Page 31 of Sully

Her tight nod was her only answer, but she tried to take deep breaths with me, holding when I held. But it only lasted a minute or two, before the panic was back just as strong as before.

“Alright. What else do you do when you’re anxious?” I asked, rubbing a hand up and down one of her legs, slow and steady, trying to offer her something else to focus on.

“I… do puzzles or… color…” she said, her hand creeping up from her heart to her throat.

“Color, huh?” I asked, popping up. “Give me one second,” I said, rushing out of the room and into the common area.

“What are you looking for?” Brooks asked, brows pinched, as I dug around in the box we stored shit for the kids in.

“This,” I declared, finding and waving the box of washable markers at him.

With that, I turned and made my way back to my bedroom, moving in and closing the door.

“Let’s color,” I said, placing the markers next to Bonnie on the bed.

“Paper,” she said, exhaling hard.

“That, I didn’t grab. But no worries. I have a canvas for you.”

Then I turned and pulled off my shirt, showing her the tattoo that covered almost my entire back. Just the outline. I’d never gotten around to filling in the color.

Now, that suddenly felt like the best decision I’d ever made.

“Work your magic on me, Monet,” I said, dropping down across the end of the bed on my stomach.

I could have found paper.

There were probably even coloring books in the same box as the markers.

But I figured that maybe having an unconventional canvas might help pull her out of her panic better than something she was accustomed to.

I was seriously starting to wonder if I’d fucked up as a minute or two passed without her moving.

Then, little by little, she unfolded from herself.

The lid of the cardboard box slid open.

A marker cap popped.

Then she was leaning over me.

One of her hands moved to press against my shoulder as the marker tip kissed my skin.

And I realized a little too late that maybe this wasn’t a great idea after all as desire fucking soared through my body.

But there was no going back now.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Bonnie

I’d been prone to nightmares as long as I could remember. I used to wake up screaming as a little girl, my body unable to tell the difference between dreaming of being chased by a clown with a meat cleaver and the reality of it.

I would wake up in fight-or-flight. And without parents to give a damn—save for occasionally busting in to tell me to quit my crying or they’d give me something to cry about—I just spiraled.

Honestly, it was probably a big source of all of my anxiety as an adult.

But the nightmares persisted. Though, the older I got, the less I dreamed about things like clowns, and the more they tended to involve subliminal manifestations of my conscious fears.

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