Her Billionaire Heartthrob - Kaylee Baldwin Page 0,1

the ground. There he curled his fingers into the tightly woven carpet, his body slick with cold sweat.

“Does he have asthma?” Felicia asked, kneeling beside him, her comforting hand on his forehead.

I don’t, he wanted to say, but he couldn’t get the words out past his struggled breathing, past the panic squeezing him, past the knowledge that if he didn’t get more air, he was going to die.

“Is an ambulance coming?” Xander shouted, sounding nearly as panicked as Liam felt, but Liam never heard the answer before his body gave in to the suffocation and encroaching darkness.

✽✽✽

Felicia and Xander stood by Liam’s hospital bed, frowning. He’d been hooked up to an IV and was feeling more relaxed and at ease than he had in ages. Perhaps it was the medication the doctors had given him when he’d arrived by ambulance. Something that relaxed every limb and sent him into a deep, dreamless sleep.

“What time is it?” he asked with a scratchy voice. Xander handed him a plastic cup of ice water, and he swallowed it down, reveling in the cold feeling against his throat.

“Nearly seven o’clock,” Xander said. “You’ve been asleep for about six hours.”

“Whatever they gave me knocked me out.” As if to punctuate his exhaustion, he yawned long and loud. It felt so good to have his lungs full of oxygen that he almost hoped he’d yawn again. After a series of tests right after he’d arrived, he’d fallen asleep before the doctor could tell him what was going on with him.

He was still wearing his suit from earlier, though his coat was tossed over the back of a chair in the corner, along with his tie and belt, and the first few buttons of his shirt had been loosened. There was a light rap on the door, and it opened to a man wearing a white doctor’s coat over a checkered button-up shirt and dark brown slacks, a stethoscope slung around his neck. Liam scanned his memory for the doctor’s name. Dr. Wright.

“How are you feeling?” Dr. Wright asked. Xander and Felicia moved away from the bed to let Dr. Wright come closer.

“Good,” Liam said. “Did the test results come back with anything?”

“Your heart is good,” the doctor told him, “and your lungs are strong.” He glanced at his tablet, clicking through a few pages. “You need to get more sleep, your blood sugar was low, and you were dehydrated, so we’ve hooked you up with some fluids and electrolytes. Once the bag is empty, you are free to leave, but you need to take it easy.”

“What happened?” Xander asked. “It was like he couldn’t breathe.”

Liam took a closer look at his brother, who looked as ragged as Liam had felt earlier. He tried to imagine what it would be like to see his brother collapse like that, but he couldn’t. Didn’t want to. Xander was all he had.

When the doctor hesitated, Liam shifted nervously in his bed. He’d given the doctor permission earlier, when he’d first arrived, to share his medical details with Felicia and Xander, so he knew that wasn’t why the doctor was hesitating.

“It was a panic attack,” he finally said.

“A panic attack?” Liam shook his head. “No. It couldn’t have been. I couldn’t breathe. I passed out. It was like my entire body was shutting down.”

The doctor powered down his tablet. “Is this the first time it’s happened to you?”

“Yes,” Liam started to say, but then stopped and remembered all the times in the last couple of months that his chest had felt extra tight, or where his hands had shaken almost beyond his control. He’d even had a handful of times where his breathing had felt a little wheezy, but he’d chalked it up to exhaustion or working too hard.

“I want you to follow up with your primary care doctor when you leave, and you need to consider seeing a therapist to help you manage your anxiety.”

A therapist? Liam Nichols was one of the richest people in the world. He had a great brother, a great team, a great life. What in the world did he have to feel anxious or need to see a therapist about?

The doctor left and a nurse came in with some papers for him to sign and to remove his IV. He swung his feet around the side of the bed, still groggy from the meds. Anxiety? He was just tired and overworked.

“I think you need to come to Eureka Springs.” Xander brought over Liam’s shoes, while