Breathe

Chapter 39

Lucie

There wasn't a lullaby. There weren't any sheets tucked around me to keep me warm, no nightlight to fight off the shadows. I didn't get a bedtime story. It was just this: one moment, standing before the boy I loved, staring down the barrel of the gun in front of me, and the next, darkness.

I was asleep even before I knew it.

I was locked inside myself. Someone was screaming, maybe at me, maybe not, but none of the words made sense. Nothing made sense. It was reality, yet it wasn't. It was some strange, twisted dream. My consciousness was gone.

I was slipping, and slipping fast. I wanted to stay. God, I wanted to stay. I fought and I fought, fought by the light of Cian's blue eyes, fought by every single flawlessly platinum hair upon Vinny's head, fought by my parents' reassuring embraces. I fought because I loved, because I was loved.

Now I knew, though, what Vinny meant, when he said the worse part was giving up. No one is going to save you.

You are alone.

There was nothing for me to grab onto, nothing to pull myself back up to the surface, to everything I knew. I stopped hearing the screaming. There was nothing. Silence. Painful, throbbing silence. I went numb. I couldn't feel.

Everything. Just. Stopped.

I couldn't fight anymore.