“How are you feeling?” He asked, brow creased with concern. “Sounds like yesterday was miserable.”
Oh, it was, but not for the reasons you think.
“Yeah. It was, uh, rough. I’m…” Telling him I was better now was a lie. I’d already lied to him about having food poisoning in the first place, and I couldn’t do it right to his face. Somehow, I found just enough air to whisper. “Today’s been better.” Technically true. I hadn’t wound up on a locker room floor with paramedics hovering over me.
We sat down on the couch like we usually did when he came over, but I couldn’t settle. I was a wreck. Everything Maddox had said to me came crashing in along with the heart-thumping panic that had dropped me in the locker room, and all the arguments I’d made to myself about why I wanted to stay with Devin no matter what… Those were all drowned out behind the blood pounding in my ears. How was I supposed to navigate a relationship when just looking at my boyfriend made me start sweating? I didn’t want to walk away, but I was going to give myself a fucking heart attack. A real one, not one of those freak-outs where I thought I was having one.
“Devin, I…” Fuck, I couldn’t look him in the eye.
“Hmm?” He squeezed my hand and furrowed his brow, which turned my conscience to acid. “You all right? What’s going on?”
“Look, I…” I ran a hand through my hair and shivered when I realized it was damp. Or maybe that was my fingers. Either way, I was sweating already, and just noticing that made the shaking worse and made my heart pump even harder and—
“Jase.” Devin touched my chin and lifted it so we were looking at each other. “Is everything okay?”
Okay? Wasn’t it painfully obviously that I was nowhere near okay? Oh God, I could not wind up in the ER today. Not again.
I moistened my lips. “I need… I need to level with you about something.”
“Oh. Um. Okay?”
“Remember when I had that breakdown? When we were talking about me coming out to my brother?”
He nodded slowly.
“I’ve, um…” I exhaled, then blurted out, “I’ve had three of those in the last week. And yesterday, it wasn’t food poisoning. That’s just a canned line they feed the press.”
Devin’s eyes were instantly huge. “What was it?”
Shame pushed acid up my throat as I croaked, “A panic attack.”
“A panic—” He gripped my hand tighter. “Jesus, what happened?”
“It’s… It’s this.” I swallowed hard. “Us.”
He blinked. “Us?”
“Everything we talked about… About me and Dallas, and…”
He straightened. “Is that what this is about? Dallas?”
“Not her, just…” I took a deep breath. Tried to, anyway. “I’ve been thinking about what we talked about, and… I just don’t know if I can handle it. I don’t know if I’m ready for it. Just trying to get my head around it put me the ER and has me on the bench for tomorrow night’s game.” My voice wavered and my eyes stung as I dropped my gaze and whispered, “I’m sorry. I don’t think I can—I can’t do this.”
“What? Jase.” The shakiness in his voice hit me hard. “Let’s talk about this. We don’t have to just—”
“Look, I wish we could make this work, but I’m spending so damn much time losing sleep over it and freaking out over it, I…” I shook my head. “I can’t even function right now. I literally can’t do my job.”
“But we can work through it,” he whispered, a note of desperation in his voice. “We don’t have to call it quits if—”
“I do,” I said, my voice shaking. “I love you, Devin, but this… What we’re doing… What it all means…” Fuck, I couldn’t breathe again. My chest was tight, blood pounded in my ears, and my heart was going so fast—Jesus, I really couldn’t breathe. “I thought I could do it, but the more I think about it… I can’t. I barely know who I am. I don’t know how to be a boyfriend, never mind anything close to a stepdad, and I’m… I just can’t do it. It’s too much. I’m sorry. It’s just too damn much.”
He didn’t say anything for a while. Or maybe it was only a few seconds, but it felt like forever because I was falling the fuck apart and trying not to fall the fuck apart and goddammit, Devin, say something.