Page 11 of What We Become

The foam reaches my waist. It’s warm, pressing in and filling the space between my thighs and the chair, molding itself to the shape of me, pushing into the gaps of the zip ties with a slow, insistent pressure that makes my skin crawl.

I cough again. Longer this time, harder. The fumes are getting worse as the foam expands, releasing a gas that’s making my head swim and my eyes water in the dark.

In for four. Hold for four. Out for four.

The breathing technique doesn’t work when the air you’re breathing is poison. I try anyway. Count the seconds. Force my lungs to slow. But each inhale is shallower than the last because the foam is displacing the oxygen and my body knows it even if my brain is still trying to pretend otherwise.

“HELP ME! PLEASE! SOMEONE!”

My voice cracks on the last word. The sound is thinner now. Reedy. The scream of a person scraping already-damaged vocal cords raw. I know this feeling. I lived it once already—in a hospital bed, throat wrapped in gauze, unable to speak for days.

Not again. Please. Not again.

The foam creeps up to my ribs.

Think. Stop screaming and think.

Stephen said eighteen hours to fully set. Not eighteen hours to fill the space.

I don’t know how long I have.

Panic will make it shorter. So will the fumes. My head swims. My eyes water. Each breath comes shallower than the last.

Focus.

What can I do? What do I have?

I’m wearing a dress. Strappy sandals. No boots, which means no knife. No jacket. My phone and bag are gone. Stephen must have taken them while I was unconscious. I don’t have anything. I’m a woman in a party dress, zip-tied to a chair in a sealed room filling with expanding foam and I have nothing.

The foam touches my breasts. I flinch. The warmth is obscene—intimate, invasive, like being touched by something that has no right to be this close.

I’m going to die in a wall.

I don’t want to die in a wall.

I don’t want to fucking die at all.

I suck in a breath and bite my cheek, hard. The pain cuts through the panic for half a second—just long enough to remind me that I’m still in here, that my body is still mine, that none of the rest of this was ever supposed to happen.

If I can breathe, I can move. If I can move, I can fight.

I try again to work my wrists, twisting hard, as if hatred alone could cut through plastic. The ties pull, slicing the skin deeper. Blood, warm and slick, makes the next twist easier—almost. I flex my hands, squeeze tight, let my sweat and the blood make a lubricant. The foam crawls up my arms and my whole body shrieks, but I keep rotating, keep yanking, keep tearing at my own skin, because if I don’t get out of this chair I’m going to be a statue forever.

And I don’t want that.

I don’t want this to be the end.

Not when my life is finally beginning. Not when my guys and I have just made everything official, moved in together permanently, and decided that this is the thing we want—each other, shared meals, shared space, shared lives. And sex. So much sex. And babies. Fuck. I want to have their babies. One with each of them. More if it works.

The oxygen must be going, because I start chuckling, thinking of Milo as a dad, of Knox. Of the five of them chasing rug rats around the house.

Five kids minimum.

In this economy.

A laugh catches in my throat and turns into another cough.

I shake my head, forcing myself to refocus, fighting the dizziness trying to drag me under.