Home > All Maxed Out

All Maxed Out
Author: Brandi Evans


Chapter 1

 

 

Today was the day.

I was doing it.

I was going back to work.

So why the hell wasn't I moving?

I stood fully dressed in the middle of Max's living room and stared at the hallway leading to the garage—stared being the operative word. Fear froze me to the spot. No, fuck frozen; I was paralyzed.

Since my attack at the hands of a madman two months earlier, the world outside the safety of these walls had slowly become my enemy. Actually, enemy wasn't the right word, but I couldn't think of a better one. My therapist called my reaction PTSD, but I called it losing control of my life. For the second time in my almost thirty-four years, my world was crumbling around me, and like last time, I was powerless to stop it.

Except, I had to stop it. I wasn't a helpless child this go-around. I was a grown-ass woman. I could do this. I would do this.

I just wish I knew how.

I closed my eyes and immediately regretted it. He always skulked in the darkness. Théo Roux—my attacker—waited, watched, readied to kill me again, and I was terrified he'd succeed, afraid that I wouldn't be able to fight him off this time, that the blade which had pierced my kidney would find its way to my heart.

From behind, Max wrapped his arms around my middle, and I flinched. I hated the automatic reaction. In that split second before realization and reality could pull me back, a fucking autonomic response had its claws in me. Fear had me strung so tightly that, when I wasn't actively expecting it, a single touch could send a spike of terror shooting through me—even if the touch came from the man I loved more than life itself.

But as I'd asked him, Max didn't let my reaction stop him. Pulling me possessively and protectively against him, he nuzzled his nose against the side of my neck. "Nothing says you have to do this today, my sweet." What I'd termed his Americanized British accent weaved through his words. "Wait another week or two. Wait however many weeks you need. Forcing yourself back to work faster than you're physically and emotionally ready will only make the anxiety worse."

He was right. Deep down, I knew that. Nothing was forcing me out the door today except my sheer will to not let Théo beat me; it was also a fact that had been true yesterday—and the day before that. Every morning for a week, I'd found myself right here, facing the hallway leading to the garage and trying like hell to muster the courage to walk out of here with my head held high, to get back to my old life, to go to work, to perform the job I loved. To start living as if I hadn't been brutally attacked by a maniac who was still at large.

Fuck.

I turned, banded my arms around Max's middle and held on to the man who'd been my rock. He'd sat by my side while I'd recovered. During my convalescence, he'd helmed much of his global business empire from within these walls, only leaving when he had no other option. He'd held me at night when the nightmares came, and they always came, images bathed in death, blood and Théo Roux.

"I have to do this, Max. I have to. I can't let him win. I have to find a way to get back to my life."

He pulled back and, finger to my chin, tilted my face toward him. "This isn't a battle, my sweet; you've already won. You survived. You beat him. You're free, and he's in hiding. His assets are frozen, and he's being hunted by every law enforcement agency on the planet."

Not to mention the private army Max had hired to hunt him down.

"Which makes him that much more dangerous, don't you think?" I challenged. "He killed Giselle in cold blood. She was nothing more than a pawn in his sick little chess game. I don't even want to think about what he's capable of now that he's been backed into a—"

"Shh." He silenced me with a quick kiss. "Théo Roux will never hurt you again. I won't let him."

And here, within these walls, I believed that. Max had made sure of it. He'd upgraded the house's security system. He'd hired scores of security personnel to parole the perimeter. He'd turned his home into a fortress to keep me safe, but somewhere along the way, these locked doors had begun to feel like a prison.

"You'll get through this, Bree," he assured me. "We'll get through it. Just give it time, my sweet. Dr. Marcus said being scared was normal after what you'd been through."

Dr. Marcus was my therapist; I'd begun seeing her after the nightmares had started. I liked her. She was smart and understanding. Like Max, she had more faith in my ability to pull through this than I did.

"Scared? I'm not scared, Max. I'm fucking terrified. All the damn time. Every time I think about leaving your house—"

"Our house," he corrected.

"Our house," I reluctantly agreed, still not used to the idea.

Before my attack, Max had asked me to move in with him, but I'd said no. I'd told him we shouldn't rush things, that we needed to do things right this time, but then, as I'd been muddling through my recovery, he'd asked again, and I'd said yes. Before I could take it back, Max had sent someone to clean out my apartment, so for better or worse, we were living together. I still wasn't sure how I felt about it.

I loved Max more than anything, and I wanted to live with him. Hell, I wanted to marry him, but all the reasons I'd given him for saying no before still stood. We were skipping steps. We were still wading through past secrets, him more than me. He had a lifetime's worth of pain hidden away, and although he'd slowly begun sharing that pain with me, we had a long way to go—and that was all before we factored in overcoming the aftermath of my attack. Intellectually, I knew we were moving too fast, but when the nightmares had started, the panic attacks had followed shortly after.

Fighting the fear had become my most pressing problem; I'd started pushing other things aside so I could tackle the "big issues.” At least, that was what I kept telling myself, but I couldn't help but feel as if we were making the same mistakes all over again, only the aesthetics had changed.

"Whenever I think about going out there," I said, gesturing toward the hallways, "being at the store where anybody could walk in, I'm petrified. I keep picturing Théo with a knife and—"

I cut myself off, willing the image to retreat back into the box in my head where I tried to keep it locked away, but it was too late. I'd already triggered a panic attack.

"Fuck, I can't—"

Breathe.

But I couldn't get the last word out.

The world teetered, and a searing heat spread to all points in my body. I tugged at a non-existent neckline, my chest tightening. I felt as if I'd been hooked to a low-voltage car battery. The hum of the electricity coursed through me. I couldn't stop it. My lungs burned, and my heart hammered unrelentingly against my sternum. The world spun faster and faster around me until I was on the verge of passing out.

"Breathe," Max crooned, drawing me back against him. "Just breathe, my sweet. You've got this, and I've got you. Just breathe…"

I closed my eyes and, quickly, before pictures of Théo assaulted me, imagined a closet door in my mind. Dr. Marcus had instructed me to store overwhelming memories in the closet until I had time to deal with them, so I did just that. Using precise imagery, I opened the closet door and removed an empty box. I plucked out one of the dark images swirling around me and placed it in the box. I repeated the process until nothing but a calm void, the sound of my heartbeat, and Max's gentle words surrounded me. Only then, did I lock the lid on the box and return it to the closet.

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