Stacked Up: Worth the Fight Series (22 page)

Panic.

Blood-curdling fear.

It was a contrast to all the happy, carefree people at the exclusive Miami Beach nightclub. I used to be like that—but that was a long time ago. So long ago, it’s but a fuzzy memory at the back of my mind causing me nothing but melancholy now. I used to be one of these happy, carefree people, swaying, thrusting, and rubbing against complete strangers. Foreplay is what it is, really. Instead, my hands are clammy and shaking. Thumping bass tattoos against my heart and pulsating strobe lights are making me dizzy. I am two minutes away from ruining my sister’s engagement party by throwing up all over her expensive designer shoes. And I’ve only been here for half an hour.

Because of the loud music, I tap hard on her shoulder to get her attention and point toward the far wall, where the restrooms are located. With barely open eyes and a loopy drunken grin, she gives me a thumbs-up and continues to sway her hips to the EDM music with a group of her friends I’ve just met. The guys, including her new fiancé, are at one of the bars on the other side of the club getting everyone drinks. I envy them because they’re having fun, oblivious to everything around them, while I’m a prisoner.

Fun.

What a foreign term for me.

The sickening feeling of impending dread is my norm. That sinking sensation you feel when you just know that something bad is going to happen—that’s how I feel when I’m outside the four walls of my apartment, which means that I don’t have time to dwell on my sister and her friends. Nor do I have time for self-pity. Instead, I hightail it to the bathroom, unprepared to stand in the long line of inebriated, scantily dressed women. Impatiently I wait there for my turn while feeling the walls begin to close in on me. My palms are now a sweaty, drippy mess, and the queasiness hits me in a wave of nausea that has me covering my mouth in order to stop myself from throwing up. Leaning a hand against the dirty wall by the bathroom door, I hang my head low, and my heart beats faster and faster while the club spins around me in an orgy of lights, strange faces, and deafeningly loud sounds. I need to find a quick exit, and I need to do so right now.

I am dying.

I have to be. It is the only way I can describe how I feel. The tightness around my chest is unbearable and my skin is covered in sweat. Quickly I look left, then right. Where’s the damn exit? I know I must look hysterical to anyone watching me, but I don’t care. I need to get out of here. My breath quickens and my abdominal muscles cramp as I double over, about to lose my lunch in the middle of the trendiest nightclub in all of Miami Beach.

“Hey, you okay?” the woman in line behind me asks, her pupils unnaturally dilated. Unable to speak, I nod, but she isn’t buying it because she makes a disgusted face and steps back. I close my eyes and press my forehead against the wall knowing that people are skipping ahead of me, but it doesn’t matter because I’m unable to move. Faster and faster my heart beats, and sweat drips down my spine while I try to suck in a breath.

I count to ten and try to work on my relaxation techniques and all the cognitive behavioral therapy I’ve been reading about. I close my eyes and think about the ocean breeze against my skin and the sand between my toes. Months ago I Googled “panic attacks” and found that having a happy place is important and, incidentally, beaches were the most popular “happy places.” So that became my happy place. I stole it from Google and from a million other people like me who need happy places. But tonight it’s of no use. Feeling the blood begin to slowly drain down my body, the last thing I remember is trying to clutch the wall as I fall down into a pit of darkness.

“Swear to God, Bethany, I catch you one more time in my club and I’m having you arrested.”

“Nick, please. Don’t be like that.” She runs a chipped nail down my neck, and I push it away. I remember a time, in my early twenties, when I was mostly drunk, stupid, and high, when I used to find Bethany gorgeous. She was the older woman we all wanted. My friends and I would run to the bar and fetch her and her friends drinks like the stupid young pussy-chasers that we were. Now she looks worn out, and that older experienced-looking woman I once found attractive just looks sloppy. With overly processed blond hair, tanned skin that now looks like leather, and fake tits that are practically on display since the strap on her too-tight dress has fallen down her arm, Bethany is a mess. I remember how she used to give my younger self a hard-on, but now I just feel disgust.

I snap at one of the new bartenders, “Cut her off.” Then I turn back to Bethany. “Finish that drink and get out.” Leaning into the bar, I grab some napkins and hand them to her. “And clean your nose. Have some fucking dignity. Some self-respect, for Chrissake.”

She takes the napkin and wipes the residual white powder off her nose. “Your father was a lot more fun,” she says, and that’s the last thing I need to hear.

I stop dead in my tracks.

