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cold. Too cold to be standing outside engaging in painfully awkward chitchat with a man who had already seen me at my worst.
    “It’s because of my helping you before. I noticed that the instant I mentioned it, you clammed up. You’re embarrassed,” he surmised, and I wanted to roll my eyes.
    So I did.
    “Don’t be ridiculous,” I responded breezily, proud of how almost normal I sounded.
Almost
.
    “I’m sorry if I made you feel weird. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot. I just couldn’t believe it was you. I’ve been thinking about you since that day. Wondering if you were all right. I was worried about you but had no idea how to find you.”
    Beckett looked down at me with eyes that had gone suddenly serious.
    “You were?” I asked, my voice high-pitched. Why did I feel all fluttery inside at his admission? Why did my heartbeat pick up and my palms start to sweat?
    I took a tentative step forward, my feet moving of their own volition.
    Beckett nodded and then gave me a shy grin that had me feeling a strange sort of buzzing all the way down to my toes. What in the world was wrong with me?
    “I thought briefly about getting a police sketch artist to draw up a composite, but I figured that might be taking it a bit too far.” He chuckled. I chuckled. My stomach did a strange little flip-flop.
    Our gazes met and clung briefly and for the first time ever I didn’t want to look away. I licked my suddenly dry lips, and I didn’t miss the way Beckett’s eyes dropped to my mouth and stayed there. One second. Two seconds.
    Blue eyes turned molten and I was having a hard time breathing.
    Get it together, Corin!
    Three seconds. Four.
    Then he looked away.
    The belly flops turned into a full-blown stomach heaving that resembled nausea.
    “Yeah, that would have been a little stalkery,” I joked, trying to dispel the tension that seemed to envelop us both.
    “That’s what I thought too. Glad we’re on the same page with that one,” Beckett said and all was normal again. Whatever that meant.
    “I used to get them sometimes too. The panic attacks. After my cardiac arrest. They sucked,” he admitted.
    Why were we still talking about this?
    “I’m sorry to hear that,” I responded, not knowing what else to say.
    Beckett absentmindedly rubbed at the spot below his collar.
    “So, I’ll see you next week?” He posed the statement more as a question.
    I looked at him for a moment and nodded.
    Beckett smiled, his eyes lighting up. “Cool. See you then.”
    “See you,” I said with the wings of a thousand butterflies beating against my rib cage.
    Suffocating. Consuming.
    Exciting.
    Oh crap.

Chapter 3
    Corin
    “So not a good group then?” Adam asked, handing me a basket of fries, which I politely declined. I picked at my salad and shrugged.
    “I don’t know. It just might not be exactly what I’m looking for.”
    We sat perched on our designated stools behind the counter in Razzle Dazzle while a group of preschoolers and their helicopter mothers painted ceramic bunnies and chicks for Easter. They were a rowdy bunch, and my normal love of kids was being sorely tested with this group.
    Adam gave the kids a disinterested look before turning back to me. “Just find another group then,” he suggested, and I agreed that would be the easiest thing to do.
    Part of me thought I was overreacting. So what if the guy that had helped me during a mortifying panic attack happened to be a member? It wasn’t the first time I had endured horrifying and very public humiliation. What did it matter that he had seen me lose it? He wasn’t the only one, unfortunately.
    I had lived through embarrassments much worse than that.
    So what was my problem then?
    “Yeah, well, I’m going to give it one more week and if it still sucks, I’ll find a different group.” What I didn’t want to admit to Adam was that I wasn’t sure that the heart patients’ group was going to work out for entirely different reasons.
    Because, of