Page 22 of Undone

It was suddenlyalltoo much.

The overwhelming rollercoaster of emotions slammed into me, sudden and all-consuming.

My heart pounded erratically, each beat a painful blow. The dizziness creeped in. I blinked, trying to clear the fog that was obscuring my vision.

The need to move suddenly overwhelmed me, some desperate attempt to work out the havoc inside me. The stark white hospital walls seemed to close in, each step making it even harder to breathe.

I paced, my mind fixating on one thing. Moving.

Moving.

I had to move.

I had to get out of my head.I had to.

He’s a murderer?

Someone I let in so close to me. Someone who could have hurt me, but instead was hurting other women?

Dorian’s voice barely reached me, though I knew he was close.

It didn’t matter. I kept walking, my feet carrying me mindlessly up and down the narrow corridor. Back and forth.

Suddenly, I stopped—frozen in place.

I tried to breathe, but my throat tightened. The world around me blurred at the edges, and the room spun. I reached out, gripping the back of the chair to catch myself. His voice still tried to cut through the haze, as Dorian’s hand brushed against my back.

But I struggled to focus, my mind a tangled mess of disbelief and terror. Thoughts raced through my mind, colliding and fragmenting.

Everything around me was muffled, distant, as though I were underwater, unable to make out the sharp details of the moment. I reached for clarity, but it slipped out of my grasp.

The image of John, his effortless charm, his smooth gaze, everything I knew about him now replaced by a sinister shadow I couldn’t reconcile.

The man who knew the most intimate details about me, who’d been by my side through all the messy, angsty years of adolescence—a murderer? Someone who could take lives for pleasure, then come home and act like it was just another day?

“Noah!” Dorian pierced through the fog, sharp and clear, pulling me back to the moment.

His hands were at the nape of my neck, instantly centering me in a way nothing else could. His touch was now the only thing keeping me from floating further into the panic.

My knees buckled, but he caught me.

“Easy,” he murmured, his tone calm, a stark contrast to the disarray in my head as he slowly lowered us both to the ground.

I was deeply tangled in John’s web of lies and deceptions without even knowing it.

Each breath came shallow and strained, as if unseen hands were slowly choking the air from my lungs—but Dorian was there, cutting through it all.

My body moved on instinct as he pulled me closer—his warmth anchoring me, feeling the rise and fall of his chest.

“Noah, look at me.” His thumbs brushed against my cheeks, drawing small circles over my skin. “You’re safe,” he murmured. There was a storm in his brown irises.

An invisible vise gripped me, squeezing with every thought that threatened to unravel me.

“I… I can’t…” I whispered.

“Just breathe. Noah, I need you to breathe. Breathe with me.”

His words soothed the loud heartbeat in my ears. I pulled back and looked into his eyes. The calmness of them was comforting.

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