as the guide exited the room and shut the door behind him.
Jansen remained quiet and calm by my side, and my shoulders tensed. I hated that we weren’t like the other normal couples who were booked for the other rooms in the establishment. Wearing happy, excited faces, eager to challenge themselves with a fun, safe game.
But not me.
This was a test to help me heal the old wound that had festered since childhood. And Jansen, he wasn’t complaining. Wasn’t pushing me to just have a good time and let it go. No, he stood there, holding me, patient. Standing in support, an island when I was thrashing and stranded in an endless ocean. Because that is how the panic felt—a lonely, cold, vast ocean with no escape. Nothing but the exhaustion of trying to stay afloat, keep your head above the raging water, survive.
But with an island so close to me?
It didn’t seem such a lonely place. Such a desolate, terrifying place.
Jansen’s support, his willingness to understand and support me felt like he was offering me a life raft. But I had to be the one to reach for it. He didn’t have the power to heal me. Only I had that capacity, but he was able to help me with the tools I needed to do so.
And slowly, with more strength than I thought possible, I reached internally for the line he’d cast. Mentally gripping it, I grabbed it with both hands, hauling myself closer and closer to the safety of that island until I made it to land and was able to breathe.
“Where are we supposed to look first?” I asked, my eyes clearing as I met his blue gaze. I glanced around the room, appreciating it for the first time. It was an Egyptian theme—golden walls covered in hieroglyphics, and a colorfully painted sarcophagus sat in the middle of the room. Other wooden crates were scattered about, some with clay pots and urns on them, others with elaborate puzzle boxes that looked like ancient safes.
Omigod we were locked in a tomb—that was the theme of this room.
I waited for that panic to return, to incapacitate me, to knock me off that island and send me right back into that endless, cruel ocean…
But it didn’t come.
I felt it, like a phantom sensation, just skating beneath the surface of the new strength I’d mastered, but it wasn’t enough to crush me.
The knowledge alone filled me with an almost intoxicating sensation. Or that could be the way Jansen was looking at me, all fire in his eyes mixing with pride. “There should be a concealed scroll that will lead us to the next clue. We just have to find it.”
I nodded, dropping his hands and crossing the room. On my own two feet. Without my island. I made it to the other side of the room where a crate with four different clay jars sat. “A scroll could be in here,” I said, and Jansen’s eyes practically shined as he nodded and came to stand next to me.
“Definitely,” he said. We each grabbed a jar and started searching.
Thirty minutes and four clues later, we were stuck, and a cold sweat had crept onto the back of my neck. Nothing debilitating, but enough to make breathing more of a struggle.
“How are you doing?” he asked, smoothing his hand over my back as we took a break from searching for the makeshift key that would open the sarcophagus.
“I’m okay,” I said, blowing out a slow breath.
“We can go,” he said. “If you need to. The door is just a magnet. All we have to do is push the button, and we’re out.” He pointed toward the door, and I’m not going to lie, I thought about it. For just a split second.
But looking at him, the compassion in his eyes, the understanding…I knew without a shred of doubt that I didn’t want that out.
Not here.
Not with him.
Not ever.
“No,” I said, a rush of adrenaline spiking through my blood. His eyes widened as I smiled up at him, now breathless for an entirely different reason.
God, how had I ever hesitated to give this man my entire heart? To tell him the truth about how I felt about him?
I spanned the small distance between us, reaching up to gently clutch his neck. “I don’t want the out, Jansen,” I said, and he grinned down at me.