Page 12

Marcus

A lone in the elevator, I let out a sigh and run my hands over my face. I’m fucking exhausted. Spending the whole day with my dad and Tim is not easy. They had us bouncing around all over the resort. We spent time in the water before they dragged us to the golf course to spend a couple of hours in the sun. Then, just when I thought I could sneak away and hide out in my room, my dad said he wanted to have a drink with his two sons. So even though I wanted to say no and run away, I stayed behind for another two hours to have some drinks with them.

But now I’m so damn tired and all I want to do is take a shower and fall into bed. Preferably with Parker.

Naked.

But I’m not picky. I’ll take a dressed Parker as well. As long as he’s in bed wrapped around me.

Stepping off the elevator, I stride to our door in a hurry. The thought of Parker being inside has an extra spring in my step and a huge smile on my face as I open the door to our room.

I walk into the dark room, an eerie feeling overcoming me as I softly close the door behind me. The room is silent and I pause. Where the hell is Parker?

I move farther into the room when I finally see him. He’s hunched over on the side of the bed and his shoulders are shaking. My stomach falls as I rush over to him, dropping to my knees in front of him.

“Parker?” I ask, my voice booming in the empty room.

He doesn’t move, but I hear his whispered voice, and I strain my ears, trying to make out what he’s saying. It sounds like he’s counting. My mind runs wild with what could be happening when I remember him telling me about his anxiety and how sometimes he gets attacks. I recall him saying one thing that helps is to count backward. Shit, is that what’s happening right now?

“Parker? Baby? Are you okay?” He says nothing, but he slowly shakes his head no and my heart stops. “What can I do? How can I help?”

I feel so useless right now. Parker is having an attack and I’m frozen. I’m stuck in place and I hate it. Leaning forward, I grab his hands with mine, reassuring him he’s okay and I’m here.

My brain tries to remember back to our conversation before about his anxiety attacks. My mind is working a million miles an hour when I finally remember he said that instrumental guitar music helps him. I slowly remove one of my hands, finding my phone in my back pocket. With my other hand, I continue stroking his wrist, quietly letting him know I’m here for him. I pull up YouTube searching for guitar music. Before letting it blast through the speakers, I put it up to my ears and listen to a sample. Realizing it’s just music and no voices, I slowly raise the volume. Once it’s loud enough to hear throughout the entire room, I set the phone on the nightstand next to the bed and take a seat next to Parker.

He’s no longer counting down, but he’s still breathing in and out slowly. We sit quietly and the only sounds in the room are from the acoustic guitar filtering from my phone’s speaker. I keep my touch on him, too scared to let him go. I’ve never felt this helpless before and I can’t even imagine what it must be like for him.

Researching anxiety attacks differs greatly from seeing one in person. I want to scream, cry, and rage. I hate that he’s having to deal with this, and there’s nothing I can do to help. After a few minutes of the music, Parker’s body slowly deflates, and he leans into me.

I open my arms, cradling him tightly. We don’t say a word, but I know he’s okay as he slowly starts coming back to himself.

“What happened?” I ask quietly, reaching over to turn down the music. I don’t shut it off completely, but enough that we can talk softly over it.

“My mind ran wild, and I had an attack,” he whispers, one of his hands gripping the back of my shirt.

I brush his curls off his face before asking, “What had your mind racing? Something bad?”

He sighs loudly before sitting up, letting me see his reddened face. “It wasn’t anything bad. I came to the room early and was planning a surprise for you. Somewhere between deciding I wanted to do it and actually putting it all together, I freaked out, wondering why I was even doing it. Would you like it? Would you hate it? Would you consider it some type of pity thing and only pretend to like it? It was those thoughts that set it off. Sometimes I can calm myself down pretty quickly, but I think because it was about you, I couldn’t.”

Ouch.

As I go to move away, Parker’s eyes widen before he quickly scrambles closer. “I meant nothing bad by it. What I was trying to say was that the last time I ruined everything with us, and I didn’t want to do that again, so my attack hit harder. I’m trying not to let my anxiety ruin this for us again. I can’t risk losing you.” His eyes get wide again, and he sputters, “I mean, you’re not mine, per se, but I would love it if you were again. You know, someday.”

“I would love to be yours again. Someday. Preferably someday soon.” I snatch Parker around the waist, pulling him onto my lap so he’s straddling me. “But I need you to know that I’m not going anywhere. If there is ever a time when you are doubting us, or my feelings for you, I need you to come and talk to me. Fuck, if there’s a time when you want to surprise me, I never want you to get so worked up that you give yourself an anxiety attack.”

“I can’t control it,” he mumbles, his hands caressing the nape of my neck.

“I know, and now that I’m aware of what’s going on, I’m going to make sure you never doubt my feelings for you. I can’t cure your anxiety, but what I can do is make sure you always know how valid my feelings are for you. And to show you that every day.” Sliding my hands up and down his back, I hope he realizes the truth in my words. It’s easier to say the words, so I need to make sure I show them to him daily.

“I wish I would have talked to you about all my thoughts before and not run away like a coward.”

“Parker Olsen, you were not a coward. I can never imagine what you were feeling, but I know it had to have been tough enough for you to leave. But now I’m going to do everything to make sure it doesn’t happen again. I can’t do that again. Live without you. It was too hard.”

I place my forehead against his, both of us breathing the other in. His body still has a slight tremble, so I grab him in my arms and stand up, lifting him into the air.

“Marcus!” he squeals, a smile flashing on his face. The first smile I’ve seen since I walked in. Fuck, I will never take it for granted.

“Come on, let’s take a shower.”

Holding onto him tightly, I carry him into the bathroom, placing him down in front of the sink. I turn the water on, then twist around and help him remove all of his clothes. As much as I want him sexually, tonight I just want to care for him.

