Sea Haven 01 - Water Bound

and she felt as if she was made of lead and could barely move. She couldn’t have produced a sound even if she’d tried. She could feel each individual muscle, hear the blood flowing in her veins and pounding in her head. She hated those sensations, the overload that made no sense. It had taken years before she realized everyone else didn’t have the same responses to stimuli in the environment around them.
    Her body felt as though it might break apart on her if she stayed one more moment.
    She picked up the bags and hurried out, cursing under her breath. The man better eat these things slowly because she wasn’t ever putting herself through that again. Feeling sick and disoriented, she hurried to her truck and drove the few blocks to the headlands where she could park and get out and walk around on the bluffs overlooking the pounding sea. She got two feet from the truck and was sick, her stomach protesting the vicious stabbing in her skull.
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    Rikki stumbled down the narrow path through the heather to reach the edge where she could stand with the ocean stretching out in front of her like a cool blanket of gray blue. Whitecaps broke along the rocks and spray hissed up the sides of the cliffs. Gulls screamed and far out she saw a whale breech.
    The wild chaos in her mind and body began to settle enough that her hands stopped trembling. She needed to be out on the water where she belonged. She didn’t belong on land, in public, anyplace where there were other people. She didn’t realize she was crying until her vision was completely blurred. She yanked off her dark glasses and rubbed angrily at her tears.
    Lev had to go. He couldn’t ruin her life. She couldn’t deal with someone in her house. She knew what she was like. There was no pretending she’d be all right. She had nearly lost it right there in Inez’s store. He just had to go. That was all there was to it.
    She drove home faster than she normally did, not allowing any other thought to get the upper hand in her mind. She just had to finish this before it cost her too dearly. She parked the truck and, catching up the groceries, rushed up her back porch to the kitchen door. Lev must have heard her coming because he was there before her, unlocking the door so she didn’t have to use the key.
    Rikki pushed past him, dumped the grocery bags on the table and whirled to face him. “You have to go. You do. Right now. You just can’t stay here and that’s all there is to it,” she blurted out.
    Lev frowned and stepped close to her. Before she could elude him, he removed her glasses and looked at her eyes. “You’ve been crying. Rikki, tell me what happened to upset you. Talk to me.”
    She shook her head, stepping back, and to her horror fresh tears spilled over. “No talking. I’m done talking. You can’t be here, that’s all.”
    He went to the door, closed and locked it before turning back to her, his expression unreadable. “Lyubimaya, you’re going to have to talk. I’m not leaving without finding out what happened to you.”
    She was trying not to sob, her emotions were out of control. She detested being out of control and it was his fault. Why couldn’t he see that?
    “You’ll touch my dishes and use the pans to cook with. I’ll have to go to the store again and I can’t. I just can’t.”
    “You don’t have to do anything, Rikki. Not for me. And if you don’t want me to use these dishes or the pots and pans, I can buy some others.
    Come on, lyubimaya, what really happened?”
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    There was no way to make him understand because she didn’t understand. She’d always thought her strangeness was due to her childhood, but others had suffered all kinds of trauma and they weren’t like her. They didn’t feel as if their entire body was going to come apart. Everyday noises didn’t make their minds so chaotic that they couldn’t think straight. They didn’t need order the way she needed it—just to breathe.
    His voice—gentle, almost caring, velvet soft—was her undoing. She turned and ran for the bedroom, slamming the door behind her and flinging herself on the bed. She reached under it to find her weighted blanket. Made of soft material, it had inner pockets of small pellets to provide the needed twelve to fifteen pounds for her body weight. She pulled it over her and jammed her hand in her mouth to try to stifle the weeping. She hadn’t cried in months, and now, with someone nearby, she had to go and lose it.
    After