Page 39 of Playing with Forever
I stared at her, plate in my hand, for a few seconds too long before I realized what the hell I was doing and went to sit down at the kitchen table.
We ate breakfast quickly. We didn’t have a lot of time to talk since she needed to finish getting ready for work, but it wasn’t the kind of awkward silence that needed to be filled with idle conversation. It was nice, actually. One of the things I appreciated about my friends, including my brother, was how they could chat and joke and laugh, filling my life with joy even if I was in a quiet mood, which was most of the time. They distracted me from the dark places in my head.
It was unexpectedly nice to be with a woman that I could just sit in comfortable silence with. No need for talking to fill the space. Just enjoying the morning and each other’s presence.
Shit. I was getting in way over my head with Andrea, yet I couldn’t stop those feelings stirring to life inside of me.
I drove Andrea to work and she didn’t make a single snarky comment about my need to do so. As much as I loved her sass, I appreciated her taking this situation seriously.
We pulled up in front of her office, right at the front door. I didn’t want her even walking through the parking lot on her own. The sun was out and it was a bright morning, but I wasn’t about to take any chances with her safety.
“Thanks for the ride.” Andrea smiled at me and leaned over, placing a soft kiss on my lips before I realized her intent. “I get off at five, so don’t be late. I’ll be starving.”
She winked at me, playful as ever, and hopped out of the car. I watched her head into the building and resisted the urge to bang my head against the steering wheel.
Jesus Christ. I was so fucking sunk.
Annoyed with myself, I drove off to work. I parked, stepped out of the vehicle, but was only just closing the car door when the shot rang out.
On instinct, I dropped to the ground like a stone, my body laid out tight and flat to the concrete, trying to make myself as small a target as possible with the car as a shield. My heart hammered so hard in my chest I thought it would burst free.
I sucked in a breath, but the scent of blood and sand was all I could smell, the memory still so fresh in my mind. A gunshot—I tried to pinpoint the direction. Where had it come from? Who was shooting at—
It’s not a gunshot. That initial panic cleared as I realized it had been a car backfiring. But telling my body this information didn’t matter. There was still blood and sand in my nose. I couldn’t inhale properly, the sand in my lungs choking me, the sound in my ears still ringing…
I attempted to breathe. In and out. I desperately tried to claw my way out of the past so I could remember the countless breathing exercises I’d learned over the years when something triggered my PTSD. My therapist told me that the trauma I’d endured in the military wasn’t just something I’d magically heal from. And my response to high frequency sounds—like this one, or gunshot or fireworks—would never be the same as a person who’d never experienced what I had.
“Chase?”
My brother’s voice sounded like it came from incredibly far away, echoing in my head as if I were in a tunnel. I pushed my body back up so I was crouched beside the car and raised my head, which felt like it weighed a ton.
“Chase, hey.” Austin hunkered down to my level in front of me. “It’s me, Austin.”
Relief swept through me as I tried to pull his face into focus. My reaction to a car backfiring had been embarrassing enough, but I was grateful that it was Austin who’d witnessed the episode, and not someone else. He’d been with me one other time when the same thing had occurred and knew how to handle me, and the situation. Thank God it hadn’t happened in front of Andrea.
“Can I touch you?” he asked, aware that any quick movement, if my mind wasn’t clear yet, could make things worse, instead of better.
I nodded, realizing I was shaking all over. I hated this, I hated it more than anything, my mind and body in a panic that I couldn’t control or escape, a prisoner in my own head. It was fucking mortifying.
Austin took me gently by the arm and helped me up to standing, then put a hand on the small of my back to walk me over to a nearby bench. “Well, this sure is a fun start to the day, huh?”
His tone was casual, relaxed—joking even—but not like he expected me to reply. Considering what a smart-ass my brother was the majority of the time, he surprised me by being calm and level-headed when it truly mattered the most.
Once we sat down, he continued more seriously. “Can you do me a favor, give me five things you can see?”
I despised grounding techniques, but I’d learned that they did help to clear the fog from my brain after this kind of incident, diverting my attention from the anxiety still lingering inside of me.
“The cars,” I gritted out. “You. The trees along the edge of the parking lot. The building with the firm in it. Some of the casinos down the strip.”
“Great, that’s great.”
On a regular basis, Austin could drive me nuts, but he had a way of praising me during my panic attack that didn’t make me bristle, but relaxed me instead.
“Four things you can hear?” he asked.
I briefly closed my eyes to concentrate on the sounds around us. “The cars, the birds, the wind, and you.”
“Three things you can touch?”
