Page 24

The hissing of engines; a horn blaring non-stop, long and drawn out and never-ending; distant crying; someone whimpering.
I think the last one might be me, but I pass out before I can be sure.
When I come to, I wake to the chattering of people—panicking, trying to help, and a terrified voice that rises above the others, shouting for someone to come fast. “Please, hurry,” the voice says. “I—I don’t think they’re going to make it. The cars—it’s so bad. Please. Please, hurry!”
I think time might have sped up in the moments before the crash, everything happening so fast, but now it feels as if time has slowed down, crawling before ceasing to move at all.
My breaths are hard to take, hard to find, locked somewhere behind my lungs. My limbs are stuck—curled under me, or under the weight on top of me. I can’t feel them at all anymore. I can’t really remember anything now, but the sound of vehicles slamming into each other and becoming one in the middle of an intersection.
The weight on my chest intensifies, and I don’t know where my breaths are hiding anymore. I think they’ve fled from my body, feeding life into someone who isn’t me.
Maybe it’s because I’m scared, or maybe it’s because I’m in a state of shock, but I have the distant thought that I might be dying.
A slow, ragged breath seeps through my lips and into my lungs, defying the thought.
And then somewhere beyond that, a pain races up through my consciousness to meet me, lashing through my body in a flash that’s so painful it doesn’t feel real.
It’s the kind of pain, I think, in a jarring moment of clarity, that no one is meant to feel.
And then everything goes black once more.
______
I wake from my nightmare with a loud gasp, and that’s exactly where my breaths get stuck. Frozen in my inhale, until the emotional pain of reliving those buried memories crashes into me, splitting my heart in two and forcing my breath from my lungs with a loudwhoosh.
The agony of it knocks every ounce of air from my body, leaving tears stinging at the back of my eyes, my heart racing behind my ribcage and strangling me with its ache, making it impossible to breathe.
Five, four, three, two, one. Five, four, three, two, one,I repeat, but I can’t find the mental space to follow through with the steps. So I repeat them instead since it’s all I can do.Five things I can see. Four things I can feel. Three things I can hear. Two things I can smell. One thing I can taste.
Again. And again. And again.
I try, slowly, to drag myself back down and focus on the execution of the five steps, attempting to push the hauntingimages from my mind one by one, but the effort is useless. I’m too far gone, drowning in an ocean of images that keep crashing back into me.
A soft knock sounds at my door, and I let out a shuddering breath. Addy. Thank God.I desperately grasp onto the hope that she can help me.
But when the door cracks open, it isn’t Addy I see. It’s a pair of stormy gray eyes, dripping with concern.
“Hey,” Jude says. His voice is quiet and rough with sleep. His rumpled hair falls into his face, and he pushes it back with his hand. “You okay?” he asks with a frown. “I thought I heard—shit,I’m not sure what I heard, but it didn’t sound good.” He looks me over, raking his gaze over every inch of my skin.
I try to take a deep breath. Try to swallow back my emotions. But with the careful way he’s looking at me, his features pinched with worry and his eyes brimming with unwavering concern, my anguish floods forward beyond my control. Tears spill down my cheeks in rivulets and land in my lap, Quinn’s face still so fresh in my mind I can’t tell the difference between nightmare and reality anymore.
I choke back a sob as Jude strides forward, and my gaze stays glued to his feet as they pad across the wooden floor, stopping at the edge of my bed. He grasps my chin and lifts my gaze to his, and his entire body tenses with the realization that I’m crying. “Fuck, Declan. What’s going on? You want me to get someone? I can go get Addy. I can—”
I shake my head, focusing on my breaths. Focusing on pulling myself together enough to tell him it was just a nightmare, and that I’ll be okay. At least IthinkI’ll be okay.
“Just a nightmare,” I manage the three seemingly simple words.
Except, itwasn’tjust a nightmare. Because I lived through every moment of that pain five years ago, and I live throughit again and again when it haunts me in my dreams, buried memories twisting with the haunting images of my nightmares until I can no longer tell them apart.
It’s enough to leave me gasping for breath, losing control as Jude steps closer.
“Declan, look at me,” he says, his face inches from mine but a world away.
I stare up at him, into the torrent of his gaze. Rainclouds form in his eyes, brewing with intensity, and the chaos in them forces the chaos inside of me to falter.
It starts as a small pause, just a tiny blip of hesitation, before it truly begins to recede. It’s the slowest descent, but I can feel it happening, gently dragging me back down into reality. Back into my bedroom, with Jude standing so close I can feel his breaths.
I take a breath of my own, intentionally matching the rise and fall of his chest, feeding my lungs fully for the first time in too many minutes.