Never Bend

Chapter 24: Storm

*♦̮̑ɜܓ*‎
Note
Listen to this piece to get in the mood. Just press play on the image above.

I hope you will enjoy it!
Happy reading! 

╔═.✵.════════╗
Humans are supposed
to feel emotions.
We need to learn how to use them right without drowning in them.
MJ1
╚════════.✵.═╝

The air refuses to fill my lungs, a suffocating emptiness that makes every breath feel like an impossible task. Tom's voice, once so familiar, so grounding is dissolving into thin air. His touch is nothing but a ghost against my skin, distant, unreachable. The magic inside me is rising, uncontrollable, twisting, and in some sick, perverse way, I am the one forcing myself not to breathe.

My body, my very essence, is rebelling against me.

Flashes of memories break through, the younger version of me. That scared girl clutching an inhaler, the one thing that kept the storm at bay when everything threatened to break apart. I'd turn to it when the world felt too overwhelming, when the magic surged too high, too fast. But that was before I knew the truth. Before I knew that the inhaler wasn't just for my lungs. It was a carefully crafted barrier, a concoction designed to neutralize the chaos inside me. To stop the magic. To silence the wolf.

But there's no inhaler now.

And there's no one to stop me from tearing myself apart.

I feel the magic coursing through me, dark and wild, ripping through every inch of my being. It's taking me over, drowning me in its ferocity. The world is spinning faster, the edges blurring as my own power threatens to consume me whole.

"Annie, run."
Leah's voice cuts through the chaos, raw, desperate. It's the only thing I can hear now, but it feels so far away.

I blast the door open and run. Following her every command, she grounds me to reality protecting me from myself.

Confronted with his words, everything falls into place. The weight of his confession presses down on me, suffocating, yet oddly liberating. My mind races, the pieces of the puzzle clicking together in ways I hadn't expected, hadn't been ready for. The memories... those haunting fragments I'd buried deep.

A ragged sound comes out of my throat.

They are now flooding to the surface, clearer, sharper than ever before.
And then I see it. The evidence. The shoebox. The one I'd shoved into the back of my closet, out of sight, out of mind. But it had always been there, patiently waiting for me to connect the dots.The truth was always there laying bare, like a cruel puzzle I never wanted to solve, but couldn't avoid any longer.

Tom.

He was the MVP all along.

He gave me what I'd asked for. No filters. No pretenses. Raw, brutal truth. He never sugarcoated it, never held anything back. Even when it hurt, even when I didn't want to know. He gave me what I needed, not what I wanted.

The realization hits me harder than anything else. In his own way, Tom was the answer to all my questions. It wasn't pretty. It wasn't easy. But it was the truth.

And now, I had to live with it.

My heart stops for a beat.

"Impossible!" I repeat to myself like a mad woman walking down the street.

"Are you ok miss?" a stranger asks concern in his voice.

I avoid him running instead, while tapping the side of my ear as if that would stop my ramping thoughts from stabbing my heart.