Page 29 of Hero's Prize

Like he’d said:all good.

Colton felt his hand begin to tremble and stuck it in his pocket without looking at it. Sweat popped out on his forehead, but he forced himself not to wipe it. He happened to know for a fact that if he ignored the physiological signs of the panic attack waiting to try to overtake him that nobody would notice anything was wrong at all.

Because nobody knew about or expected them. They only knewColton showed up for work every day and got shit done. Just like he always had.

He turned away from Tony as the man started talking to someone else, and he walked toward the conference table, breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth.

One, one thousand.

Two, one thousand.

There was no snow. There was no dark. There was plenty of air. He was fine. He was fine. He was?—

“You okay, Colton?” Tony asked from behind him.

“Fine.” Colton forced the word out, taking a seat, keeping his back to the other man.

If tradition held, nobody would press. All Colton had to do was keep it together enough not to make anyone look too closely. It had worked for two months.

“You sure?” Tony continued. “If we need?—”

“Okay. I’ve got the master calendar like you asked.” Sheila Masters, one of the leads of the media team, entered with Rick Wynnsworth muttering behind her.

Rick was kind of an asshole, but at least their entry got Tony’s attention off Colton. He clenched his hands in an effort to force the tremors to stop, but it didn’t seem to work. Even breathing was becoming an effort at this point.

Fuck. He couldn’t have a full-on panic attack right here in front of some of his team.

“We’re still waiting to hear back from the Taiwanese government about the Taipei 101 stunt, but?—”

Colton tried to focus on the words as the three of them discussed something about camera problems and security, but he could barely hear them over the roaring inside his head. The most he could do was nod anytime any of them looked his way.

This is like a stunt. Breathe through the fear. Breathe through the pain.

Colton had been facing down fears his whole life. Nobody did the sort of stunts he did without having to figure out how to center themselves in the middle of chaos.

Do that now.

Centering himself had never been something he’d actively had to figure out how to do. He’d always merely focused on what was in front of him and silenced the noise of everything else around him.

But how could he silence something that was inside his own mind?

Sheila laughed at something scribbled on to her tablet. Tony said something to Rick and the other man rolled his eyes, but Colton still didn’t force himself to figure out the words. Instead, he clenched and unclenched his fists, focusing all his energy into that motion.

Into something he could control.

He did it over and over, until some of the roaring died, his chest easing and allowing more air through.

“What do you think, Colton?”

Colton looked over at Tony. “Yeah, just let me know when and where to be.”

The air became thick with awkwardness as Tony, Sheila, and Rick looked at one another and then basically everywhere but at Colton.

He obviously hadn’t answered the question correctly.

“Um.” Tony cleared his throat. “Rick was telling us there’s been another letter.”

Colton sat up straighter, trying to salvage the situation. “Right. Sorry. I had the master calendar on my mind and sort of zoned out.”

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