Five minutes after Jason left the library, I fell apart. I leaned against the door, my heart pounding in my chest like a wild beast, yearning for release. It felt as if I was drowning, as if the waves of despair were pulling me under, washing away the last shreds of my sanity.
The whole world came crumbling down around me until there was nothing and no one left but this empty ugliness.
What the hell was I thinking? I never should have allowed him to kiss me like that. I was not ready.
That kiss was a promise, an unspoken agreement of something more, something I feared I couldn't give. Not now, not while my heart still wore the shackles of a horrifying past.
Hundreds of images of Steven and what I endured for the better part of the year we were together haunted me, each worst than the