Being compared to my father is the one thing I despise. “Bitch,” I snarl, getting so close to her face that she has to lean back, “unless you want to end up in the same place he’s at, I suggest you get the fuck out of my club.” Each word is spat out clearly, so that there is absolutely no misunderstanding that she’s not welcome back. Ever.

I look away from her and am searching for Bear, my head of security, when I see a bunch of people pressed together by the bathrooms, Bear’s big body sticking out over the crowd. “What now?” I growl to myself. Something’s going on, and I don’t have time to deal with Bethany, who’s forever stuck in the fast times and high life of the eighties. I almost feel bad for her.

Almost.

I weave through the crowd and see that Bear has a woman in his arms. “What the hell happened?” I ask, pushing people aside to give him room to walk toward the other end of the club. I swipe my finger against the fingerprint pad of my private elevator, and he steps inside with the girl while I follow behind. “What do you want me to do with her, boss?” he asks, now that I can hear him over all the loud music. “She was about to pass out. Caught her just in time.”

“I’m so sick of this shit. Take her to my office,” I say just as the elevator door opens. “Matt! Mateo!”

My brother sticks his head out of the security room, where he’s probably been monitoring the screens with the other security guys, and yells, “What?”

“My office. Now.” I swipe my finger on the pad and my office door unlocks. “Put her on the couch, Bear. Bethany’s making trouble in the Red Bar.” That’s the smaller bar on the west side of the club. “Make sure she’s gone. If not, make her gone.” I turn to Matt as he walks in. “She’s done. Don’t want her at Panic again. Got it?”

Matt shrugs, uncaring.

Bear sets the girl down on the coach. “Got it, boss,” he says, walking out.

Matt leans in close. “Why’s there a girl sleeping on your couch?”

“She passed out.” Her chest is moving in and out, so she’s clearly alive, but that’s all I’ve been able to ascertain.

Matt reaches into his pocket and takes out his phone.

“What are you doing?” I ask him.

“Calling an ambulance. What else do you think I’m doing?”

“No!” I yell, taking his phone from his hand.

“What the hell, man?” He snatches his phone back.

“This month we’ve had four run-ins with the cops. The
New Times
had that shit article about the club. One more piece of bad publicity and we’re done. We’ve worked too hard this year for this to take us down.”

“What if she’s hurt? What if she ODs? You think we’ve got bad publicity now? That shit’ll ruin us,” he says.

I know he’s right, but I don’t care—we need to avoid the cops. I reach into my drawer and take out an old first-aid kit. The ammonia capsules are missing, so I find an alcohol wipe, open it, and hand it to Matt. “Here—try to wake her. I’ll look up her name and see if I can find who she’s here with or something.”

Gently Matt runs the alcohol wipe back and forth under her nose while I look in the woman’s purse to see if I can find a clue as to who she is. A tube of lipstick and a wallet are all that I find. I’m surprised I don’t find a shit-ton of drugs. Instead I take out her driver’s license and place the wallet on my desk.

“Katherine Wilson,” I say, looking at her photo. By my math, she’s thirty-two years old. It says she’s five foot seven, though she looks tiny lying on her side on my couch. And her hair! I’ve never seen so much hair; it must go down to her waist when she’s standing. My brother is pushing it out of her face while running a hand towel doused in water from a bottle against her forehead. “She’s burning up, man,” he says. “We need to call an ambulance.”

I kneel down beside her. “Katherine. Wake up.” I shake her gently at first, and then none too gently. “Damn it. Wake up!”

Am I dead?

Confused and dizzy, I register voices in some crevice of my mind, but everything sounds distant. My thoughts are slow and thick like molasses, making it impossible to process what is going on.

“If this doesn’t work, I’m calling 911,” I hear a male voice say through my fuzziness. A strong smell of rubbing alcohol wafts up my nose, clearing a lot of the cobwebs and jolting me back into the present.

“I think she’s coming around,” a deeper, raspier voice says. The voices come in muffled, as if I’m underwater, but I still hear them, which means I’m not in fact dead. “Katherine?” Someone wipes a cold towel across my forehead, and the excess water drips down my neck as I struggle to open my eyes.

“There you go. Attagirl,” the softer voice says, pressing an alcohol wipe against my upper lip, forcing me to inhale. Senses assaulted, I jerk my eyes open. The light spotting my vision adds to the confusion.

“Get her up and out of here.”

“What the hell do you think I’m doing, Nick?” the soft voice argues. Realizing that I have no clue as to my whereabouts or who these men are, I begin to breathe quickly again. Now that the spots surrounding my vision have left, I see two pairs of identical-looking green eyes staring down at me.

One looks concerned.

