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

as it crinkles with my glare.
    “A while ago,” he elaborates as if he can read my thoughts. “You were breathing so heavy and fast and then you just stopped. I thought you were dead. I thought maybe I…”
    His hand pulls back up in a stretch to reach for me. I cock my head back and my eyebrows dart up as my eyes widen.
    “Don’t touch me,” I hiss out before I can think.
    He gasps. “I’m sorry. Please,” his words come out in a raspy plea. “I just thought that maybe,” he pauses, looking down in shame.
    He should be ashamed. Venom courses through me and it’s the first time in my life that I’ve felt such a foreign emotion; something so cold and vicious, but it surrounds me, it sinks through my skin and rushes through my veins, filling my heart and mind with one thought. I hate him.
    “I thought that maybe it would feel different…” he looks back up at me and my heart stops. The last thing I want to feel is the pain that is in his voice. “I thought with you, it might feel…”
    I suck in a startled breath and spin around, not wanting to listen; sickened by what he wants to feel or hoped to feel. Flying to the door, I don’t wait, I don’t even grab for my shorts; I just run, grabbing the ties that brush across my leg into my hand so that my suit doesn’t fall to my ankles.
    My hand falls on the door knob and I tug at it before looking back. I stumble forward when I’m met with zero give and quickly see the deadbolt that Dad installed last summer is twisted sideways; locked. My fingers fumble clumsily as if I am trying to escape from a crazed serial killer; escape is absolute. I snap it to the side and fling the door open with such force that it thuds against the wall. I don’t even care if Mom and Dad wake up, as long as I am gone.
    “Piper, wait,” Trent whispers as the mattress creaks behind me. “Piper…”
    I run out the door, my feet shaky and unstable, my mind a wreck of images and sounds that I cannot shove aside and my body still crawls with the heat of his breaths on my neck and the touch of his hand on my hip.
    I want to forget that it ever happened.
    Forget how it felt; erase every dirty detail of this night.
    Just forget it all.

 
    ONCE BACK INSIDE MY COZY little hideaway, I drag myself towards my bed with a shiver. My eyes skim over my thick comforter before settling on the small metal radiator between the bed and table. Running my hand a few inches above it, I let out a frustrated breath and drop my hand onto the smooth surface. Great. It’s warm, but no doubt it is going out. Squatting down onto the balls of my feet, I turn the heating knob just a couple of notches to high and hope that it starts cranking out some heat soon. I hate being cold. I may not complain about much, but I am a pansy when it comes to cold weather.
    Clasping the fabric of my shirt at the back of my neck, I pull it off in one swift motion and quickly grab the sweatshirt that’s wadded up at the bottom of my bed. After pulling on an old pair of gym pants, I slide under the warmth of my blankets and settle in for the night with the springs in my worn out mattress digging into my back. I’m due for a new one, but this bed holds way too many memories; carefree, adolescent fun along with more intimate moments when I got older.
    Reaching behind my head, my stomach tightens as I lift my upper body until I find the only thing I have left from all those memories. I pull out a picture of Piper that I’ve held onto since the second she gave it to me back in the ninth grade. At the time, it seemed like such a small deed, exchanging pictures, but now as I look back, I remember the huge smile she had on her face as she handed it over. I can still see the nervousness in her eyes as I grabbed it and then handed back one of me. Her skipping away with my picture in her hand should have told me right then how much that little gesture did and how she felt about me. Nonetheless, her picture went up beside my bed that