Page 60 of Unmade

Last but not least, I’d never see Alex again. She was so fucking cool. Like a tiny adult. She’d so clearly been raised by a father who couldn’t spell baby talk or had the patience for princess shit. Like, she loved her dolls, but they were special forces, cops, and pilots. Except for the doll she called Lydia. Lydia was a farmer, like her grandparents on her mom’s side.

All this could go away.

I swallowed dryly and felt a pressure spreading across my chest, and I wanted to tell Beckett to shut the fuck up, but no words came out. He was still talking—wait. Was he on the phone? Why couldn’t I hear him?

I blinked hard and sucked in a breath?—

“Yeah, right about now—she’ll knock and try to run away,” he was saying. “Thanks, man. I appreciate it.” He ended the call and stood up. “Let’s go find a quiet place, pup.” He cupped my elbow and ushered me out of my seat, and I couldn’t fucking function. Not consciously anyway. I followed him on autopilot as the edges of my vision went darker and blurrier.

My fingers tingled like when my leg sometimes fell asleep, and with a single shot of panic, my pulse went through the roof, and I broke out in a cold sweat. What the fuck was happening?Escape, escape, escape.Beckett ushered me into the stairwell, and I gulped in some air.Not enough. Oh fuck. I had to get out of here—I had to bealone. This was… It was a panic attack, wasn’t it? I’d had a couple of those in the Army, but they’d felt different. They’d been centered around grief and losing Mom.

This was fine. A panic attack wasn’t going to kill me. I was okay. Nothing was wrong. It would pass. I’d just focus on one step at a time. Gray walls, Beckett’s utility pants, random Caps sticker on the wall, concrete stairs, Alex’s backpack in Beckett’s hand.

“I shouldn’t have sprung that on you like this,” I heard him say. “I’m sorry.”

I tried to swallow, and I shook my head. “I’m fine.”

We were almost there. Few more steps. Echoes from farther above from other employees.

“Lemme give you a head start on a class that starts in a couple of months,” Beckett told me. “Address a paper cut before it turns into an infected wound. You’re not fine, Leighton—and you trying to convince me that you are makes you unreliable in the field. Come on—in through your nose.” He stopped me in front of the door to our floor, and he grasped me by my shoulders. “I’m canceling the rest of your day. We’re gonna have a little one-on-one, you and I.”

Was that a promise or a threat? They were good at blurring those lines at Hillcroft.

“Hey, look at me, recruit.”

I snapped my gaze to his, and I got confused. I’d thought I was already looking at him, but clearly not, and this wasn’t much of an improvement. My focus was off, and I was looking without seeing.

Concentrate.

I sucked another breath in through my mouth, unable to use my nose. My breathing was too labored—and shallow. At the same time, something fucking broke inside me because I couldn’t even shatter properly. Even with panic tinting my senses, a part of me was devoid of emotion. I stood there stoically and stared unseeingly at Beckett, whose face was more expressive than anything I felt on the inside. His blue-green eyes flashed with concern, and he had that furrow between his brows. He was trying to figure me out as usual. Like he did with all recruits—but I guessed I was more difficult on account of my being a fucking zombie.

The next breath came a little easier.

“You have a choice,” he said quietly. “Either you tell me everything right now, or we go to Doc’s office. But you and I are still spending the day together both before and after a session with him.”

Fuck that, I wasn’t talking to Doc more than I had to. He was like…quiet and calm and a pro at waiting people out, but he also had this knack for making me talk without wanting it, not unlike Beckett. But at least with Beckett, he couldn’t diagnose me.

I feared there would come a day some professional labeled me a psychopath or something.

I swallowed hard and remembered something Beckett said earlier.

“I’m not unreliable,” I croaked.

He didn’t let go of my shoulder or change his stance. He was still hunching his posture to be face-to-face.

“Then you gotta open up,” he murmured. “Taking on too much or saying things are fine when they’re not don’t make you a hero. That’s not strength. It’s why I told you to come to me the moment things become too much with watching Alex.” He paused briefly. “It may seem like an insignificant thing, but everything that stresses you out needs to be addressed. If your plate is full, anything you add next is at risk of falling off. And in here, that might not be an issue—but out in the field? It could be a matter of life and death.”

Goddamn him, that couldn’t fucking compare.

“I don’t operate the same way in here as I would during an assignment,” I said.

“No, but you show people who you are, no matter the environment,” he replied. “If I give you ten assignments and it’s three too many, what do you think is best? That you perform all of them under duress and do a half-assed job, or that you come out and tell me you can only do seven of them—and you do them damn well. Which of these options would make a coworker relax and trust you?Rely on you?”

Fuck. I dropped my stare and swallowed again.

Screw him for making sense. That was the worst.

“I hear you,” I mumbled. I exhaled shakily and was finally able to inhale through my nose. My heart rate was returning to normal. “But for the record, I haven’t taken on too much.”

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