Page 181 of One More Kiss

My heart raced, and my tears followed, making tracks down my cheeks. The second my chest started to heave, I tried to rationalize the situation in my head. No pep talk from my psyche helped, though. Like someone had flipped a switch, I could barely drag in enough oxygen to keep from seeing stars, and imminent danger loomed. I knew none of it was real, but my mind just wouldn’t heed my advice. The more I struggled to get it under control, the worse it got. My shoulders shook with the hiccupping breaths I pulled in, and I wrung my hands, trying to feel something, anything real.

“Hey, hey—April.” Ryan had slid across the floor and planted himself in front of me. “April, look at me.”

But I couldn’t. I didn’t have the resources to even acknowledge him. My head had taken over, convincing me of my forthcoming death, and words weren’t penetrating the fortress my thoughts had constructed around my rational mind.

The more erratic my breathing and thoughts became, the more stressed Ryan appeared. It wasn’t that I was focused on him so much as he had gotten in my face, forcing eye contact. I tried to zero in on the gold flecks that dotted the brown, but nothing I did worked. His pupils dilated; the circle seemed to pulse I studied them so intently.

“Deep breath. Come on. Stay with me, April.”

I heard his words, but I couldn’t quite grab them, wrap my mind around them.

“Watch my chest.” He took a heavily exaggerated inhalation and then exhaled as if his life depended on getting out every last bit of air. And then he did the same thing again. “Come on. Breathe with me.”

I had no idea how long he sat in front of me, holding my hands, trying to get me to mimic him. It could have been two minutes or an hour; I didn’t have the faintest awareness of time. All I knew was we were stuck in a box, suspended somewhere above the tenth floor, and we couldn’t escape.

“That’s it. You’re doing good. Keep watching my chest. In and out—deep, slow breaths.”

Then I realized he’d calmed the panic. He’d gotten me to breathe with him, to hear the sound of his voice and allow him to lead me to safety. There was only one other man who’d ever done that for me, and he’d never be able to do it again. As the anxiety ceased, the tears took over.

Clearly, I didn’t know Ryan any more than he knew me, but a damsel in distress seemed to have called to the white knight in his spirit. There weren’t many people in this city who had a chivalrous side, but Ryan appeared determined to prove that he was one who did. Somehow, he spun around and got next to me, circling my shoulders with his arm. I let him assume a position that should have been reserved for someone I was close to, but since there was no one around who currently fit that description, I leaned my head on his chest. There, I let out all the emotion that had welled in me, all the sadness, the pain, the sorrow, the unexpected loss—it all just hurt so much. And I wanted more than anything for it to stop, even if it was just for a minute.

His hand traveled up and down my arm in a purely platonic, hypnotic petting motion. Ryan didn’t push for me to talk; he didn’t try to get me to calm down. He simply rested his chin on top of my head and let his heart beat a rhythm against my ear that soothed my mind, comforted my spirit, and spoke to my soul. The cadence was a slow thump, and the longer I focused on it, the more I relaxed, until finally, I stopped crying.

But then, I didn’t want to move. I realized I was in a position that probably wasn’t appropriate given the nature of our relationship—that of pure strangers. However, I didn’t care. His arms were like a fortress, protecting me. He was warm and dry to my cold and soggy. Ryan seemed to know just what I needed in a world where I was lost and alone, where half of me was gone, taken unjustly and unexpectedly. Even his scent nuzzled its way into my nose and found a place that made me think I was home. It wasn’t cologne, just fabric softener, or maybe even just laundry detergent, but it was clean, crisp—rain on a spring day. No, the sunshine after the rain on a spring day.

I clung to him like a monkey to a tree. My fist was tangled in his shirt, but he didn’t seem to mind, or if he did, he didn’t say anything.

Then he lifted his hand and brushed my hair out of my face again. I pulled back just enough to look up and see his face. The gold specks in his eyes now seemed radiant, like striations instead of dots that had erupted in his irises, taking over the brown. Still, despite the color change, there was something there. He was hiding something, too. I didn’t have the courage to ask, or maybe I just thought it wasn’t my business.

But when he cupped my jaw and stroked my cheek with his thumb, all I wanted to do was get to know him. To have a thousand more moments just like this—well, minus the whole elevator problem. I wanted to connect with this man, to know what had broken him. And I badly wanted to tell him what ailed me.

There was something in the way he looked at me, stared at me, that told me he’d understand. He was a kindred spirit. A man who would not only get it but fight to fix it, change it. Suddenly, I wanted that as much as my next breath, and I’d gotten all of that from a mere glance, the way he gazed into my eyes.

He bit his lip, brushed his thumb across my cheek one more time, all while maintaining eye contact, and then said, “Do you want to talk about it?”

My heart screamed yes. My head said hell no. And before I knew what I was doing, my thoughts had aligned into a truth I hadn’t yet uttered to another living soul, not even those who knew about it and had been there. Then those thoughts came out in words—in an elevator to a stranger. Ryan.

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