Free Breathe With Me (The Breathe Series Book 3) by Wendy L. Wilson

expected…paralyzing me. My tongue knots in my mouth and my throat closes in as a soft touch runs over my hip. Breathe, breathe.
    I suck in…
    and in…
    and in…
    and in again and again, not ever feeling oxygen reach my airways. Breathe, breathe echoes in my mind as if someone is saying those very words to me.
    “Piper…Piper…”
     

     
    “Piper…” Trent says in the darkness.
    A smile creeps over my face as I hear him walk across the living room. I turn my head slightly in the direction of his cot which is slid over to the corner of the living room. The lumpy hide-away mattress shifts with his weight and a sudden draft moves over my body as if the covers have been lifted.
    “You awake?”
    My smile drops and I nod slowly as if he can see me. Why is he getting into my bed? Mom and Dad crashed hours ago to the back room. Trent and I shut off the TV a few hours later and went to bed, but as I flicked off the living room lamp he looked perfectly tucked into his sleeping quarters. Maybe he had a dream?
    “Hey…” he softly says, placing a hand under the covers along my hip.
    I tense up and take in a huge gulp of air, baffled and suddenly scared. His hand drops and the mattress shifts, instantly allowing me to let out the breath I was holding and relax my whole body. I move my head to the side, not enough for him to notice, I hope, but curious at the muffled sound that I now hear only inches away; a tearing like paper being ripped. I stop any movement, clueless but still knowing he is beside me. A strong plastic-sort-of-smell reaches my nostrils and I’m even more baffled. Why is he in my bed? Something about it all doesn’t seem appropriate, making my insides flip and spin in panic.
    The mattress moves beneath me, jostling about until his hand lands gently along my hip again with his body pressed against my back. He pushes his stomach and chest against me harder, aligning himself with me and I freeze, noticing things I shouldn’t. My chest pulses in and out with each breath as I fear what is happening. Do I get up and run? Do I scream? Do I ask him what he’s doing?
    “Hey…you awake?” he says in his soft sweet voice that he usually uses when he talks to me as if I am just a kid and so much younger than him, when I’m only three years beneath him in school.
    “I’m sleeping.” I squeak out, my entire body reeled so tight in terror.
    His hand moves slowly from my barely developed hips to my legs and forward. I squeeze my eyes shut; not understanding, yet somewhat comprehending what is going on. My eyes seal closed so tight that I fear the tears welling up may have nowhere to go, but they fall anyway, seeping through somehow one after another as pain slices through me and makes me gasp.
    “Shhhh…it’s ok. I won’t hurt you, I promise,” he whispers against my ear through thick, hot breaths that make the skin on my neck clammy and dirty.
    My mind fogs over at his words. You are hurting me. Stop, please stop, but the words are lodged in my mouth, on the tip of my tongue and ready to jump off, but they won’t budge.
    Stop, please stop. My head is on a constant repeat, but all vocabulary I have learned in the past nearly thirteen years of my life are lost. My shoulders shudder and my chest heaves in and out and a strangled cry reaches my ear from under the pillow as I am jostled around. My hands ball into fists and although I want to use them to slap him away and stop him, I’m scared; I don’t know what to do. The fabric drifts away from my face and his head falls against my shoulder. I remain still; so still with all movement from him completely ceased and the unbearable odor of rubber still lingering in the air.
    “I’m so sorry,” his words pierce my eardrums, but I still cannot move, think, feel or comprehend why this happened to me; why he would do this. “I’m so so sorry,” he breathes through a muffled sob. “I shouldn’t have done that…it’s just, I thought that’s what…”