ready.”
I swallowed at the abrupt dismissal, every instinct in me kicking into flight at being yelled at. I thought I’d gotten over my fear of that but I’d reacted as soon as he began. It took me right back to too many awful verbal attacks, and helplessness threatened to drown me.
Inferiority rushed in, and I fought to regain control of myself, to reach for the strategies that years of therapy had taught me.
My therapist would tell me it wasn’t okay for anyone to try to make me feel so small but that I had the power to prevent it. I simply needed to remove myself from the situation to deny their access to me. I had to withdraw my consent to be talked to in such a way.
No one got to talk to me that way anymore. I refused to be a high school kid ever again.
I stood and locked my knees so they didn’t shake. “You know that?” My voice trembled but I didn’t care. I shook my head. “You don’t have to bother calling me ever again because the way you just spoke to me will never be okay.”
His eyes widened and something like shock seeped into his gaze.
“If you love someone, Shayne, you don’t treat people the way you just treated me.” I hesitated because Shayne had been taught to love this way. But it wasn’t good enough, and I didn’t need to accept it, so I plowed on. “Maybe you don’t know what love really is.” I walked to his front door and tried to ignore all of the places in the room that he’d kissed me. “I hope you work through whatever crap this whole situation is, and if you need a good therapist, I know a guy.”
I did great. I sounded so flippant as I threw the words out but then I had to actually walk the walk of my confidence and I yanked the door open before letting myself through to walk stiffly down the path to my car.
It wasn’t even just the shouting. It was that it brought back every bad memory from high school when I’d felt trapped and disrespected and unable to leave. And my heart ached that Shayne was the one to do that to me again.
I rubbed my chest absently as I climbed into my car. Something was going on with Shayne but I couldn’t make myself collateral damage to all that shit again.
As I flipped my blinker on to turn the corner, doubts started to creep in. Perhaps the problem was actually me. Maybe I hadn’t done enough to keep him.
Heat began to creep through my body until sweat broke out on my forehead and nausea rose up my throat, choking me. My fingers went numb, and I didn’t trust myself to drive so I pulled over and sat at the side of the road while my chest began to tighten. I couldn’t drive home like this. It grew harder to draw a full breath, and I reached for my phone at the sense of disconnection from my body.
I gasped for a breath, but luckily Kairo answered quickly.
“Dude,” I gasped. “I think I’m having a heart attack. I think I’m dying.”
He immediately became the doctor rather than my brother. “Have you just been to the gym?”
“No…I…at Shayne’s.” I tried to suck in a deep breath but my chest was too tight. “Chest hurts.”
“Are you at Shayne’s now? Put him on the phone.”
I shook my head. “In car. Pulled over.” My attempts at breathing were loud in my ears.
“All right. I’m already heading to my car to come get you. Where are you?”
I gave him my location, already comforted by the sounds of Kairo starting his engine to make his way to me. My chest ached again, and I rubbed my palm over it as my heart seemed to thunder out of control.
“I’ll stay on the line, okay?” Kairo said. “And I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
I mumbled something in response, my concentration still on the tight feeling in my chest and the sense that everything had gone horribly wrong, like I might not make it.
“Did you have a nice time with Shayne?”
I tried to huff a laugh but it wheezed from my chest of a strangled gasp. “Argument.” One word didn’t tell the whole story, but it was all I could manage.
Kairo fell quiet for a moment. “I see.” When he spoke again, he was all business. “Make yourself as comfortable as you can. I’ll