Breathing.
“Just leave me alone,” she whispered, no idea if it washim, the man who had tormented her, but unable to stop her fear that it was.
Sometimes it was hard to separate real fear from paranoia. After surviving as she had, after fighting so hard to escape, Sunny’s sense of danger was all messed up. She had to stop herself, to think through the instinct to run, to panic, and figure out if there was actually something worth fearing. Every little sound, every wrong number, everything she couldn’t immediately identify was always him in her mind, waiting to grab her, to drag her back to her nightmare.
It was a call. She wasn’t even sure if it was breathing, or if she was just freaking herself out. Tanner, her ex, had no idea where she was, had never reached out or found her in all the years since her escape. If he hadn’t come for her in five years, she had no reason to think he had now.
Relax.The rumbled voice from Gold the night before came back to her, and even if she hated herself a little for it, she used his voice to calm her. She held on to that voice, to the demand there, sinking into the safety of it.
She hung up, chastising herself for taking it so to heart. Prank calls and wrong calls happened to everyone. It must have been the night before that had set her off, like something that aggravated a wound already there, made her more sensitive, more on alert.
She wouldnotlet Tanner steal the peace she’d worked so hard to create for herself. He was five hundred miles away, out in Utah, while she had taken refuge in the California desert.
The shrill ringing of the shelter phone forced the thoughts away. If there was one thing that helped her when she started to slip, when the past became too real, it was work. It let her focus on something good, let her see therewasgood in the world, helped her to add more good to it.
“Marla’s Bakery,” she answered, the fake name they used to help protect the shelter and any woman whose spouse might have gotten the number.
Silence.
Her chest constricted as if something had wrapped around it so tight, her lungs couldn’t fill anymore.
A laugh, dark and sinister andfamiliar. Breathy, cold.
The room spun, and Sunny grasped for the desk, for something to keep her upright. This made her other panic attacks look like a party.
Everything shook, the walls moving as if they breathed, and still that laugh came through, so quiet she almost had to strain to hear it.
It had to be Tanner, right? And if he’d called the main phone, he’d found her.
Everything went black as she collapsed.