Page 98 of Catch Me
“Late Nightswraps up filming in two weeks, maybe even sooner given how smooth everything has gone so far. We’re ahead of schedule. I have a few sponsorship appearances I need to do once filming ends, and we’ll probably do a wrap party. But my trip home will be a few weeks after we wrap. Plenty of time.”
“I don’t know …” I trail off. Going home with Andreas will make this official, won’t it?
“We’re already official, Ivy.”
I blink before meeting his eyes again. I’d mistakenly spoken my thoughts out loud.
“You want me to meet your family.”
“Baby, I’m fighting real hard not to tell you that youaremeeting my family because I want you beside me when I go back home. But I’m doing my best not to scare you off. If you knew how much I wanted you, you might try running for the hills. And, well …”
“Well, what?” My curiosity gets the better of me.
“If you run, I’d have to catch you, baby.”
His tone drops menacingly low, and a shiver courses through me.
I would let you catch me.I pinch my lips just to keep those very words from spilling out.
“What if I’m not as great as you seem to think I am?”
A frown instantly appears on his face. Andreas briefly closes his eyes, and when he opens them, there’s fire inside.
“Who was it?”
His tone is almost lethal.
“Who the hell was it that made you think you are anything less than perfection?”
His question would almost be laughable if it wasn’t laced with so much venom. As if I were to tell him who said person was, he’d get up from this bed and hunt them down.
Andreas continues to look at me expectedly, though.
“I had a panic attack on stage during my college graduation.”
His arms tighten around me, which gives me strength to continue.
“I was valedictorian of my graduating class with an undergraduate degree in finance and my Master’s in Business Administration.
“For weeks leading up to the ceremony, I’d had smaller panic attacks, but I would dust myself off after and continue finishing up my finals, perfecting my speech, and going into the office a few hours for the investment bank I was to start working at once I graduated.”
A chill runs over me as I remember that very hectic time.
“You never told anyone about your panic attacks?”
“I had my first panic attack in high school. I had no idea what it was, but one of the school counselors found me. She helped me through it, and later on, told my parents what happened. She recommended I start seeing a therapist.”
I pause to sigh.
“My mom basically told her that therapy and treatment was for the weak-minded and that it was an insult to even suggest a child of hers to be so weak. I never worked with that counselor again. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect my dad had her fired or removed somehow.
“After that, I did my best to hide them whenever they happened. Throughout college, they occurred here and there, but I thought that because I was living away from home, I had them under control. Until my final year of school. They started occurring more frequently.
“Back then I was so busy that I just wanted to pretend they weren’t happening.”
I swallow before speaking again.
“But while I was on stage, my mind went blank. It was like I kept trying to restart my brain while pushing away the growing panic but that just made things worse. I don’t even fully remember what happened up there. All I recall is afterward, being in the emergency room with Mya and Ari sitting beside me, both of them in tears.
