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“I –” My mouth snapped shut because Riley…was right. She knew me so well. I’d always been competitive by nature.
I made an aggravated sound at the back of my throat before admitting the truth. “Okay, fine. I’m pissed he had a better analysis, and I’m annoyed he called me out like that. And, he called it constructive criticism. Maddox can shove it up his ass. He was trying to embarrass me.”
“We’ve established that. You’re on his shit list, but you’re letting him get to you, babe.”
I chewed aggressively around my last bite. “I’m not.”
Riley was right, though.
Maddox Coulter, with his pretty smirk, pretty eyes and surfer hair, was having the time of his life messing with me, and I was letting him.
I clenched my fists on my lap. Not anymore.
CHAPTER FOUR
Lila
First, I heard my mom scream.
Then, there was silence. It happened within a nanosecond.
The world tilted suddenly, my vision blurring, before everything went black. I sunk into a very dark place. For the longest time, I stayed there… awake… fading… heart beating… numb… lost…
The silence slowly faded away, a buzzing noise replaced it, filling my ears. It felt like the only thing inside my head was static.
My throat was dry, scratched raw from the inside, and I couldn’t make a sound.
Mommy? Daddy?
I couldn’t see anything. Everything was so dark… so empty…
I remembered the sound of crushing glass, mixed with the distinct cracking of bones breaking. I remembered my mom screaming, and my dad… I remembered…
Pain came next.
My bones and fragile organs felt like they were being crumbled and smashed into a tiny, suffocating box. I couldn’t breathe. It hurt so much. My torso burned like acid was being poured on it. There was a knife dug, painfully, into my chest… no, not a knife… I didn’t know… but it hurt. It felt like a knife or a hammer being pounded into my chest.
I blinked… forcing myself to breathe. I couldn’t. My lungs contracted with such force that I was afraid they would fold into themselves. When I coughed, agony strummed through my body, and my cracked lips parted with a silent scream.
Mom… Dad…
I couldn’t speak. The buzzing noise wouldn’t stop in my ears.
The taste of coppery blood pooled in my mouth; it tasted bitter, and I could feel it soaking my tongue and the inside of my mouth. Blood…?
No…
How…
What…
I remember…
The fight…snow outside… in the car… mom… dad… me…
I remember the screams…
My bones felt like they had been mangled together, and my chest, it was being carved open. I lifted my head up a bit and looked down at my chest to see… blood. Everywhere. So much blood.
I sucked in cramped air and tried to scream, tried to breathe, but my lungs refused to work.
No. No. No. Please. No. Oh God, no.
MOM, I wanted to scream. DADDY.
The pain never ended. The darkness never faded away.
I woke up with a gasp, my mouth open in a silent scream. Drenched in a cold sweat with my heart beating way too fast, I tried to suck in desperate breaths.
Ten. Inhale. Nine. Exhale. Eight. Inhale
I didn’t die. I wasn’t dead.
Seven. Exhale. Six. Inhale. Five. Exhale.
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!”
I grabbed my bag and strode out of my room. Sven Wilson, ex-military man and now a retired veteran, my dearest grandpa sat at the breakfast table. With a newspaper in his hand and Grandma Molly making us pancakes, it was a typical morning.
