Penetrating..

Dahlia's POV.

Day eight of bed rest.

The days of bed rest were wearing me down. It had been eight days since the incident, and I was tired. Tired of staying indoors, tired of replaying that fateful day in my head. They said I almost drowned, but it felt like more. I didn’t want to remember it, didn’t want to recall how my own mother had pulled me into the pool. They called it a hallucination, but I thought something else had gone wrong.

I tried to let it go, to focus on something else. Like the movie in front of me. Who did that to me? Dorothy was my first guess. Ares was my second. He hated me, but he wasn’t there when I started hallucinating. He did show up when I almost drowned. Was that a warning? Payback for not meeting him at the cafeteria? But I’d gone to school with him that morning.

Ares was a devil. No question. Yet, despite everything, I found myself wanting him to come and save me. It was a bitter realization, one that gnawed at my insides.

Night had fallen, and I couldn’t