(Hazel)

My teeth clatter furiously. It's not his place to choose whom I date, but he keeps coming, like an unrelenting headache.

As if the war in my mind wasn't enough, Dominic invited me to dinner. And somewhere in my mind, the image of him and Samantha taunts me.

And just like me, he blanks repeatedly, brooding. The silence stretched between us. It intensified, so much, that it could rattle the dead in their sleep. 

I cleared my voice, shrugging off the claws of this suffocating ...