The Healing Touch - Apryl Baker Page 0,7

bewildered and listening to the sound of a door slamming.

What the fuck just happened?

Chapter Three

By the time she hit her bedroom, the walls started crowding in on her, and her breathing became nothing more than a futile attempt to pull air into oxygen-starved lungs. Spots began to dance in front of her eyes. This was one of her more severe attacks. She tried to get to the nightstand where her inhaler lay. It would force her lungs to work. Only her knees buckled well before she got that far. Crawling, she made her way across the floor, praying she didn’t pass out.

There was a knock at the door, and she panicked more. Dimitri couldn’t see her like this. She felt embarrassed and ashamed of her anxiety. Dimitri didn’t know anything about it. She’d hidden it from him as much as he’d hidden his injury from his fans. As she tried to claw her way up the nightstand, she finally understood why he didn’t want anyone to know. He had to be as embarrassed as she felt right now.

“You okay, Becca?”

He sounded concerned. She opened her mouth to try to form the words to reassure him, but only a loud gasp struggled its way out. Becca knew she’d black out soon if she couldn’t reach the damn inhaler. This had only happened once before, and thankfully, she’d been at her shrink’s. It was the last appointment she’d ever gone to. From that point on, she refused to leave her apartment. Her therapist agreed to Zoom meetings for her therapy sessions.

Dimitri showing up on her doorstep, demanding she go because he trusted her, made her anxiety hit the boiling point. She did want to help him. She wanted to be able to go to his signing with him, smile, help where he needed her to. Because they were friends, and friends did shit for each other.

But she couldn’t do it. Her anxiety wouldn’t let her. And she hated it. Hated herself for not being able to do something this simple without the panic gnawing at her.

She fell, unable to find the inhaler from her half-crouched position on the floor. This was so bad. If he came in here and found her like this, it would lead to questions—questions she didn’t want to answer.

To her horror, the door opened, and Dimitri walked in. She couldn’t see him, but she heard him walking toward the bed. “Becca?”

When he found her lying on the floor, barely breathing, she saw the panic on his face. He rushed to her and dropped down. “What’s wrong?”

“Inhaler,” she managed to wheeze out and pointed to the nightstand.

He found it then helped her sit so she could pull the lifesaving medicine into her lungs. Almost instant relief. Her lungs opened, and she started to drag air in. Dimitri hauled her up so they were both sitting on the bed, his hand stroking her back in soothing circles as she worked to breathe.

“What’s wrong, Krasivaya?”

“Panic attack.”

Dimitri wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. A panic attack? What the hell caused her to have a panic attack? He had no clue they were like this. His papa suffered from them, but he’d never witnessed one. It was jarring, to say the least.

“What can I do?” He felt helpless. It was yet another thing he wasn’t used to but was being forced to accept, thanks to his legs.

She shook her head. Not knowing what else to do, Dimitri sat with her and rubbed her back for over an hour. It took her that long to finally calm down. Her head landed on his shoulder. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, sweetheart. Want to tell me what brought that on?”

“You.”

“Me?” What the hell had he done to cause her to have a panic attack?

She tilted her head and looked up at him, incredulous. “You’re not serious?”

“I wouldn’t have asked if I knew.”

“You really are dumb sometimes.”

For once, he was going to agree with her because he had no clue what he’d done.

“Dimitri, I told you I couldn’t go with you. This is why I can’t go. I get panic attacks even thinking about all the crowds, the people. This is what happens to me.”

Well, damn. He really was a dumbass. Not once did the thought of him asking her to go cross his mind as the reason for her panic attack. No wonder she’d quit. This was serious shit.

“It’s not that I don’t want to go. I do. Really, I do. If I could help you, you know