
“Shoulders against it.”
I obeyed.
“Hands behind your back. Hold your own wrist.”
The position did something to me immediately. Not restraint. I could let go whenever I wanted. That was why it worked. Choice wrapped around stillness.
Declan stepped closer, close enough that his voice didn’t need volume.
“You are going to stand here and breathe. You are not going to plan the next conversation. You are not going to answer texts in your head. You are not going to punish yourself for wanting guidance.” His gaze moved over my face like he was checking for cracks. “For sixty seconds, the only thing you carry is the next breath.”
My eyes stung. I hated that. I hated it enough to blink hard and stare at his shoulder.
He didn’t call me on it.
“Start now,” he said.
I breathed.
The first twenty seconds were ugly. My thoughts kept bucking against the fence. Vanessa. Olivia. Game. Wrong. Want. Door. Hallway. His mouth. My hands behind my back. His voice.
Then something lowered.
Not disappeared.
Lowered.
The thing I craved wasn’t control. Not really.
Control was just the shape it took because shape was easier than chaos. What I wanted was the brief, impossible relief of not carrying every moving part alone. Of handing one minute to someone else and believing he would give it back intact.
Declan watched me understand it.
When the minute ended, he didn’t move away.
“Color.”
My voice came out rough. “Green.”
“Do you want more?”
“Yes.”
No hesitation. No joke.
His nostrils flared on one controlled inhale.
“Then tonight after the game, if your obligations are done and your color is still green, you will text me two words. Still green. Nothing else.”
Anticipation curled through me, slow and brutal. “And if I’m not?”
“Then you text the true color.”
“What happens then?”
“Then I answer that color.”
