Page 51 of Atlas

The pleasure of that touch bursts right along with the balloon of panic, detonating like a grenade in my chest. All I know is that I’m trapped. Caged. I’m falling and the roof is crumbling. The ceiling is going to cave in and we’re going to be trapped under the wooden beams and bricks. I. Still. Can’t. See. Can’t. Breathe. Can’t. Think.

My body reacts like an animal would when they’ve just sprung a steel trap around their leg. I’m on my back and Willa ison top of me. I grasp her hips, somehow aware even in the mire of black and with the walls pressing in on me from every angle, the ceiling, the beams, the fuckingskycoming down, that I don’t want to hurt her.

I tilt her to the side gently, spilling her away from me as I jerk backwards. The motion sends me reeling along the concrete. It bites in against my naked skin, flaying me, but I barely feel a thing. I tip myself onto my stomach, get my hands under me, and push up onto my knees.

Bile splashes up my throat and I turn, dry heaving to the side, but nothing comes up. My mouth floods with saliva and a bitter taste creeps along my tongue, but that’s it.

“Atlas!”

I’m heaving, but there’s no oxygen filling my lungs. There’s nothing but a crush, the searing burning grasp. I can taste my own end when I flick my tongue out, tasting the air, begging for just the smallest amount.

“Simon!”

Willa’s hand is on the small of my back. Stroking. Soft, gentle circles.

“You’re hurt. You’rebleeding. What’s happening. Please tell me!”

I can’t. I’m drowning in the black. Dark water sucking me under, filling my lungs. This is how I die. This. Is. How. I. Die.

I’m going to pass out. There’s going to be nothing after. I’ll never wake up again. Never see the people that I love. This will be Willa’s last memory. Me, dying on her floor, right in front of her.

No.

I claw at my throat like I’d claw at the surface of that black water.

“Are you having an asthma attack? Atlas, please tell me what’s happening!”

My fingers grasp my jaw. Both hands. I wrench it open, parting it, opening my own airway, but still, there’s nothing. Only more black water, rushing in.

“I’m calling an ambulance. Hold on. I need to find my phone.” I can hear her, dimly, scrambling around. “Fuck!” Something clatters to the ground. “Just hold on!”

I’m not crushed under the weight of the building. It hasn’t collapsed. It’s all in my head. My head is doing this to me. There’s no lake. No black. There’s air. I just have to relax enough to let my muscles expand instead of being clenched so tight they won’t release. I don’t have to drown. There’s no water. I just have to swim. I just have to breathe.

The first gasp is like fire, a sucking, wheezing sound as though I was just kicked straight in the stomach. The second goes down cleaner, and my vision clears just enough that I make out the shape of Willa, phone in hand.

“No!” I stumble to her, knocking it away.

She blinks at me. Hard. Again. The are still black spots dancing all over the room, but my eyes focus on her face, and I can see one thing clearly. Herhorror. I’ve terrified her. She thought I was dying. I wouldn’t have. It just felt like that. Didn’t it?

I reel from her, ramming myself straight into the bench of tools on the far side of the room and sending them half of them flying with my flailing arm. I look like I’m drunk, completely out of control. That’s the truth. I have no control left. Nothing stands between me and the black.

I stumble and surge forward, locating pieces of clothing and ramming them on. Underwear. Jeans. Boots. Shirt. My back screams like a whole host of demons have taken up residence there and are breathing fire all over my skin. I don’t know why. I can’t stop. I’ll worry about it later.

I wheel around, trying to find the damn door so I can wrench it open and get the fuck out of here before my head explodes. Before I lose whatever tenuous grasp I have that’s keeping the black at bay.

“Atlas!” Willa doesn’t just chase after me. She throws herself at me, wrapping her arms around my waist. “I- I shouldn’t have touched you like that. I’m so, so sorry. We clearly weren’t ready for that. I should have asked I should have given you some warning.”

I clench my eyes shut against the burning liquid that wants to spill out. Not tears, but blood. Hot, bloody, black streaks. She thinks this is all her fault. Not only was I not put together properly, as any man should be, but there’sthis. This shit in my head, in my chest. The shit I have to struggle to control, the way some days I feel like I’m constantly going to go out of my skin, out of my head.

She doesn’t need this. She’s too kind. She’ll want to stand by my side and tell me I’m not broken. That this is okay.

I could have hurt her. I scared her. It could be worse next time, or the time after, or the time after that. When I was withJodie I managed to get a handle on my anxiety—at least most of the time. But the break-up did a number on me. If I didn’t feel like shit already, I’d be mortified about losing it while I was having sex with the woman I’m falling for.

Talk about emasculating.

She’ll try to convince me that I can be saved. That I’m not half a man for not having a handle on this shit. That I’m not pathetic. She’ll tell me that I’m worthy. Worthy of her and of myself. She’ll say all the right things and she’ll truly believe them.

She’ll still be wrong.

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