You've Got Male. Elizabeth Bevarly

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СКАЧАТЬ an explanation. If nothing else, it might make him stop looking at her as if she were some kind of freak.

      “It was a panic attack,” she said softly.

      “A panic attack,” he repeated evenly.

      Again she nodded. But she said nothing to elaborate. What else was there for her to say?

      He shifted his weight to one foot, hooked his hands on his hips in challenge and flattened his mouth into a tight line. “Peaches, that was no panic attack. That was transglobal, thermodynamic warfare.”

      She made a face at him. “Oh, stop it with the hyper-bole.” Although, now that she studied him more closely, she realized there was a big red spot on his cheek. “Look, I said I was sorry,” she said again. “It’s not like it’s something I can control. And usually it’s not that bad.”

      “Just what is it then?”

      She sighed. She wished she could tell him. At least in terms that wouldn’t make her sound weak and timid and nuts. Unfortunately, over the past several years, Avery had pretty much come to the conclusion that she was weak and timid and nuts. Which made her even more reluctant to tell him the truth.

      In spite of that, she told him, “I wasn’t trying to be coy or uncooperative earlier when I told you I couldn’t go anywhere with you. I was telling you the truth. I can’t leave my apartment. Not without some serious preparation first.”

      “What, like you need to make sure you have your wallet and house keys and a token for the subway?” he asked sarcastically.

      “No. I can’t go out, because…” She sighed, resigned to revealing more of herself than she wanted him to know, because there was no other way to make him understand. “Because I have agoraphobia.”

      He eyed her dubiously, “Which is what?” he asked. “Fear of the outdoors, right? But you weren’t outside yet when you went psycho.”

      She tried to sit up, remembered that she was strapped down, so fell back against the cot with an exasperated sound. Honestly. Talk about overkill. So she’d roughed him up and called him a leper. So she’d nearly given someone a concussion. So she’d taken a couple of nurses out of commission. Like that didn’t happen every day in some boroughs of New York.

      She tugged meaningfully at her restraints. “Let me up, will you?” she pleaded. “I’m fine now. I swear.”

      “What you are is completely whack,” he countered. “Has anyone ever told you that?”

      “Once or twice,” she said softly. Then, more forcefully, “I’m fine,” she repeated. She jerked at the restraints again. “Get me out of these things. Let me up. Please.”

      Although he obviously didn’t believe her, he bent over her and, after a moment’s hesitation, cautiously unfastened one of her wrist restraints. But he waited before loosening any more, apparently wanting to take this thing slowly, in case she was still a little, oh, homicidal. After another moment, evidently satisfied that she wasn’t going to go all Hannibal Lecter on him again—probably—he carefully freed one of the ankle restraints, too. Then the other. Then finally the last, on her other wrist. Then he took a giant step backward and positioned himself near the door.

      Where was she anyway? she wondered as she folded herself into a sitting position on the edge of the cot. It wasn’t quite a padded cell, but it was a tiny white room, empty save the cot on which she had been restrained, and there was a window in the door for observation from the other side. He’d mentioned nurses, so she must be in a hospital of some kind. God, she couldn’t even remember how she’d gotten here.

      “What time is it?” she asked.

      He flicked his wrist to glance at his watch, returning his attention to Avery in less than a nanosecond. “It’s ten after two.”

      “A.m. or p.m.?”

      “It’s two-ten in the morning,” he said. “You’ve been here for about an hour. But it took me and my partner almost an hour to get you here.”

      Avery nodded, waiting for the panic to rise again, because she wasn’t in normal surroundings where she felt safe. Not that she ever really felt entirely safe in her normal surroundings. But nothing happened. She was a bit edgy, to be sure, but who wouldn’t be upon one’s discovery that one was in a strange place and couldn’t remember how one had arrived there? Not to mention when there was a man like Santiago Dixon staring at one as if one had just emerged from a pea pod from outer space?

      “And just where is here?” she asked.

      “You’re in an OPUS facility,” he told her.

      Well, at least it wasn’t Bellevue.

      “An OPUS psychiatric facility,” he clarified.

      Oh. So it was Bellevue. Only without all the glamour and accountability.

      She looked down at her attire, at the loud pajama bottoms and ragged purple sweatshirt. There was a rip in one sleeve that hadn’t been there before. One of her socks was missing, and the toenails of her one bare foot were painted five different colors. No telling how that had happened. The lost sock, she meant, since she had painted her toenails herself. One of her braids had come almost completely frayed. She looked at Dixon again, at the mark on his face for which she was responsible. She was lucky they’d only put her in restraints. Any other place would have performed a full frontal lobotomy by now.

      Still, she wasn’t panicking here. The small, bare room didn’t frighten her the way most new surroundings did. And neither did Dixon’s presence in it. That had to be significant somehow, but she was too exhausted at the moment to try and figure it out.

      “So tell me about this agoraphobia you have,” he said.

      Avery reached for the unraveling braid and freed what little of it was still intact, then finger-combed her hair as best she could before going about the motions of plaiting it again. “Clinically,” she said as she wove the strands back together and avoided his gaze, “it’s defined as anxiety about being in a place or situation from which escape might be difficult or in which help may not be available in the event of having an unexpected panic attack or paniclike symptoms.”

      “In layman’s terms?” he asked.

      “It means I’m terrified of being someplace where I don’t feel safe,” she said simply. “And the only place I feel safe is my home. So anytime I have to leave my home, I am literally crippled by fear.”

      What Avery didn’t add was that her agoraphobia had appeared after her release from prison and was a direct result of her incarceration. As bad as it had been to have her freedom revoked, in prison, for the first time in her life, she’d felt oddly safe. Strangely content. There was a strict system and regimen to life inside that had appealed to her. Everything was scheduled and everything went according to plan. Everyone was equal. The only thing that had been expected of her was that she stay out of trouble. And living in a place like that, Avery had felt no desire to get into trouble.

      Not as she had growing up in East Hampton, where society’s strict rules—which had never made any sense to her—had dictated she behave in ways she didn’t want to behave. Growing up in the Hamptons, she had never felt like a worthwhile part of society, and because of that she had rebelled. Constantly. To her family she had СКАЧАТЬ