One looks utterly pissed off.

I sit up and accidentally knock my forehead against the chin of the pissed-off-looking guy. “Shit. Sorry,” I say, rubbing my forehead with my hand and trying to stand up on wobbly legs. The pissed-off guy catches me by the forearm and steadies me before I can land unceremoniously on my face. “Whoa. Slow down. Sit.” He drags me back down. His touch causes my warm skin to heat further, which then makes me realize that my skirt has crept dangerously high up my legs.

“Here, sweetheart, drink this,” the concerned guy says, handing me an open bottle of water as I’m trying to right my skirt. With shaky hands I reach for the bottle and put it to my lips as the two men continue to watch me suspiciously. But as the liquid is about to hit my mouth I bring it back down, shake my head, and hand it back.

I don’t know these men. What if they’ve drugged the water?

“I…uh…where am I?” I ask, blinking a few times, knowing that my voice is coming out shaky and squeaky. I feel sticky from all the sweat, and all of my muscles ache from the stress I endured before passing out.

“You’re at Nick’s office here at Panic. The nightclub you passed out in. I’m Matt, and that’s my brother, Nick. We own the club. Bear caught you right before you hit the floor.”

“Bear?” My voice sounds raspy even to my own ears.

“One of our bouncers,” he explains. “We were about to call an ambulance.”

An ambulance? An ambulance that’ll drive me to a hospital? A hospital full of people?

No.

No!

“I’m okay. I’m sorry. Please, no hospitals.” Again I try to stand, holding the hem of my dress down at the same time, looking awkward as hell, I’m sure. The two men stand aside watching me. The pissed-off guy, who I now know is named Nick, looks me over distrustfully, arms crossed over his chest and his jaw twitching.

I look around the room. Even though there is a sleek modern-looking desk with a glass top and chrome finish, the walls are cement and the ceiling is exposed, so I can see the ducts. I don’t see any windows. Not one. And the fluorescent light is flickering above me. “I…um…thank you for your help. Where’s the door?” An overwhelming need to escape consumes me, and I know it is just a matter of time until I start to freak out again. Nick isn’t helping matters by being creepily gorgeous with his unabashed angry glare.

“Wait. You can’t drive. You’re shaking. Are you going to pass out again?” Matt asks, taking a step closer as I take a step back.

“It’s okay, really.” His green eyes seem genuinely concerned and harmless; he even holds his arms out as if he’s trying to show me he comes in peace. On the other hand, Nick…he’s both scaring the crap out of me and intriguing me. Clearly his anger is directed at me. What have I done that’s so awful he has such an instant aversion toward me? Our eyes lock accidentally for a moment, and I feel those emeralds pierce right through me in a way that intimidates the hell out of me. I make it a point to look away because I can’t figure him out and I don’t need to add a new set of confusing emotions to my already out-of-whack ones.

It’s weird. I’m in the middle of losing control of my body and I’m having perhaps the single most embarrassing moment of my life. Yet I’m also having some sort of visceral reaction to this man. To Nick. Whom I met just thirty seconds ago. A man who is staring at me as if I’m the most appalling creature he’s ever had the displeasure of meeting. I, on the other hand, have never seen a more attractive man before. His long hair is swept up in a bun that seems more like an afterthought than a style—but on him it looks particularly sexy. He’s also sporting a neatly trimmed beard that almost, but not quite, hides a pair of beautiful lips. I mean, I’ve seen lips like his. Full lips whose corners are tipped downward in a snarl. And his unconventional look—the beard, the hair, the scowl—contrasts sharply against the conventional but flawlessly tailored black suit, paired with a perfectly crisp white shirt and a thin black tie. Nick is striking, for lack of a better word. Or at least that’s what my stupid, traitorous body seems to think as my heart pounds not just from fear but from his intense gaze.

With all I have been through in my thirty-two years of life, I’ve never wished I was someone else.

Until today.

Right now, at this very moment, I wish I was someone who has her shit together. Someone who could possibly stand a chance with a man like Nick. Someone who doesn’t make Nick look pissed off. Someone who wasn’t carried in unconscious by a man named Bear. A woman who’d caught his attention on the dance floor, not on her back about to puke.

Matt snaps his fingers, trying to get my attention. “Hey—where’d you go?”

I shake my head frantically, trying to disengage my stare from those pissed-off green eyes that are glaring back at me. I shift my eyes to Matt, who’s still talking.

“How ’bout a cab? We can call you a cab. Or Uber?”

I shake my head. “No.”

“Oookaay…I can have an employee take you.”