Once he’s completely naked, I strip out of my clothes, then usher him into the shower. I make sure he’s standing under the hot water, and crowd in behind him, holding him close to me. He turns in my arms, resting his head on my chest.

“I love you,” I tell him, realizing how hard it would be for him to say it first. “Everything that happened sucked, and I hate we had time apart, but I still love you. I don’t think that’s ever going to change. And I’m not going anywhere either. Any time you’re having an attack, I’ll be right by your side to see you through it. Whether that’s sitting next to you in silence, putting on some guitar music, or hell, even standing with you in the shower.”

“I love you too. So much. And thank you, but I also need you to know that it’s not all on you. It’s on me too. I need to remember that sometimes little things don’t need to be blown up into something huge. And that I don’t need to analyze every little detail of something. Does that mean I’ll stop doing it? No, there’s no way my mind will let me. But I’ve been working toward it, and talking with my therapist helps a lot. She listens to my thoughts and helps me talk about them and determine which ones are true and which are something I can control. I’m going to fight for you, always. I might just need a little bit of patience. But I promise I will always come to you when anything is on my mind.”

“Forcing us into the same room for this trip was the best thing that Kendra could have done.” I pour some shampoo onto his head, lathering it into his curls. “I’m not lying when I say that I fully intended to avoid you this whole trip.”

“I wouldn’t have blamed you. Leaving you without telling you the truth was a shitty move.”

“It was,” I agree. “But now that I know, I get it. And we can use it to bring us even closer. So, I’m guessing tomorrow I’ll need to go and tell Kendra thanks. Oh, fucking hell, I never thought I would tell her she was right.” I groan, nuzzling Parker under the water to rinse off his hair.

“Tell her she was right?” he questions.

“She said this trip could change my life. And she was right.”

“Thank you for your help earlier. With the music and now with the shower. It’s the little things like this that help me when I’m having an attack. It helps it to pass quicker.”

“You told me they’re some things you do at home to help, so I figured it would work this time.” I continue washing out his hair, gently taking my time to massage his scalp.

“You were right,” he whispers. “Thank you.”

“Come on, let’s go lie down.”

I step out of the shower, grabbing the towel off the rack. First, I dry off Parker, and then I quickly dry myself off as well. I pull him by the hand out of the bathroom and snatch back the comforter to the bed. He slowly climbs into the bed, his head on a swivel around the room. I look to see what he’s looking at, and for the first time since I walked in, I see the surprise he was working on for me.

There’s a table set out on the balcony with food, lit candles, and rose petals leading from the outside to the bed. My focus on Parker sitting on the bed made me overlook the petals earlier. My heart is full at the thought of Parker planning all of this for me. I look back at him, and he shrugs his shoulders.

“I wanted to do something nice for you. So I thought a nice dinner overlooking the ocean, then maybe some sexy time together. But uh, this was not what I had in mind.” He chuckles softly and I smile back. It seems as though his anxiety attack is receding and he’s becoming himself again.

“I can’t believe you would do this for me,” I rasp, glancing back toward the table again. I would never say Parker was the romantic one. Hell, neither of us was over-the-top romantic, so this means everything to me. A small thing that shows me how much he was thinking of me earlier. He always used to do things for me, but I wouldn’t consider them romantic.

Parker sits up on his knees, the blanket falling away, his naked body on display for me. Fuck, if he wasn’t so vulnerable right now, I would pounce on him. But I won’t. I’ll wait until he’s in a better headspace.

“I wanted you to know I was thinking of you. I wanted to talk to you about us and thought it would be best to do it over a nice dinner. And if it ended with us in bed, then that’s a plus, too.”

I laugh, shaking my head at his antics. “Lie down and I’ll bring some of the food over to the bed. We can eat naked in bed. Nothing sounds more fun than that.”

“Okay,” he responds excitedly. He bounces lightly on the bed while I walk outside the sliding doors. I grab both plates and make my way back inside, setting them down on the nightstand. We’re both still completely naked, but there are more important things right now. My stomach rumbles, which causes Parker to laugh, a softness in him that wasn’t there thirty minutes ago.

Pulling back the blanket, I slide in next to him, grabbing hold of his hand. “Are you okay?” I ask.

“Yeah, I’m okay. Sometimes, I can get over it quicker than others. It’s getting easier now than it was at the beginning. The first time, I really thought I was having a heart attack. I had never been so scared in my life.” Pausing, he takes a deep breath before talking again. “It’s still scary sometimes and while I’m in the middle of it, it’s hard to remember that it’s just my mind. But once it’s over with and I have the control back, I’m reminded that it wasn’t real. Is it hard some days? Yes, of course. But it’s getting better.”

“I want to learn everything. These are things I didn’t know about you when we were together before.”

“I didn’t know what it was called before. I never realized what I’ve been feeling for years is anxiety. At first, I thought it was normal. The second guessing everything or needing to be prepared for every situation I had to make. But now that I know, some things are easier and some things you’ll learn with me. I hope.” His voice trails off, but I hear the hope behind them. He wants me to be there for him.

“I will always be there. From here on out. We’ll do it all together.”

“Okay,” he whispers.

He snatches his plate of food off the bedside table, and I join him, grabbing my own. We take turns talking about our day in between eating our food. He takes bites of food off my plate and I do the same, laughing when he shoves all of his green beans onto my plate, stating he doesn’t eat vegetables.

Once we finish our food, I place the dishes outside the room before crawling back into the bed and snuggling close to Parker. I put on The Office and we lie in bed with him falling asleep wrapped tightly in my arms. I’ll never take for granted the feeling of him in my arms again.