Sophia
“Who killed her?”
I couldn’t stop shaking.
My hands clutched at Erick’s shirt as if letting go would mean being pulled back into that nightmare, into that blood-soaked street where the woman and the little girl had been torn from me.
My chest rose and fell erratically, each sob cutting deeper than the last.
Erick’s arms held me fast, his warmth trying to anchor me, his voice low and soothing against my ear.
“Shh… Sophia, I’m here. It’s just a dream.”
But it didn’t feel like just a dream. It had been too vivid, too real.
The way the woman’s hands had moved, the way the girl had smiled, the scream when the car hit…those weren’t figments of a sleeping mind.
They were memories, fragments of something buried deep in me.
Erick pulled back slightly, cupping my face in his palm
