The Expansion of the Universe

Twenty-Two | "Is anyone there?"

Liza fiddled nervously with her sweater only three hours after her meeting with her therapist, desperate to pull her attention from everything she and Whitney had discussed. She also didn't want to take notice of how rapid her pulse was, or the way her arms and hands were still trembling.

Progress, she had made. Unfortunately, she could feel her sanity slipping the more the silence allowed her to recall Mitchell's leers and his father's screams of anger through her door.

"What do I do?" She asked the condo and Milo, receiving no answer from either one. "I don't know what to do." Not that such a thing was uncommon. Since the accident, it felt as though she was lucky if she ever knew what to do.

Elijah would know, though.

The thought was fleeting, but she grasped onto it swiftly.

It was true, after all. Even if the man didn't really know, he would at least be able to offer her comfort. She'd seen as much after the incident with Carson Pierce—she shuddered at the name and the memories it held with it—had first occurred.

God, she really wanted to hug him.

Recalling what he'd made her promise before he left, she forced her unsteady hands to cooperate long enough to dig through the side table and find the scrap of paper he'd left her, clutching onto it tightly once she'd recovered it.

It took four tries before she typed the number in correctly—damn, quivering fingers—on her laptop, but she forced herself to hit the green call button as soon as she knew it was correct. God knew even a moment of hesitation would have her anxiety crashing through the roof.

The FaceTime software began to ring, letting her know it was trying to connect, and she waited, biting on her thumbnail.

It rang again. Again. Again. A fourth and fifth time, and then it became silent, flashing the words, Not Available.

Well. Shit.

Her shaking spread, until her entire body was nearly quaking with the desire to find some form of peace.

But what the hell could she do if Elijah didn't answer? She didn't want to call Whitney back. She wanted to talk to Elijah, even if only to leave a message begging that he call her back as soon as possible. There was too much adrenaline for her to take a nap in an effort to calm down, and God knew she couldn't handle taking Milo for a walk.

Maybe she needed to try the breathing exercises again.

Yeah. As if those would work.

She set her computer aside with a frustrated breath, hating that she couldn't leave him a message through the FaceTime app. Maybe she could send a text? No, her fingers were shaking too badly, and she had no idea how to put her thoughts into words.

Oh; she could always call him.

Wait.

Wait.

Call? Could she? Could she do that without panicking? Without spiraling into another attack?

There was only one way to discover the answer to those questions, of course.

So, doing something she hadn't done since the accident, she pulled out her phone from where it had been sitting in one of the side tables beside the couch, turned it on, and began to type a number into the keypad.

Elijah's number.

Hitting the call button, she held it to her ear and waited. She wasn't expecting him to answer, obviously, but at least she could leave him a message instead of just typing things into a text or waiting until he'd returne—