My Winter Family: Rose Falls Book 2 by Raleigh Ruebins

Author:Raleigh Ruebins [Ruebins, Raleigh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-12-02T16:00:00+00:00

My chest was tight. Painfully tight—like someone was stepping right on me, and my breathing was coming too short, my windpipe just wasn’t big enough—

I jolted awake in bed, a sheen of sweat on my body. I blinked, rapid-fire, my heart slamming in my chest. I was disoriented. It was dark—still night—and I sat up silently, clutching my chest, looking over to the other side of the bed.

Ryan was still there. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, really—I didn’t expect that he would just get up and leave—but I felt like I’d been dreaming for ages, and I was bewildered to see that it had really only been a few hours. He was sleeping soundly on the other side of the bed, curled up and cozy, but I felt like I was about to descend straight into panic.

I focused on the photograph that hung just across from my bed—a calming one, one my dad had taken of the waterfalls, and I’d framed and matted years ago. Everything felt like it was spinning, but the photograph was a beacon of stillness in the dull light.

The dreams had not been good. There had been garden-variety anxiety ones first—ones where I was running to work late, wading through sand, couldn’t find my car in a big parking lot.

But then another, even more vivid dream had started. At first, it was almost pleasant; I’d been at a huge amusement park with Ryan and his baby. It was a sunny day, and at one point Ryan had stopped at an ice cream stand to get cones for the both of us. I waited at a bench, watching over Anna, making sure her stroller wasn’t in the direct sunlight.

She was so perfect, so adorable in the dream. I felt a tenderness for her that shook me to my core—almost as if I were a caretaker for her, as if I wanted to make sure she grew up safe and sound.

Ryan called out to me from the ice cream stand—asking if I wanted chocolate, vanilla, or swirl—and I turned just for a moment to answer him.

When I’d turned back around, Anna’s stroller was gone. Raw panic seared through me quick as lightning, and I shot up from the bench, craning my head from side to side, searching for who could have taken her.

But in the dream, no one else was around. Anna was just gone—she’d been in my care for all of two minutes, and I had lost her. I had failed. As I was running around frantically in the dream, I felt my chest start to constrict, felt that boot-like weight upon my throat.

That’s when I’d woken up.

And now I was sitting in bed, reliving the whole thing again, feeling like I was going to explode if I didn’t calm the fuck down.

I slipped out of bed, trying to be as slow and soundless as possible. I grabbed a pair of sweatpants on top of my dresser and then crossed over to the balcony door. It

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