Page 78 of The Keeper
Mack shakes his head slightly.
“I mean that I can see you battling with yourself over there. I’ve seen you at war with your mind since the moment we found out I was your coach. Maybe even before that. I feel like you are trying to scramble away from us, like we are some combustible thing…”
“But we are!” I shout, interrupting him and startling myself slightly in the process.
I lower my volume, not wanting to be a crazy chick who screams when she’s frustrated.
“Wearecombustible, Mack, don’t you see? We have the capability to hurt people, and hurt ourselves, and change the course of what we want out of life. Does that not bother you?”
I curl my hands into balls, my breathing becoming labored.
“How can you not see the worst case scenario here? I could be kicked out of school, lose my scholarship, have nowhere to go when I have no way to take care of myself. I’d have to go back to… I’d have to go find some dead end job and live on food stamps.”
My eyes start to well up, and I can feel the actual fear of these things coursing through my veins, lighting up my skin with a blaze of goosebumps. My heart pumps fast and fierce, my body feeling like it’s heating from my chest outward.
“And you! You could be fired and never coach again when you’re just starting to find your way out of the darkness. And that’s just individually. What about together?”
I slam my eyes shut as I fight the tears that are trying to escape.
“I can’t be strong for you, Mack. I’m too busy trying to be strong forme, and to get past myownshit and what happened to me and I can’t be what you want. I can’t be the type of woman you look for or what makes you happy and what happens if I give all of who I am to you and find out later I’m just a throwaway too!?”
The silence that follows my verbal outpouring is deafening. And as my mind rewinds and replays what I said, I feel the color drain from my face.
“What happened to you?” His voice is barely louder than a whisper, and I know the look on his face will be one I don’t want to see, so I don’t look.
I just stand there and say nothing.
“You said… you had to be strong for yourself. Because of what happened to you.”
He says his words slowly, like he’s turning them over in his head, trying to figure out any possible meaning behind what I said.
“What happened to you?”
Suddenly, my world shifts and I have to lean forward and brace my hands on the windowsill to steady myself. My breathing stutters and stops and starts as I gasp for breath because I feel like every item in this room is piled on top of me, holding me to the floor as my lungs claw for air.
Strong arms come around me, picking me up and carrying me somewhere. But I fight at the embrace, as I try to inhale something. Anything.
“… for me, Rachel, just breathe for me.”
A hand slowly rubs my back as I curl onto my side and struggle, struggle, struggle to take any beloved oxygen into my body.
“Come on. It’s just you and me. Just take a breath for me, sweetheart”
And suddenly I inhale deeply, the blurring on the edges of my eyes receding. I inhale again in a large gasp, my body scrambling for every last bit of air it can take in.
“That’s it, Rachel. You’re going to be fine.”
Inhale.
Exhale.
My mind feels fuzzy after my anxiety attack, and my body has broken out into a light sweat that is now chilling my skin. My eyes well with tears as I realize I’ve had my first full blown attack in years, and I hate that I allowed myself to get to a point where I wasn’t able to calm myself down.
But I notice something different. Something that doesn’t normally happen when I come down from an attack. I find myself wrapped in a warm cocoon, against a hard body, with the scent and feel of safety hitting each of my senses.
I burrow deeper into the warmth, reveling in the security I feel in Mack’s arms. After a few minutes has passed and I feel like my heart has finally slowed and my breathing has returned to normal, I move my head slightly until I’m looking directly into Mack’s eyes. We are snuggled together on our sides, our faces inches from each other, as Mack rubs my back in slow, steady circles.
“You would never be that to me, RJ,” Mack whispers, his gaze combing my features. “You could never, in a million years, be throwaway.”
