Fucking help me. Please. Please!
I was going to pass right the fuck out. Reyes watched me struggle, and that weaving line of sorrow drawing through his stare straightened with purpose in a flash.
Fingers unbuckled me from my seat easily. The handcuffs were off in a blink. A sturdy arm shifted beneath my legs while the other steadied at my back, and Agent Reyes lifted me from my seat. Too many pairs of eyes observed us with disgusting curiosity as he curled me into his chest like a wounded lamb.
He stormed down the aisle with me in his arms as I coughed and wheezed and tasted nothing but fire and tears.
“Scarlett, you have to breathe,” Agent Reyes encouraged, his voice a husky point of focus for my flailing mind. I could hear him throwing demands all around us at the flight attendants for water and a place to sit on the floor with me.
Aside from him—his deep voice, his chest, and body warmth—everything around me was cutting in and out. My vision was a kaleidoscope turning faster than I could keep up with, warping brilliant blue sparkles to glowing violet dots, to white as light shimmers. It all made me sick, my stomach rolling with nausea as my world distorted in rainbow mirages.
“Hey.” Reyes' voice was a sharp hit. “Stay with me, Scarlett.”
I shook my head as more tears soaked my cheeks, fingers fisting against his polo shirt until the sound of fabric popping out of seams filled the air. He didn’t seem to care though as I ripped his shirt. Just kept barreling up and down the plane until a flight attendant gestured to a place he could sit against a wall, and we sank together to the floor.
He barked for water, and I thrashed my shoulders, trying to throw myself on my hands and knees to beg the fucking Gods for some oxygen. Everything hurt. My fucking body was a chasm of aching, burning, blinding pain.
A large paw of a hand flattened all five fingers against my chest and pushed me back against him. Warm breath focused my attention as it tickled my ear.
“Feel my breathing, Scarlett.”
The words didn’t make a fucking lick of sense and I thrashed harder, trying to scream against the ash filling my throat. His hand covering the space below my throat pressed firmer and then released its tension as his chest behind me expanded with breath.
“Come on. Breathe with me. You can do it.” But I couldn’t. I couldn’t fucking breathe anything but fire through my lungs, and I found my hands against his thighs that I sat between, clawing his jeans through my fingers now that I couldn’t reach his shirt.
“Scarlett, you can do anything. Now, let's go.” His tone left no room for argument as he continued. “In and out. With me. You have to breathe. Just once. Come on.”
Desperation stitched together his last words, and the shock of it pushed a sharp intake through to my lungs.
“Good,” Agent Reyes heartened. “Again. Feel my breathing and match it.”
I threw my head back against his shoulder, silent cries bleeding me as dry as the dust coating my lungs. My eyes were pinched shut against the world, but I knew it was him that brushed the roughness of his jawline across my cheek to whisper in my ear.
“I need you to breathe for me, Scarlett. Let me feel you breathe.”
The caress of his whisper was sweet velvet, smoothing up my throat to slink through my ears. Surprising myself, I did as he asked.
Choppy cuts of air sucked down my throat, relieving the pressure of the burn in my chest only a hair. But it was something, and it allowed me to let out a proper, bursting sob.
“There you go.” Fingertips rubbed indents into my chest as Reyes encouraged me to keep going, keep breathing, keep trying not to pass out. “In…”
His chest lifted behind me, taking mine with it as I gulped down spurts of air.
“Out...”
Our chests flattened back down as we exhaled together.
“In…”
He guided my chest up with his.
“Out...”
And his hand guided it back down. Again and again, breathing and breathing until the world wasn’t spinning in colors, and the scorch in my veins was a burning itch rather than an inferno.
A flight attendant’s heels clacked up next to us, and she dropped off the cup of water Agent Reyes had requested. He lifted the cup to my lips, telling me to drink.
Water slid cooling ice down my throat, quelling the sore ache put there by my screams and rough gasps. More. I wanted more, and I released the grasp I had on his jeans to push the cup to my lips, gulping down messy splashes of relief.