Page 98 of Coach
Panic welled up, animal and mindless, the primal understanding of how close I was to unconsciousness, to death, as the air died in my lungs.
I clawed at him, nails raking skin, hot, sticky blood coating my fingertips.
I kicked, jerked, writhed with a frantic strength I didn’t know I had.
The edges of my vision went fuzzy, the world tilting with every strangled gasp I couldn’t quite draw in.
My heart hammered so violently it hurt, pleading with me to find air, find space,escape.
I had no conscious thought, no strategy—just the savage instinct to survive.
I twisted, bucked, threw my head back, anything to try to loosen his hold.
The scream stayed trapped in my throat, needing oxygen I didn’t have to escape.
The pressure on my ribs crushed tighter, steel bands cinching, each gasp becoming smaller than the last.
My chest convulsed against the unyielding arm, each attempt at air ragged.
Pain flared sharp with each inhale that didn’t quite come, spreading panic like wildfire through my veins.
My vision went spotty, little sparks of white crowding out the darkness all around.
A sound clawed from my throat, raw and cracked, not a scream, but the distinctive cry of something cornered, caught, caged.
My hand shot downward, seeking his thigh, balling my hand into a fist, trying to slam hard into his injured thigh.
My mind screamed louder than my lungs:Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
The command went unanswered.
The air wasn’t there.
The edges of the world collapsed inward, shadows smearing my vision.
My heart thrashed too hard, too heavy.
Then dulled.
The fight that had burned hot and frantic faltered.
My limbs grew heavy, each movement sluggish, weak.
I tried again, clawing, gasping, but my body betrayed me.
The panic turned into terror.
Then something smaller, quieter.
An awful, sinking surrender.
My last thought, jagged and desperate, wasI can’t—
And then the world went dark.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Coach