Again I shake my head. All I want is out of the confines of the small room, because no matter how hot Nick is, I need to get the hell out. My anxiety over being in a windowless room with strange men trumps the unusual reaction I’m having to him.

I look around the unfamiliar area and begin to feel queasy again. Matt carefully reaches over to my side, retrieves my purse, and slowly hands it to me as if any sudden movement will send me running.

He’s right.

“It says here you live on Collins Avenue,” he says, showing me my license, which one of them obviously took from my purse. “Nick lives close by. He can ta—”

“No, I can’t,” Nick bites out, his raspy voice reverberating through my body.

“Shut the fuck up, Nick,” Matt scolds. “She needs help.”

“Exit?” I ask in a low voice I barely hear. My heart begins to hammer against my chest again. I turn my head to one side and then the other. I need to find the exit. Where the hell is the door in this place? And where are the windows? It’s been years since I’ve had a panic attack this bad. I’ve embarrassed myself enough. I need to get out of here. Now.

“Look at her. She’s out of it,” Nick says, and snaps his fingers at me. “Hey. Hey, you.” To his brother he says tersely, “Her eyes aren’t focused. Damn it, Matt, we can’t have another run-in with the cops,” and he lets out a frustrated breath.

I open my mouth to speak but quickly close it and decide to save my energy. Nick turns to look at Matt, who doesn’t seem to know what to do with me. Rolling his eyes, Nick grabs me by the forearm so abruptly that I lurch forward, my legs barely keeping up.

Normally I don’t like people touching me, and if I’d seen it coming, I’d have made it clear not to touch me. But, since he left me with no other choice, I don’t pull away. If his touching me means that I’ll be far away from this room, I’ll gladly hold his hand the entire way. Touching is preferable to claustrophobia. That, and it feels thrilling to have his big paw on me.

Nick pulls me out of the small, windowless room and into the hall. “You have to breathe. In and out.” He says it not delicately or comfortingly, but with a tone that tells me he thinks I’m weak and annoying and that he’s coaching me only so that I don’t cause him any further problems. It’s clear he just wants me out of his club.

What a coincidence—seems we both want the same exact thing.

I’d like to note that before my “condition” worsened, I was not a pushover. Not by any means. I was going to go into law enforcement. My dream was to work for the FBI. So being dragged out, told what to do, scolded, and humiliated goes against every fiber of my out-of-control body. The problem is, the anxiety I feel masks everything else, and coping with that emotion takes all my energy.

With Matt on our heels, Nick continues pulling me down the hall. “You can’t pass out again. I’m not calling an ambulance for you. If there’s an ambulance, there’s police.”

I’m right—he absolutely wants me out of his club.

We continue to walk down the winding hall. “You hear me? What the fuck are you on?” He practically shakes me as he says this.

On? What the hell is he talking about? Too many things are going through my head, and my flight instinct is kicking in. “Panic atta—” I begin to croak out, but I’m gasping for air by the time we reach the end of the hallway. And then I stop dead in my tracks.

My feet stop.

My heart stops.

Everything just stops.

Time fucking stops.

I see it.

My worst nightmare stares back at me, taunting me.

At my abrupt halt, our hands disconnect, and oddly enough I feel a need to grab him back. But before I can get a handle on things, Matt crashes into my back, and I’m thrown forward against Nick, who’s forced to grip me tightly around the waist in an effort to steady me.

“Get the elevator, Matt,” Nick demands, still not releasing his grip on me, his eyes fixed on mine in a mixture of confusion and disgust.

“She’s about to go down again,” Matt says.

“I am not,” I answer, pulling away from Nick as I take slow and steady steps toward the elevator, all the while taking deep and deliberate breaths in and out.
I can do this. I can do this. I can do this,
I chant to myself. I hate being weak, and if I had control of my body, I would have reacted differently. But that is the crux of the problem. When I am outside my apartment, I have no control of my body, and it makes me mad and ashamed.

With each step I take, I come closer to my nemesis. My legs become heavier and my breathing shallows. With a low, ominous beep, the door opens. Over the years of seclusion, my anxiety has expanded to the point where I am now basically afraid of everything: small spaces, open spaces, loud noises, small rooms, heights, strangers…you name it. But claustrophobia is by far the worst.

I see the small, confined space, the dim light and the mirrored walls.

The edges of my vision become fuzzy as all the blood drains from my body. I feel my eyes roll to the back of my head as strong hands grab me right before I hit the floor.

I’m passing out.

Again.

But not before I hear Nick spit, “I fucking hate junkies.”