DARE-TO-LOVE-TRUTH-AND-DARE-DUET-COLLECTION-by-Lylah-James-pdfarchive

It was only a dream, I told myself.
Four. Inhale. Three. Breathe. Two. Exhale.
My chest hurt; the pain was almost crippling.
One. Breathe, damn it.
Hot tears stung my eyes as I held them back from
spilling over my cheeks. I rubbed my chest, trying to
alleviate the hammering ache. A whimper escaped past my
chapped lips, and I choked back a sob.
Don’t cry. Don’t you dare cry.
I breathed through my nose, the fear slowly receding
back, and I locked a cage around it. The pain and the taste
of coppery blood faded away, and my senses came back to
me.
Just a dream, I told myself.
Except…
My eyes closed, and I sniffed back my unshed tears. I
did as my therapist had trained me to do--count backward
from ten and breathe. So, I did, and while doing so, I locked
the memories away.
Once my racing heart calmed to a soothing beat again, I
got off the bed and started my morning routine.
While combing my hair, my eyes fell on the picture
frame on my nightstand. A picture of me on my thirteenth
birthday. I stood in the middle with my parents on either
side of me. We were laughing; our faces smudged with cake
icing.
My lips twitched at the memory, a phantom of a smile as
I reminisced our time together.
I laid the hairbrush down beside the small frame. My
fingers slid over the picture, caressing their faces. “I miss
you,” I whispered to them. “But I’m okay. I promise you. I’m
okay.”
They kept smiling back at me.
“Lila!” My grandma’s voice broke through the moment.
“Breakfast is ready.”
“Coming!”