First Comes Like (Modern Love #3) - Alisha Rai Page 0,65

across the bridge of her nose natural or makeup? He hadn’t noticed them before.

Jia’s small hand came to a fluttering rest on his shoulder. “It’s okay,” she said, confident and calm. “You’re having a panic attack. I’ve seen this before.”

He shook his head frantically. He was not. He’d tell her that as soon as he could speak, too.

“Match my breathing.” She inhaled loudly, then exhaled.

Automatically, without conscious effort, he mimicked her, and she nodded. “Tell me something you feel.”

Dev took another deep breath, then another. His hand groped for hers on his shoulder and he squeezed.

“Good,” she said, like he’d spoken. “Now tell me something you see.”

“You,” he wheezed. Truly, it felt like there was no one else.

His breathing gradually regulated, growing calmer. His heartbeat slowed from the gallop it had taken off on. He squeezed his eyes shut, though he didn’t want to stop looking at her face. As if she knew his struggle, Jia moved to sit next to him, plastering herself against his side. Dev dropped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her tight, something he would have never dared to do under normal circumstances.

When he felt more like himself, he opened his eyes, and was immediately hit with a truckload of mortification. What on earth had just happened?

He looked down at her. She was staring at the water, but glanced up. Her eyes were soft and calm. Her shirt was slightly rumpled, though he wasn’t sure if it was from him or the breeze.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yes. I apologize. Nothing like that has ever occurred before.” He licked his lips, searching for an explanation.

“Please, there’s no need to apologize. Panic attacks happen.”

“Not to me.” He rubbed his chest. “Never. Especially out of nowhere like that.”

“Nothing triggered it?”

“No. I was simply looking at the swing and remembering the swing my family had when I was a child.”

“Do you think that did it?”

The muscles in his jaw worked. “I suppose.” He should move away, but he didn’t want to. The warmth that had filled him when she’d hugged him had come back. He hadn’t realized how cold he’d been.

“That’s natural, to miss them.”

“I miss my parents. I . . .” His greatest shame. “I don’t think I miss my brother as much as I should. I told you we weren’t close.” Sometimes it felt as though strangers had mourned Rohan more than he had.

“You don’t have to be close to someone to miss them. Or miss what they used to mean to you. It’s part of being alive, I suppose. To miss people, or to even miss missing people. Grief is like that sometimes. Like a bubble that gets big and small.”

He rubbed the bridge of his nose. Miss missing people. Yes. That was exactly how he felt about his brother, and even his grandfather, to an extent. He missed the idea of a loving grandfather. He missed the brother he’d pushed on a swing. “I blamed Rohan.”

“For what?”

His words came fast, spilling over one another. “For adapting so easily to life with our grandparents, after our parents passed. He was so happy with the attention and, later, the fame. With the industry. With our last name greasing wheels, with our grandfather’s bullshit and money. Meanwhile, I would have traded all of that for our life with our parents, and I didn’t think he would have. It felt like he betrayed them and me, and that’s absurd.”

“Why is it absurd?”

“He was a child.”

“So were you.”

His chest tightened. “No, I was older. At the very least, I should have mended bridges with him when I was a grown adult.”

“You could have. He could have, too.” She paused. “Please don’t think it’s my anger over the catfishing driving me to bash him or anything, but it sounds like there was some resentment on both sides. Don’t take all the blame on yourself. It’s okay to have complicated feelings about someone after they pass away.”

He huffed out a breath. “I don’t like these feelings.”

“Oh, no one likes feelings.” Jia rubbed his arm. “Don’t you think we would all choose to be robots if we could?”

A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “You wouldn’t.”

“True. I do like pouring my emotions out on everyone. But I imagine those people wish I’d be a robot, sometimes.”

“I would not,” he said, gruffly.

She pressed slightly closer. “That’s nice to hear.”

Dev didn’t know how long they sat there, only that he was startled by how close her face was when he looked down at