Page 26 of The Call of Azure (Unexpected Love #3)

Liam

Why am I even considering this? For all intents and purposes, this man is a virtual stranger to me.

Okay, yes, he once spent a few minutes jerking me off, but that was ages ago, and it hasn’t even come up again since.

He might not even realize it was me! He’s a fellow performer and the professional I’m going to be working with for the next couple of months, and that’s it.

I don’t touch people. I don’t let them touch me.

I don’t take comfort in the way their weight on my lap settles my restless soul or the scent of coconut on their skin or the way their bottomless coffee-colored eyes seem to focus on me as if they’re actively paying attention when I talk.

As if they seem to think I matter. I certainly don’t stick around to chat once they’ve seen me having a panic attack.

In fact, I’ve spent the past few years so hyperaware of the way it feels just before one happens that no one currently in my life has ever seen me have one before, not even my Aunt Mar.

I absolutely don’t know how to process the fact that I’m apparently okay with Gabriel having seen me falling to pieces.

That I’m okay having accepted his help and his support.

That, for some irrational reason, I’m more than okay with it.

Instead of taking off and distancing myself as quickly as possible, I’m sitting here clinging to him and refusing to let him off my lap as I consider telling him that water helps too - something that feels so private that I’ve only briefly mentioned it in an offhanded way to my therapist.

But he feels safe. He feels safe in a way I’ve rarely known in my life.

He was so quick to try and help me, even though he had no idea what was going on in my head or whether he was in danger.

Some folks with trauma like mine lash out unintentionally when they’re touched during a panic attack.

He’s helped a friend through them before, so surely, he knows that.

I’m a big guy, and it had to be nerve-racking for him to risk his own safety, but he still did it, simply because he thought it might help.

Panic attacks can be, of course, very different, but just as scary in their own right for those who see them happen, but he hasn’t broken down over it, and he hasn’t run away now that it’s over.

He’s still letting me hold him simply because I asked.

Because he knows that…somehow…it’s helping.

Not many people are willing to offer that to someone they barely know.

I want to feel safe. I want him to stay here and let me hold him.

I want him to curl back up around me while I open my soul for the first time in I don’t even remember how long.

Even if he doesn’t really care or understand what I have to say, I think it might be good to share it with someone.

My Aunt Mar is the only person in the world who knows what I’ve been through, and opening up to Gabriel is far more terrifying than talking to the woman who’s basically become my mother, but I want to try.

I know it’s possible that he’ll listen and realize that I’m batshit crazy.

I don’t want to see those rich brown eyes looking at me with pity and awkwardness as he tries to distance himself from the new almost-friendship we’ve started to build, but for the first time, the idea of letting someone in just a little isn’t overwhelming and terrifying.

I don’t know what it is about Gabriel that makes me feel both vulnerable and secure, but I don’t really want to question that feeling right now.

Something about him makes me believe that even if things are scary, they’ll still manage to work out all right in the end.

I’m sure I’ll panic over my decision not to run away and never look back once I’m home and lying in bed and remembering what I’ve done, but just for a minute, just this once, it might be nice to let someone help me carry the weight on my shoulders that rarely seems to ease.

I let myself focus on the warmth and strength of his body in my arms, and with a deep breath, for only the second time in my life, I let someone see just a bit of my past…and my soul.

“I was a foster kid. Not the kind who’s waiting to maybe luck out and get adopted, but the kind whose druggie mom pops back into his life once a year or so for a few weeks.

Which was just often enough to keep me stuck in the system since they hoped that maybe one day, she’d be clean enough to get me back for real.

I lucked out in some ways though; I never landed with any truly bad families.

There was never any real abuse or even a whole lot of endless yelling.

But the group homes, or the foster families, were always too crowded to do much more than make sure we were regularly fed, made it to school, and stayed alive.

I spent a lot of my time trying to help take care of younger kids who always seemed worse off than me somehow, but sometimes it just got to be too much.

The endless buzz of too many people. The bickering and fighting and constant talking that are just a part of life when you have a lot of people living in close quarters.

There were always TVs or radios on in the background or feet running through halls and down stairs.

It was loud inside my head too. The wondering where my mom was and when she might come back.

The worry whether the other kids were bullying the smallest in whatever group I found myself in.

The hunger that never seemed to go away completely, since there was never quite enough food to fill me up.

The desperate and slowly fading hope that someone might pay attention or ask if I needed help or even just how my day was. ”

Gabriel is silent in my arms, but his fingertips trail along my spine, and I focus on them, letting them anchor me to the reality of the present.

“When I couldn’t handle it anymore, I’d run.

I’d run to the shoreline, no matter how far it was.

No one ever seemed to notice when I was gone all day, so it didn’t matter if it took me hours.

I would wander the coastline until I found small rocky outcroppings or piles of large driftwood crashed up together in makeshift forts, and I’d crawl into the safe, tiny spaces and close my eyes and let myself disappear.

I’d focus on the loud, murmured rhythm of the surf until it overwhelmed everything else.

Until it replaced my racing thoughts and speeding heartbeat and reduced the world to a quiet, muffled whisper.

Until there was only the sound of blood in my veins and tides pulled by the moon.

Until there was nothing but the calm rhythm of mist and sand and blue and grey. ”

“Oh, sweetheart. I…” Gabriel’s voice is barely audible against my shoulder, but I shake my head to cut him off, knowing that if I don’t finish now, I never will.

“Things changed as I got older. I found a stable home with my Aunt Mar…who’s not really my aunt, but that’s a whole other story…

for a few years, and then I joined the Marines.

When I look back, I’m not really sure why I did that, to be honest. I think I was looking for direction, maybe a place to belong.

Somewhere I didn’t have to exhaust myself overthinking because most of my choices would be made for me.

Whatever I was hoping for, I never found it.

But no matter where I’ve been, water has always been able to calm me down when the world gets too be too loud and too heavy and too much.

Even when I couldn’t get to the ocean, I’d use the pounding of the shower on my back or submerge myself in a bathtub until my lungs threatened to burst. There were places where that wasn’t possible, of course, but anytime it was, it’s always the first place I’d turn when everything got to be too hard.

It’s part of the reason I do the mer-shows now. The water brings me peace.”

It takes a few more deep, shuddering breaths before I can manage to pull myself away from Gabriel and lean back to search his face.

“You did that too just now. When I was lost. You somehow felt like peace.”