HEAT |OMEGAVERSE| ⚣ ✔️

Sanctuary in Each Other

JASPER'S POV

Though it came out during a bit of a breakdown, I finally told Alex how I feel. I do hold a slight amount of guilt, honestly—just unloading everything while in tears. But it took weeks of being on edge, nightmares, paranoia about leaving this damn apartment, and probably pacing it two thousand times to get to that point.

At first, I thought I could handle it. I thought maybe I just needed to keep to myself safe, stay inside, and it wouldn't be any big deal. Hell there were times in my old apartment I'd use my PTO just to bed rot.

But then I realized something. For the first time in my life, I have people who care about me—and I can't enjoy any of it because some asshole is watching me, lurking over me like the Grim Reaper.

I kept telling myself, "I'm fine." Over and over. But I'm not.

It really hit me when I opened that damn app on my phone, the one where it compares your baby to fruit, and read the line: five weeks left.

It felt less like a blessing and more like a countdown. Five weeks to figure out who the hell has been watching me before I start putting another life at risk. We have been so wrapped up in this that neither Alex and I are remotely close to being ready either. I was made painfully aware of that when I realized we have bought nothing for this child.

I tried to ignore my body telling me I wasn't okay, that the nightmares were just random. But then I remembered they didn't come out of nowhere—that this whole time, I've been burying this deep-rooted fear since I saw that silver car outside my apartment.

It's the same fear that I felt every day going home to my parents' house for eighteen years. That uncertainty of whether I'd make it through the night without something happening. The constant masking of my emotions as soon as I was around people, I'm repeating that process again.

Yesterday, I tried to unpack my things, to feel happy about officially moving in with Alex. But I couldn't—not with everything that's been pushed to the back burner of my already burnt-out mind.

I even tried to focus on him, his feelings, and made a nice dinner for us. One that I could barely get a bite or two out of before my stomach turned sour.

I thought I felt happy when Alex came home, I really did...I missed him all damn day and every single day that he was at work. But when he wrapped his arms around me initially I felt it again, my emotions going straight into the void. And I was forced to wear my mask of happiness until it slowly chipped itself away throughout dinner.

The relief I felt when Alex asked me if I was alright made my mental asylum of a brain start to go wild. I wanted to say seventy different things to him at once, but my fucking lips just said, "I'm okay."

I honestly wanted to rip the hair on my head right out, but I was so overwhelmed that somebody had asked me that I couldn't even begin to know where to start.

Luckily for me, Alex has been to the pits of hell and back himself, and knew something was wrong. So gently he wedged a metaphorical crow bar into my mind, and helped me spit out what I was feeling.

It started simple, and that's how I needed to start...short and sweet, but then word after word continued until Alex calmed me down. With his gentleness and his kind words, and the warmth of his touch he kept me from going right into a panic attack.

And then I found myself whispering something I had only ever briefly thought to myself, never out loud.

I asked him to leave with me, for us to go somewhere...to anywhere but here.

At the time I immediately felt like a damn fool, asking him to leave behind a million dollar company and move me into a house with him somewhere.

But I just found myself more surprised than with my own words, he agreed.