IN TOO DEEP || Liam Dunbar [3]

BONUS CHAPTER: remembering Katherine

A/N: totally forgot I write this so have this little bub.
basically, this is in reference to Liam saying he lost it after Katherine disappeared.

The window of his bedroom was open a crack, allowing the cool evening breeze to filter past the drawn curtains and send prickles across his skin. Liam sat at the foot of his bed with his elbows on his knees, staring out at the swaying green branches beyond the confines of his house.

For weeks, he had been feeling off.

Randomly, for what seemed to be caused by no specific reason at all, he was having panic attacks. His heart would try to race all the way out of his chest, he wouldn't be able to catch his breath, and it was as if his mind was swimming in panic caused by the absence of this thing that he couldn't figure out.

The anxiety eventually led to loss of sleep, and he knew that Hayden and the others had all picked up on it. But he was grateful that no one had asked him about it because truthfully, he didn't know what his problem was.

All he knew was that as on the night he'd gone for a walk with Hayden on the lacrosse field, his life had done a complete 180° turn for reasons that had nothing to do with her. Yet it had everything to do with the source of his anxiety.

Without meaning to, he grabbed his phone and dialed a number that he knew like it had been tattooed on the backs of his eyelids at birth and held it up to his ear.

"The number you have reached in no longer in service; please try again later or dial again."

Liam froze and pulled it away from his ear, confused.

Carefully, he dialed it again because he could've sworn that it would've been something that held enough meaning to make him feel better, but after just one ring his heart broke.

"The number you have reached in no longer in service; please try again later or dial again."

Raking a trembling hand through his hair, Liam stared down at the phone and blinked rapidly, feeling tears flood his eyes. H squeezed them shut as he felt his chest tighten, and could barely register sliding into an old pair of shoes and stumbling across the room to the window.

He was outside on the grassy side lawn of his house before he knew it.

The air was still cold, which was a much appreciated distraction from his racing thoughts, and it took everything in him to keep from doubling over and throwing up right here. It was moments like this when, thinking about what she'd gone through, he wondered how...

How what?

How who?

Who was he thinking about?

He picked up the pace he was moving at and the next thing he knew, he was sprinting off into the woods. Sure, his chest was heaving in his body's desperate attempt to get some air in properly but he paid it no mind. If he could blame the tightness in his chest on running, then maybe he could talk himself out of a panic attack.

Ignoring the cold dampness on his cheeks that was left behind by the tears falling from his eyes, Liam sprinted as fast as he could for fuck-only-knows-how-long until his body forced him to stop. But when he did, it only made him feel worse.

He could've sworn he'd been there before, in that tiny little clearing where the moonlight was just barely visible through the tree branches. But he couldn't remember why. It took him a moment to realize he was standing in a place he'd been just the year earlier.

In front of him was an old, beaten-to-shit well that was all too familiar to him.

Liam could remember floating there for what felt like days, poisonous wolfsbane leeching into the wound in his abdomen where Garrett had stabbed him during the days of the Deadpool. He could remember feeling so frustrated, so unbelievably terrified for himself and another person that he'd broken his hand punching the stone wall.