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Her sluggish thoughts were slow to grasp reality, again.
Her eyes flew open as air shuddered in and out of her lungs. Scott’s face crumpled in concern, and his hands, holding hers, squeezed too tight. Her fingers tingled and she pulled away from him. She tried to speak, but her throat, fiery and raw, strangled her words. Had she been screaming?
“Are you... okay?” Soft and soothing, his voice tamed the wildness in her mind, settled the fluttering of her heart.
Her eyes filled with tears, and then finally—finally—came the comforting tap of nails on the hardwood floor. Breaking their locked gazes, she wrenched herself around on the couch and her voice rasped out. “Gen? C’mere, girl.”
Gen approached, tail low and deep eyes limpid in the dim light. She laid her head on Abby’s lap and Abby pressed her forehead to the fine fur between the dog’s ears. She dug her fingers into Gen’s ruff and focused on breathing.
In, out.
Gen caught her hair in her teeth and pulled, the gentle tug at her scalp so familiar, so reassuring.
“No, Gen.” Scott touched the dog’s shoulder, but Abby shied away, her body convulsing tightly around Gen’s head.
Gen pressed her chest against Abby’s legs, then worked her front paws into her lap. With more of the dog’s weight in her arms, Abby squeezed, finding the steady rhythm of Gen’s breathing. Slowly, her breathing matched Gen’s and her heart rate slowed.
Unable to face Scott, she kept her face pressed to Gen’s fur and mumbled, “We should go.”
“You don’t have to.”
She appreciated his kind offer, but as lucidity returned, so did the dawning horror of Scott having witnessed her first full-blown panic attack in years.
She rose, hand still tangled in Gen’s ruff. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”
Sorry for ruining his evening, sorry for thinking she could try to start over again, sorry for dragging him into her mess. There were no words to fix what she’d done.
Eleven
SCOTT ROSE IN the early morning, giving up after a night of broken sleep, rubbing exhaustion from his eyes. Trailing into the kitchen, the dog bowl on the counter mocked him, and lifting it in careful hands, he put it away in the pantry.
He’d thought it an innocuous gift, the latest in a line of them carefully designed to earn Abby’s trust. Clearly, he’d miscalculated.
“How am I going to tell Dylan?” he asked the empty room, his voice echoing back at him.
Instead of tackling that problem, he methodically cleaned up the still-full, now-cold mugs, the slight spill where some coffee had sloshed onto the counter, the crumpled towel which had fallen to the floor at some point during Abby’s...
What? Episode? Attack? Finn’s younger sister had anxiety and sometimes couldn’t breathe. Scott considered calling his best friend, but he wasn’t sure what had happened to Abby. And, he wasn’t sure he had the right to share her struggle with someone else without her permission.
Ghosts clearly haunted her; maybe he should have left them well enough alone.
Should he not have given her the bowl?
He rubbed his forehead. No, that way lay madness. A twisting labyrinth of second guesses and regrets. And he had plenty of those.
He’d lost his best friend in high school. Jake had been the star receiver on the team; Scott had been the quarterback. It had been a running game back then; throws were rare, but he and Jake had practiced for hours in the back yard—so much so their coach had given them the go-ahead to run a play during the homecoming game. Scott had thrown a perfect spiral, and just like a thousand times before, he waited for it to slide into Jake’s arms. But it didn’t. Jake dropped the catch.
They lost the game. Not because of the dropped catch, but because Scott had been furious. They’d gotten into a yelling match on the sidelines, and he’d been about to throw the first punch when the offensive coach pulled them apart. After that, he hadn’t trusted Jake. Not to make the catch, not even to make the run. He’d been foolish, handing the ball off to others again and again, his frustration mounting as they failed to move the chains. By the end of the game, their friendship had ended.
It took a couple more years—and a lot more games—for him to learn sometimes perfect throws end in dropped catches. He could only control what happened on his side of the ball. He’d made the throw. Now, Abby had to choose what she would do with it.
A knock sounded on the front door, and Scott’s heart turned over. He didn’t need to check to know Abby had returned. He wore only sweatpants and an old t-shirt, the collar worn out and full of holes, but he wouldn’t make her wait. Wouldn’t make himself wait for her answer.
Either way, it was time to find out if she could catch.
Abby slept like the dead, Gen curled comfortingly in the space behind her knees, and woke, eyes burning and throat raw, emotionally hungover and wrung out. Gen padded after her into the kitchen and waited patiently, tail swishing the floor, while Abby filled her food dish.
“Okay, Gen.” Her voice shook and broke as if glass shards were lodged in her throat. The dog cocked her head and studied Abby before sniffing at the bowl, then sitting again. Abby sighed. “It’s okay, girl. You can eat.”