Chapter Thirteen

 

Finnley

 

The minute Aven was asleep, I crawled out of his tight embrace and left the bedroom. It’d been two weeks since my car accident and impromptu overnight at his house. Also, two weeks since he’d witnessed my last panic attack, and I’d be damned if I was going to break down like that in front of him again. I adamantly refused to stay at his house anymore but didn’t possess enough willpower to keep him away from my own.

He was smart. The sexy devil had figured out how to get me into bed each and every night he was over. However, he had yet to sort out how to keep me there. The moment he fell victim to my enemy, I was gone, slinking down the hall to conquer the night on my own. Everything about our relationship had bloomed and grown beyond anything I could have imagined. The biggest obstacle was me and my juvenile problem.

As I left his warm body tucked under my comforter, I searched around in the dark for my discarded underwear and pajama bottoms. In our haste to get naked, I didn’t know where they’d landed. I found Aven’s lounge pants before I found my own and slipped them on instead.

Once out of the bedroom, I closed the door with a gentle click and wandered through the dark house to the kitchen. I flicked on the light over the stove and rooted through the cupboards to find some coffee—deciding an entire pot was in order, and a single Keurig just wouldn’t do.

Once I’d set the pot to brew, I dug out my stash of Adrafinil and popped two pills. Aven was a non-supporter of my late-night coffee habit and had vocalized it on more than one occasion. I heard his arguments loud and clear, but I didn’t know how else to combat fatigue. The pills he still didn’t know about which was why they remained hidden in the farthest reaches of a top shelf in a kitchen cupboard.

When the coffee was finished brewing, I poured a mug and brought it to the living room to watch TV. The longer I could distract my mind, the better.

And that was where Aven found me in the morning, slumped back at an awkward angle against a throw pillow with a sexy string of drool trailing down my cheek. I returned to consciousness to him looming over me, his tie hanging around his neck, slacks on, and a white dress shirt still unbuttoned as he pecked kisses on my forehead.

“Wakey, wakey, sleepy owl.”

His face took a minute to come into focus as I blinked heavy, sleep-weighted eyes up at him. The grogginess over my body was making it hard to surface. It was like swimming through muck just to reach alertness.

“Your sleep habits are dreadful. I wish you’d at least try to stay in bed with me.”

I wiped a hand over my cheek, erasing the wet smear and stretched as he stood and fixed his shirt and tie, eyes never leaving my face. He couldn’t hide his concern. The creases in his forehead when he looked at me were becoming permanent.

“What time is it?” I mumbled.

“Just after seven.” He scooped my phone off the coffee table and tossed it on my lap. “Gus phoned three times, so I finally answered it for you since you were dead to the world and not hearing it. He said he’d be by with a delivery around eight. Otherwise, I’d have left you sleeping.”

I nodded as I fumbled my way off the couch. My body ached from the awkward way I’d crashed, and my legs trembled once I was upright. Aven looped an arm around my waist and pulled me against him as I yawned, jaw-achingly huge.

“How late were you up?”

My nerves were out of wack, and I leaned on him as I tried to regain control and stop shaking.

“I don’t know.” I dashed a look at the coffee table and saw my mug still three-quarters full. I’d last filled it at around four thirty, but I wasn’t about to tell Aven that. It would mean I’d probably slept less than two hours. “Gonna hop in a shower. It should wake me up.”

A cold shower would get my blood moving. Then, I needed more coffee, or an energy drink. Or both. Something.

Aven brushed his lips against my temple and sighed. “I’ll make you something to eat. Don’t be long, I have to leave in about a half an hour. Early meeting today.”

I set the temperature as cold as I could stand and stood under the flow as my teeth chattered and the heavy cloud drained off me. My eyes were dry and stinging. I knew without looking they were likely bloodshot.

Once I was washed, I dried quickly, trying to work warmth back into my chilled body before I slipped down the hall to my bedroom to find clothes. I dressed semi-professionally since a delivery also meant I’d be dealing with a family at some point during the day.

I returned down the hall as I buttoned my baby-blue button up. After a quick stop in the bathroom to use my eye drops, I met Aven in the kitchen. He was smearing peanut butter on two pieces of toast and had already made me a coffee.

It was the hot brew I zeroed in on and wrapped my hands around it as I took a healthy gulp. At least he didn’t seem to give me a hard time in the mornings about it.

“You drank an entire pot of coffee last night after I fell asleep?”

Busted.

Since I’d fallen asleep before I’d managed to clean it up, there was no denying the evidence. I slinked my arms around his waist and rested my chin on his shoulder while he fixed two more pieces of toast that had just come from the toaster.

Since Aven had been spending a lot more time at my apartment, he ensured there were groceries around so we could at least put together simple meals. He wasn’t a fan of my takeout addiction either.

