Page 41 of The Associate
A cold knot formed in his stomach. His breath hitched, but this time it didn't release cleanly. It caught in his chest, then began sawing in and out in short, ragged gasps that did nothing to fill his tightening lungs. A cold, greasy sweat broke out across his forehead and snaked down his spine.
No. No, no, no.
His wide eyes darted over the panel. He lunged for it, his fingers clumsy and shaking so badly he missed the ‘ALERT’ button, his nail scraping the plastic. He tried again, slamming his palm against it.
A faint, tinny buzz sounded from the speaker grate then faded. He stared at it, waiting for a voice, for instructions. Nothing came.
His gaze flew to Gael, a reflexive search for…what?
Assurance? Shared alarm?
Gael had glanced up from his phone at the jolt. He looked mildly inconvenienced, like a man whose train had been delayed. Then his eyes returned back to the screen, the glow casting sharp planes across his face.
Samuel whirled back to face the doors, staring at the frozen digital panel.11.They were stuck between floors.
Trapped.
The walls, which had merely felt close before, now seemed to be breathing inward, pressing on his temples.
Flashes, jagged and bright, cut through his vision: the heavy, locked door of a solitary confinement room at the Hills, the smell of mildew and his own fear, the complete, utter silence. A small, pathetic sound, almost a whimper, escaped his clamped lips.
He tried to swallow, but his throat wasn’t working. Beads of sweat traced icy paths down his temples. His breath was a ragged, audible thing now, harsh, and too fast in the silent box. His vision began to blur at the edges, the sickly yellow light and bronze doors melting into a swirling grey haze, tunneling down to a single point of impending collapse.
Calm down. You need to fucking calm down.
The command in his head was a desperate, furious mantra.
You can't lose it. Not again.
Not here. Not in front of your fucking boss.
Not again.
But the panic was a riptide, cold and powerful, pulling him under. He was going to drown in this metal coffin. He would shatter into a thousand pieces of exposed nerve and humiliated flesh right here on the floor, and Gael Wise is going to witness it.
And then he felt it.
A touch. Against the damp, feverish skin at the back of his neck.
Cold.
The contrast was shocking.
Unmistakable.
It washishand. There was no world in which it could be anyone else.
He froze. Utterly. Completely.
The violent tremors racking his muscles ceased all at once. The harsh, gasping breaths cut off mid-inhale, leaving a silence so profound he could hear the softshushof his own blood in his ears. The shaking in his hands stopped. The only point of reality in the dissolving universe was suddenly the cool, solid weight of that hand.
It was large. It covered the entire nape of his neck. He could feel the elegant fingers pressing with a firm, steady pressure into the frantic pulse point below his jaw. The pad of a thumb settled on the other side, just below his hairline, on the sensitive junction of skull and spine. And then it began to move.
Slow. Deliberate. Gentle circles against his skin.
The motion was hypnotic. Each slow pass of the thumb was a message decoded directly by Samuel’s primal hindbrain:Be still.
His eyes slammed shut. A profound calm swept through him, a surrender so deep it felt like his bones were turning to water, his muscles to liquid wax. His head dipped forward a fraction, offering more of his neck to that steady, circling thumb.
