Page 26 of Creed
I followed his instruction, one breath at a time. At first, I could barely get any air into my lungs, but gradually I was able to takedeeper and deeper breaths until finally some clarity returned to my vision.
We must have been lying there silently breathing together for longer than I’d thought. During that time, the van had started moving again, taking us to some unknown location.
When I was finally able to breathe without struggling and see straight again, I sat up and leaned heavily against the wall. Kayden scooted as close to me as he could until his shoulder bumped against mine.
“You all right?”
I swallowed heavily, then nodded. “Yeah. Sorry.”
“Hey, don’t apologize. If there’s ever a time to panic, this is it. But, um, I have to ask. A panic attack seems... out of character for you.”
Closing my eyes, I laughed weakly under my breath. “That wasn’t actually a question.”
Kayden stuttered for a moment, trying to figure out what to say, but I cut him off.
“I know what you’re trying to ask. I’m the cool-headed one who takes care of business, right? So, something must be wrong if I’m panicking.” With a heavy sigh, I resigned myself to a difficult explanation and turned to face him. “First, let me ask you, what do you know about my retirement from the military?”
His brow furrowed as he thought, and I hated the way it cast a shadow over his eyes. Kayden should only ever be smiling.
“I know you retired a bit early because something went wrong with your last mission. Brody and Magnus told me a little aboutit before we left, but they seemed to imply it wasn’t that big of a deal.”
My hands itched for something to fidget with. A pen. A stone. An old stick. Anything.
But all I grasped was air.
“I was taken POW on my last mission. Magnus and Brody think I arranged it in order to retire early but... that’s a lie. They just assumed and I never corrected them.”
Kayden’s shoulder pressed more firmly against mine. “So, you actually were...”
He couldn’t finish the question, but he didn’t need to.
Biting my lip, I nodded.
“I fucked up. I was distracted by everything that was happening with Magnus and Brody and I wasn’t paying enough attention. Our enemies got the drop on me during a mission and my whole team was captured. It’s a damn miracle most of us were saved as quickly as we were.”
Kayden was a professional writer. Words were his literal job. So, of course he picked up on the most important word in my entire explanation.
“Most?”
“Yeah. A few of our guys were killed in the initial capture. One of them was our translator. None of us spoke the native language of the area, and our captors didn’t speak English. Without a translator, the whole thing went south real quick. We couldn’t even negotiate. I thought...”
Panic started to creep in again, dissolving the edges of my vision into a gray fog. My hands shook against their restraints.
Kayden pressed as close to me as he could, tipping his neck to an uncomfortable angle so his head rested against mine. “It’s all right,” he said in the same soothing voice he’d used earlier. “Deep breaths. Obviously, you escaped. You don’t have to tell me about it if you don’t want to, but it’s clearly affecting you. I’m guessing that being captured again isn’t doing you any favors.”
With a growl of frustration, I knocked my head back against the metal wall of the van.
“Damn it. I hate this. I’ve never been truly helpless before. Even in our worst scrapes and our most dangerous missions, there was always a chance of survival. I could always see a path forward, even if it was difficult or unlikely. But that last mission, while I was staring down the gun and waiting for them to kill me, I couldn’t see anything except my own death. After I survived, and I retired, I swore I would never have to feel like that again.”
I felt Kayden nod more than I saw the movement.
“Yet, here you are again.”
“Yet, here I am again, in the same damn position, just as helpless as before.”
Finally saying it out loud was like lancing an infected wound. It hurt, but there was also a sense of relief. So much rot had built up inside me, every time I let Magnus and Brody continue their assumption that I controlled the whole situation, and every time pushed away my own fear, the infection buried itself deeper.
With the truth finally hanging out in the open air between us, some of the pressure building in my chest over the last few weeks abated and I could breathe a little easier.
