Page 38 of Sparrow

I hate the waver in my voice, but I can’t stop it. I’m crushed at the idea that I did something wrong and that he might be angry at me.

Then I see his mouth twitch.

I smack his arm, more annoyed than I have any right to be. “That was mean!”

His mouth grows firm and he shrugs. “I’m not a nice man, Arden. Better if you know that now, before you start thinking otherwise.”

As he turns, his sleeve rides up, and I see an old scar on his arm. It’s well healed, but it was obviously deep when it happened. It’s clean and straight, the ridge of scar tissue nearly smooth. Despite myself, I reach out to touch it, but he jerks away.

“What happened?” I ask, my voice quiet.

He moves his shoulder like he’s throwing me off, and moves away from me. “Nothing you need to concern yourself with. Old scar, that’s all.”

I freeze, suddenly feeling like I’m twelve years old again and just got caught doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing. I’m frozen, waiting to get in trouble the way I always did at home. Waiting for the blame, the harsh words that tell me I’m not worth the trouble. That I have to make up for my shortcomings again.

Instead, Orion goes back to work without saying anything else, and he doesn’t ask me for any other tools. In fact, he suddenly acts like I’m not even here. Just leaves me with the knowledge that he’s got scars he doesn’t want anyone to see, and secrets he’s probably never told anyone.

Least of all a girl like me. An outsider. Interloper.

A problem he never asked for.

I feel a rush of adrenaline at the thought... and then a tell-tale pounding in my chest that tells me I’m in trouble. There’s a flutter, and then a pause. The dizziness that says it’s about to get much worse.

I don’t wait. I turn and run from the garage with one thought on my mind: Get upstairs and into private before this gets any worse.

Because I don’t want Mars or Orion or any of their men knowing about my secrets, either. I don’t want them thinking they have to fix it.

And I don’t want them using it as an excuse to send me home before I’m ready.

Arden

Ibarely get up the steps to the second floor, and by the time I reach my room and the bathroom that branches off it, I’m gasping for breath like I just ran a full marathon rather than the short dash from the garage to my bedroom.

Because as far as my heart is concerned, I did.

The problem is, technically, my heart is broken.

I stumble into the bathroom, my hands skidding along the countertop in my rush to get to the medicine cabinet. Downstairs, the symptoms were light. A stuttering heartbeat. Slight faintness. The inborn knowledge that something was wrong.

Now, though, after the run up the stairs and the increasing panic of my body, the symptoms are so strong that I’m having trouble functioning. My heart is pounding rather than fluttering but it’s doing it on the wrong beat, shouting out a song that doesn’t make any sense because the beats don’t match up. And that’s restricting blood flow to my body and my brain, which is making it hard to both think and move. My brain is screaming at me that this is wrong and that we’re dying, while my body is churning out ‘fight, fight, fight’ hormones to try to keep me moving.

And those aren’t helping, either.

In fact, the adrenaline is actually making it worse by increasing my feeling of sheer panic.

This whole thing is both physical and mental, my brain trying desperately to contain my panic while my body goes into sheer survival mode, and the two set each other off terribly.

It’s not the first time this has happened to me.

It is, though, the first time it’s happened so far away from the safety of my own home, where I could ride these episodes out in my bedroom, where no one could see me or give me trouble for getting in the way and being dramatic.

I crash against the counter again, my muscles twitching, and finally get to the medicine cabinet, where I dig through the shelves to find the medication I have stuffed there. I take the bottle out and shake it, horrified anew at the sound of too few pills.

I haven’t had a refill since I was kidnapped, and though I was lucky enough to be carrying my medication that night, for reasons I can’t remember, the fact that I’ve only had the one bottle for months now means I’ve had to ration the meds as much as I can. I’m supposed to take them once a day to keep my heart smooth and measured, but obviously haven’t been able to do that.

Instead, I’ve been taking them once a week.

Or at least I was until I realized I was down to only three pills.