“Love me some peanut butter. Thank you.”

“Mm-hmm.” He set down the knife and lifted a peanut buttery finger to my mouth. “If you want to avoid my question, do it properly.”

I immediately took the digit into my mouth and sucked it clean, and then sucked it more clean, until he was groaning and trying to free it.

“Okay, hot shot, enough or we will both be late for work.”

I released his finger and licked his neck instead. “We could be fast.”

He chuckled and wormed around to hand me a plate of toast. “With you, it’s never fast. I always want more, and then more again. I’m only ever done when I collapse from exhaustion, and unlike you, I slept all night and have a lot of stamina right now.”

I accepted the plate and sneered playfully. “Bragger.”

We ate together and drank our morning coffee. Before I managed my second piece of toast, a familiar burning pain erupted across my abdomen, making me draw in a sharp breath before I could hide it. I clutched the area from where it radiated and scrunched my face.

“Where are they?” Aven asked, pushing back from the table. I used my Pepcid enough times a week the box tended to travel and never be in the same spot.

“Umm… Cupboard above the stove,” I gritted from behind clench teeth.

It didn’t even occur to me what I’d done until Aven didn’t return immediately. Opening my eyes against the pain, I glanced to see why he wasn’t coming back and saw him holding the box of Pepcid in one hand and my Adrafinil in the other. His brow furrowed as he read the bottle.

Ah, fuck. Here we go.

I moved on him quickly and extracted the bottle before he was done, throwing it back into the cupboard and slamming the door closed. Then, I grabbed the Pepcid and popped a pill from the foil pill pouch, ignoring the look on Aven’s face.

I ducked around him to grab a glass for water, but he halted me and blocked my path.

“Are you taking pills to stay awake?”

“It’s none of your business.” I tried to move around him, but he wouldn’t let me go.

“Finn.”

“Can I please take this, I’m in pain.”

He sighed and moved aside, watching me closely as I downed a glass of water along with my medicine.

“Do you know how incredibly bad that stuff is for your health?”

“Can we not do this? Please.”

“Between your coffee consumption, the ungodly amount of energy drinks you put back in a day, and those, you are going to give yourself a heart attack. Your blood pressure is probably through the roof.”

I swiped a frustrated hand down my face and glanced at the clock. “You’re going to be late for work.”

He checked the time and sighed. “Finn, I’m not trying to be a dick, I’m really worried about you. These things are going to do serious damage to your body if you keep it up.”

I just stared into his concerned eyes and couldn’t summon the energy to care. I was too exhausted and overdone. He had no idea the level of terror I was met with every single night. No words could possibly describe it, so he would never understand.

When I didn’t respond, his shoulders fell, and he approached me tentatively. He drew his arm around my waist and pulled me into a hug. I didn’t fight it, I needed Aven’s support more than I needed his lectures. With my head on his shoulder, I tried to remember a time when life was normal. When every waking moment wasn’t consumed with how I could remain that way—awake. It didn’t exist, or at least not in my memories. The fear was all I knew anymore. All I’d known for a long, long time.

“I care about you, Finn. You mean everything to me. I wish you’d talk to someone.” His lips found my temple, and he brushed a soft kiss there, then, he leaned out of the hug to press another to my lips. “I’ll text you after work.”

“Okay.” My voice was small and thick with guilt. I knew my actions weren’t healthy, and I knew his concern was real.

 

* * *

 

I needed to draw on every ounce of training I’d ever had to handle the distraught man sitting in my office. He looked to be around my own age, but the weariness on his face and his bloodshot, swollen eyes had tacked on easily twenty years.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized for the umpteenth time as he pulled another tissue from the box on my desk and blotted the endless stream of tears running down his face. “I just can’t believe I’m sitting here right now.”

“It’s all right, Mr. Kennedy, I don’t expect you to hold yourself together. You’ve just had an extreme tragedy in your life, and I’m terribly sorry about your wife.”

He choked and buried his face in his palms as a new wave of grief hit him. Too many times people sat in my office and poured their grieving hearts out. It was expected in my line of work, and my father had taught me at a young age how best to handle the grieving soul. Listen, he would tell me, most people just need to be heard. They need permission to feel sad.

“She was only thirty-one years old. Thirty-one.” He sobbed and blew his nose. “I didn’t know when I kissed her goodnight that I was kissing her goodbye. She…” He dragged his fingers through his hair without a care that it made pieces stick up all amuck. “She… She just went to sleep and never woke up. Oh, God.” The pain hit him fresh, and he folded his body in half, spilling his broken heart into his lap.

I swallowed a hard lump and did what I could to remain composed as goosebumps rose the hairs on my arms under my shirt. His words seeped poison through my veins, and my heart jolted and slammed against my ribs hard enough I physically felt my blood pumping through my entire body.

