keep the confrontations at arm’s length, and maybe I was a damn criminal. Maybe I’d disrespected everyone who truly gave a shit about me, as well as disrespected myself, but it was a bit too late for that.
Nicola had been a wave of solid attack for days on end. Message after message telling me what an idiot I was for venturing anywhere near Lucas Pierce and demanding she get an evening in my presence to tell me so in person.
My parents had been worse. Not only screaming down the phone about how insane I was for daubing my self-respect in lighter fluid and setting myself in flames, but screaming about how ridiculous I was for casting aside the perfect Sebastian Maitland, with his perfect consideration for my wellbeing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I knew it.
I’d already had months of the same scathing mantras on loop. What the hell are you doing? What the hell are you doing? What the hell are you doing? Only this time they were far more frantic. More cursing and hissing and telling me what a stupid idiot I was for selling out something so good for something so bad.
I was torn up with the whole sorry lot of it. So torn that my mind felt severed in two, jagged and savage on the edges.
On one hand, I believed their disgust. I felt the concern behind their criticism. I agreed with every curse and scream of Lucas Pierce’s name.
On the other, there was so much more. A scream of a very different kind inside me every time I heard his name.
I was a hamster on a wheel as I threw myself into my work that week. Meetings and minutes and consultancy calls taking up my time. Distractions that were short-lived but essential. Projects piling up, colleagues reaching out for extra insight, and hell, I gave it.
I gave it all, just to save myself the stress of working through my own fucked up headspace.
I gave it all, just to save myself the stress of realising just how much I wanted Lucas Pierce.
Friday was a long time coming after those busy days in the office. I should have been looking forward to a couple days off, long lie-ins and chocolate in front of the TV. But the looming weekend was nothing but a pang in my gut, knowing that the onrush of people wanting to shout at me was imminent.
I cleared my desk into some kind of order as the afternoon drew to a close, then waved goodbye to Stacey and Lucia as I headed out through reception and made my way home. I hadn’t given much thought to anything other than the Kirby Project that day, and was happily pushing my concentration onto what I wanted from the local supermarket as I dashed on in with a basket.
Broccoli, beetroot, some salmon fillets. Orange juice and makeup wipes and a big slab of milk chocolate. Nothing particularly exciting. Nothing stressful. Nothing whatsoever that should’ve led to the swirl of senseless thoughts that marked the onset of my seizure.
Boy needing a sharpener. Again. Again. Kicking. Month reports. Boy. Again.
It took seconds. Barely more than a breath. No warning for me, and no warning for anyone around me.
My debit card was hovering by the machine, the attendant grinning over as my brain let me down and went blank to the world.
There was sickness as the seizure slammed in hard. A horrible wobble of nausea as the woman’s face in front of me started speaking an alien language.
I didn’t understand her. Couldn’t understand her. Couldn’t understand myself. Didn’t have a clue where I even was.
It was terrifying, just as it always was. I was lost to everything in the world, but most of all me.
I must have stumbled on my feet as I tried to come to my senses. I must have spoken nonsense and turned pale and wide-eyed and every bit as fucked up as I did every other time I had a seizure in public.
I must have moved blankly when they led me off by my arm and forced me to a seat in the customer service booth. I saw them offering me a bottle of water but couldn’t understand what they were saying to me. I tried to focus on their language but got nowhere, swimming in a sea of confusion and panic and nothing whatsoever I could form any sense from.
And then my brain came back to me. Slowly.
I heard words and understood them in fragments. I heard the