Page 133 of Powerless

I hadn’t noticed how quickly I’m breathing, how I’m trying to gulp down air and failing miserably. Kai looks suddenly sober and suddenly serious, which I can only assume means that he can see the panic plastered all over my face. His arm tightens ever so slightly around me, ever so protectively.

I hate it. I hate it. I hate it.

“Pae...”

Oh, why can’t I hate it?

“What’s wrong?” His voice is stern, cutting through my haze of hysteria.

There are so many bodies around me, so close, so pressing. The air feels so thin, so hot in my lungs. I feel so confined, so trapped. Body locking, heart leaping, mind laughing at how weak I am.

My head is spinning and so are we. I stumble to a stop—my partner, my thoughts, my breathing all halting with me. I can’t swallow the panic, can’t swallow down air, can’t swallow my pride to admit to myself that something iswrong.

Calm down. You’re fine.

Suddenly, I’m that little, helpless girl again. The one with the dead dad and murdered dreams. The one being beaten against a pole for stealing to survive, running to rid herself of haunting memories. The one who would curl up in a ball, crippled by grief and consumed by panic. The one who couldn’t be in large crowds or small spaces without gasping for air or grappling to escape. Weak from worry, powerless from panic. No, justpowerless.

Calm down. You’re fi—

I’m having a panic attack.

The dress is abruptly too tight, squeezing my ribs, choking me, forcing the air from my lungs. The crowd around me is suddenly doing the same: squeezing me, choking me, pressing in, oblivious to how the garden packed full of people is suddenly petrifying me.

“I—I can’t breathe.” The words are a gasp, and I’m embarrassed that I have to admit to him, tomyself, a fear that hasn’t haunted me in years. “Claustrophobic.” I barely manage to get the breathless word out, but he doesn’t wait for me to struggle through an explanation before I’m pressed to his side, letting him lead me to the edge of trees.

“Just a little farther. Hold on,” he murmurs, pushing us through the crowd and back under the dark willow. I feel the rough bark of a trunk against my back and open my eyes, not realizing I had shut them in the first place.

In the shadows, I can barely make out Kai standing in front of me, wearing the same look he had when I was bleeding out on the forest floor before him. “Breathe, Pae. Breathe.” He seems to be struggling for air himself, his eyes scanning my face as mine dart around frantically.

“Hey, hey, hey. Look at me,” he says softly, more softly than I’ve ever heard him speak. And for once, I listen to him. I’m blinking rapidly, studying his shadowed face in the darkness, trying to calm myself. Though, technically, he was the reason for this panic attack in the first place.Hemade me panic. Hemakesme panic. I let my mind get out of control and spiral, my deep-rooted fear of claustrophobia only uprooting after the initial panic that was caused overhim.

Caused by frustrating feelings for him.

I’m still breathing heavily, struggling to get enough air into my lungs. He’s kept his distance from me, giving me space. But now he’s slipping an arm around my back, gently, slowly.

“What are you—?”

Air floods into my lungs as if I’ve been underwater this whole time and only just broke through the surface. I gulp it down, greedily, relishing in how it feels to fully breathe again. The panic begins to dissolve, my mind finally settling after spinning out of control.

“Much better, I’m sure.” Kai sounds relieved, though the faintest smirk is lifting his lips.

And that’s when I feel it.

My dressshifts.

I look down and nearly gasp at the gaping fabric that was once stretched tight across my chest. The waist is loosened, no longer cinched to fit my figure.

The whole dress is about to fall off me.

I clutch the top of the sleeveless gown and tug it up, gawking at him. “What were youthinking—”

“I was thinking,” Kai shoves his hands in his pockets, the perfect picture of nonchalance, “that you couldn’t breathe. And as much as I like that dress on you, I figured you would look just as good in it with the laces undone.” He dips his head and smiles to himself, apparently humored by this. “So you could breathe, of course.”

He winks. Hewinks.

I’m fuming.

“I am going to—”

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