As he was distracted by his grief, I focused more readily on keeping my breathing as even as possible. I dealt with death day in and day out, yet those few simple words had triggered my anxiety to spike, and the last thing I wanted was to sink into a panic attack with that man in my office.

I hadn’t read the file I’d received from the hospital, so I didn’t know the cause of death, but I pushed it as far away from my thoughts as possible, knowing the more I focused on it, the worse I would be. I prayed Mr. Kennedy didn’t feel the need to go into details. Some people did.

When he worked through his recent wave of grief, he lifted his swollen eyes and peered helplessly across the desk. The look of understanding I returned was one I’d learned from years of practice. Luckily, it came without thought and seemed to calm the man for the time being.

“I don’t know where to start or what to do.”

“That’s why I’m here. I’ll help you through this as painlessly as possible.”

Over the following hour, I guided the poor man through every step of the funeral arrangements and helped him decide what he thought his wife would have liked. By the time he was ready to depart, although he’d cried extensively, he thanked me profusely for the help I’d provided.

“Here’s my card. If there is anything else you require, feel free to give me a call,” I said as I walked him to the front doors.

“Thank you so much.”

He shook my hand with a weakened resolve, and I knew he was as exhausted as he looked. As bitter as the words were on my tongue, it was common practice to say, “Try to get some sleep, Mr. Kennedy. We will take care of everything.”

When he left, I leaned heavily against the wall as a steady tremble weakened my knees. At that point, I knew it was a combination of little sleep and nerves. It was almost noon, and my day had only just begun.

I closed my eyes and sucked in even breaths, knowing what my afternoon would consist of. Margret was coming in at two to help set up for a visitation, and I was delegated to my current job in the basement. Ordinarily, it was all in a day’s work. However, that particular job had my anxiety out of wack already.

Before I could tackle what lay ahead, I needed to clear the building haze that had been sneaking in. My feet weighed a hundred pounds, and my coordination was suffering. I considered running upstairs for food and to make a quick coffee, but knew I didn’t have the energy. So, I found the keys to my rental—since my car was still in the shop—and decided it was best I grab fast food and find a café where I could add a few espresso shots to a coffee.

A few blocks from the home, I pulled into a small café and ordered a steak and cheese panini and an extra-large coffee with a double shot. While I waited for my order, I pulled my phone out and saw Aven had messaged me earlier.

Hope your day is going all right. Can I make you dinner tonight?

I sighed. An offer of dinner usually meant he wanted me to go to his house, and I couldn’t cope all night in a place that wasn’t my own. There were no available crutches to help me deal with nighttime, and I often ended up breaking down and embarrassing myself.

Making me dinner was also his way of sneaking vegetables into my shitty diet—which I didn’t mind so long as I didn’t find them. Although his concern was sweet, at times, it got under my skin. Aven was really bothered by my nasty habits, but I also knew it was only because he cared. It made him feel better when I ate something that didn’t come in a fast food box.

“Order up.”

Speaking of which. I grabbed my food bag and coffee and shifted out of the way so I could message him back. I had yet to come out and say it plain that I didn’t want to sleep at his house, but I had the feeling he’d sorted that out by himself. Aven wasn’t exactly stupid. But because I had no balls to speak the truth, I consistently lied in my messages.

I have to do laundry tonight. Why not bring the ingredients over and we can cook together?

I rolled my eyes as I hit send. Aven knew I couldn’t cook to save my life. He also knew I didn’t much care to learn. Because I didn’t expect a reply, I shoved my phone in my pocket and headed back to the home.

 

* * *

 

My heart beat double time as I paced my steps down the long corridor toward the room at the end. A spidery, crawling sensation slithered over my skin uncomfortably. My mouth was dry, and my tongue felt so thick, it choked me and gave the sensation that my throat was closing off.

I stopped outside the room and closed my eyes, taking a few deep breaths before entering. It was stark and clinical as always. The stainless-steel doors on the refrigeration unit taunted me as I sorted out my equipment on the counter at the opposite end of the room.

It was stupid. It was a simple embalming. I’d done it hundreds of times over the years. Maybe thousands. It wasn’t like I kept track. Except, everything was suddenly different.

She just went to sleep and never woke up.

My pulse throbbed in my ears as I turned to the empty steel table waiting for me to proceed. Except, my feet locked and refused to move to the unit where the young woman’s body waited. Breaking my attention away from the cold metal doors across the room, I glanced at the file sitting at the edge of the counter and tried unsuccessfully to swallow the lump from my throat.

I really didn’t need to read it all. So long as the legal paperwork had been sent from the hospital, the rest was not necessary. And I knew those papers were all accounted for. Yet, I couldn’t seem to ignore the building urge to look and find out why. Why had that woman died in her sleep?

