Page 85 of How Good It Was (Excess All Areas 3)

Willow laughed. “You know what I mean. I have so much to learn about exposure and editing. That kind of thing.”

“Do you want to do what you’re doing now forever?”

Willow sighed and looked out over the water. “I thought I did. But I think I’d like to launch a lifestyle brand. Curate great products. Use the platform I have now to advertise them in an organic way, while I still have so much reach. I think I might look into it when this thing with Dad is resolved.”

Her fingers tightened around his, and he tugged her to his side gently. “Where is that at right now?”

“We filed paperwork to sue my dad. There’s a young actress who filed against her mom several years ago that set the precedent. Bullying, mismanagement, fraud ... that kind of thing. Basically, Dad schemed with my accountant to exploit me for his own profit and benefit. He’s refusing to deal with me directly, citing unreasonable behaviour when we’ve spoken. It’s lies. But it’s a classic ‘he said, she said’. I’d rather focus on the stuff I can prove.”

“You’re handling it really well,” Luke said. It seemed an understatement. The first night they’d spent together, he’d thought her young. But the more time he spent with her, he realized, she just had preferences when the two of them came together in bed. She liked him to take control. But outside of sex, she had an inner strength he actually admired.

“Don’t be fooled. I have moments when I feel like anxiety is going to swallow me whole and spit me back out again.”

“Yeah. But you get up and get on with shit anyway. Doesn’t it feel like a chore?”

“It does.” She shrugged. “But I’ve been reading these books, lots of them. I have a choice in how I feel about what needs doing. I can get upset, I can cry, I can ask myself, why me? Why can’t I catch a break? Or I can look at whatever it is that needs doing, tell myself I’m capable, that I’ve never let myself down yet, and get on with it. In the end, it gets done, the difference is how I feel while doing it.”

Luke thought about looking after Izabel. “That makes sense. How do you get from one place to another?”

“Mentally?”

“Yeah. Like. How do you switch from one mindset to the other?”

“Honestly? I literally ask myself, out loud, if possible, how do I choose to feel about this? That’s it. If I can’t change it, and it’s gnarly, and it has to get done, I just force myself to choose. To breathe. To relax my shoulders.”

He dropped his own at her words, aware the conversation was close to making him feel emotionally incompetent. “I want to do all that,” he said.

“Just choose, Luke. How often do you look back, specifically at something that was tough that you survived, and think how good it was for you in the long-term? How much it taught you? How much better you know yourself now?”

He was still noodling her words hours later when they climbed into a taxi to take them back to the hotel. Was it possible to choose how you felt? It felt like his feelings had always chosen him. Or maybe it was just the way he was looking at the circumstances of his life. The creep of panic rose in his throat, and he opened the taxi window wide.

“Are you okay?” Willow asked.

“Yeah, good. Why?” He forced the words out, over the panic. He breathed like Ben had said. Five in. Five out.

“Your hand just went clammy and you look a little grey.”

Yeah. No. He was not having a panic attack in front of Willow. “Maybe a little carsick. I don’t like traveling in the back of the car.”

“Oh, do you want to stop and get in the front? I don’t mind sitting back here by myself.”

The hotel came into view around the bend. “No. No. I’m good.”

He paid the taxi driver and then hurried them both up to the room. Once inside, he led her to the bed. “Get comfortable. I’ll just need a minute in the bathroom.”

“Take your time,” Willow said, concern lacing her words. “Why don’t you take one of the waters with you, just in case?”

He grabbed one and placed it on the counter in the bathroom before locking the bathroom door and sliding down against it.

Why couldn’t he look back at what had happened in his life without freaking out? Why couldn’t he think about changing the way he viewed the world without spinning out of control?

When he felt like he had his legs beneath him again, he stripped and stepped beneath the shower, turning the taps until it was ice cold. The frigid water chased away the remnants of his panic attack. Once he had a towel tucked around his waist, he brushed his teeth and studied his own reflection.

What was it his father had said?

Still waters run deep.

That’s how he’d been until his father’s death. Then, he’d fought. He’d been out of control. If the band went out for a night, he’d fight. Shit, he’d fought everything. What had happened to his dad. To his mum. Matt and Iz getting together. It was like he expected everything to be hard. Was that all he was doing now? Fighting something.

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