Page 167 of Power Play

“Next time, can you call before you come over?”

Crystal went very still, and panic began spreading through me before she answered.

“I wasn’t aware I needed an appointment to visit my daughter.”

“That isn’t what I said.”

“It sounded very much like it.”

“I’m only asking you to call first.”

My pulse hammered as I held the door open.

Crystal’s face became perfectly composed. “All right.”

She picked up her purse, and every part of me wanted to take the request back. I wanted to tell her I didn’t mean it, promise she could come whenever she wanted, and rearrange myself until the tightness disappeared from her mouth.

Instead, I stood there while she crossed the apartment.

She kissed my cheek near the door and gave me a tight smile. “I hope whatever you’re rushing off to is worth upsetting yourself this much.”

The comment struck exactly where it was supposed to.

I still didn’t change my mind.

“He is.”

My mother stared at me.

Then she left.

I closed the door and managed to remain standing for approximately five seconds before panic ripped through me.

My hands started shaking first. Heat rushed into my face while my chest tightened so hard I couldn’t draw a full breath, and every thought I had successfully held away while Crystal was standing in front of me came back at once.

She was offended. She thought I was ungrateful. She would tell Dad I had been rude, and he would ask what was happening with me. She had seen the apartment. She had seen me in a robe at eleven in the morning and probably thought I was lazy. She might have noticed my body had changed since the dress fitting. She might already be wondering what I had eaten or whether I had stopped taking care of myself.

“Stop,” I whispered, pressing both palms against the kitchen counter.

It didn’t help.

The panic had already decided there was danger somewhere in the room, and my body believed it more than anything reasonable I could tell myself. I paced from the kitchen to the living room and back again because sitting made me feel trapped inside my own skin. My fingers tingled. My heart beat too fast. When I caught my reflection in the dark television screen, I turned away before the image could become another problem.

My phone sat beside Ryan’s Spanish notebook.

His last message had arrived forty minutes earlier.

Ryan: Chicago tonight. Game at 7:30. Hope Brown hasn’t killed you yet.

I stared at the message until the words blurred.

Chicago. He would be there tonight.

For three days, I had been waiting for Ryan to make me feel better after he had explicitly told me he couldn’t always be the person standing beside me when my brain fell apart.

The realization hurt.

The next one hurt worse because he had been right.