Like a train wreck or terrorist attack you might see on the news and felt compelled to watch by some sick force of nature, I couldn’t not look at those papers.

She was only thirty-one years old.

I was thirty-one years old!

With a ragged breath, I reached out and pulled the folder closer. The sound of it sliding across the counter was too loud in the quiet room and sprang shivers across my nape. Wetting my dry lips, I took the brown folder in shaky fingers and opened it.

I skimmed the documents, searching and needing to know, but refusing to read it thoroughly because I also didn’t want to know, so I hoped minimal exposure might somehow help dampen the blow. 

It didn’t.

Name: Emily Diane Kennedy. Age: thirty-one. COD…

I squinted and scanned the coroner’s report. A slew of medical mumble jumble the average Joe may not understand. Of course, I spoke that language all too well.

Brain aneurysm.

I slammed the folder and closed my eyes tight as though it might prevent the full impact of what I’d learned somehow. Retreating from the folder, my back hit the concrete wall, foiling my unconscious attempt at escaping.

The roar of blood pounding in my ears was too loud, and the air I took in became hot and wasn’t satiating my starving lungs near enough.

The world started to spin.

Faster and faster.

Shit, shit, shit. No!

I forced my eyes open so I could get my footing, focusing intently on slowing my breathing instead of rapidly inhaling gulps of air. With effort, I tried to keep present and not allow myself to get sucked into the grips of a panic attack.

The force of each breath bordered on hyperventilating, and I knew it. Slower, I had to take each breath slower. One… two… one… two…

My eyes wandered the room as I counted each breath and worked to root myself in sanity. The white-tiled floor, scuffed from years of things being dragged across its surface. The symmetrical alignment of the square doors on the refrigeration unit, reflecting the light from the hanging fixture overhead. The steel shelving, filled with all the necessary equipment I used day in and day out. It was completely utilitarian and drab, but why would I require anything fancier in the basement where no one but myself and Margret ventured?

Then, shoved into the corner of the room, an age-worn wooden stool. Ordinarily, that small extra piece of furniture sat inconspicuously off to the side. Unnoticed. Over the years, it had been painted and repainted. The stool seemed to reject all efforts to be made beautiful. The newer paint had peeled back and exposed the old. It was currently white, but bits of green and yellow showed through from years past. When I was eight, the stool had been painted brown.

He dropped me on the hard, wooden stool, and my bum connected painfully. It was too high for me to climb up there on my own; my feet didn’t touch the floor, so I always needed help. I hated this room. It was cold and scary, but I wasn’t allowed to say that.

“Come on. Sit down and pay attention, son.”

The room seemed to shift and change, and the blond-haired little boy came into view as though I was watching a film of years gone by. The stool was in front of the table, a woman lay on top, naked, her skin the color of death. My surroundings were different, yet eerily the same. Older, or rather, dated. The equipment. The shelving. The countertop. The refrigeration unit. And my father sat on the opposite side on his own stool, his features fixed into that “teaching” face he always had when he brought me into the scary room.

When he spoke again, I saw him through different eyes, and realized, I was the one perched on the stool. I was the frightened blond boy.

“Don’t look at me, look at her, Finnley. If you don’t watch, you won’t learn. And put those tears away. This is going to be your job too someday, and there isn’t room for tears. Everyone dies.”

I sat up straighter and blinked hard to stop them the best I could. “Like mommy?” I asked.

“That’s right. And you don’t need to be afraid. Death is just like sleeping. Except it’s a big, big sleep and lasts a long, long time. Do you understand?”

I nodded because I felt the tears leaking out even though daddy said they weren’t allowed. I didn’t want mommy to be sleeping anymore. Why didn’t she wake up? Wasn’t it long enough now?

“Finnley! Finnley!” The room faded and became hazy as someone slapped my face, yelling my name.

I gasped and flailed in a panic, not understanding where I was or what was going on. My cheeks were wet with tears. More streamed down to join them and dripped from my chin. I was sitting in a heap on the floor, my lungs burning and starved for oxygen. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t fucking breathe.

Margret’s face was a picture of distress as she slapped my cheeks and yelled my name, but I couldn’t find words or an explanation. Not with my world blackening at the edges and my throat closing completely. Fierce vibrations racked my body and sweat dripped down my temples as the raw panic consumed me. Oh, God, it was the worse one yet. I needed... I needed to breathe. Gasping, nothing happened.

Someone help me. Help me!

Counting was beyond comprehension. The world faded as a deep vacuum stole every ounce of nourishment from the air. All I could do was plead with my eyes, but the woman staring back at me looked equally terrified. No one could help me. I was alone and drowning.