All my life, people had coddled me. Josh. My friends. Alex. Or at least he’d pretended to care about me. I’d let them, because it was easier to lean on others than myself. I’d thought myself free because I didn’t have a physical cage when in fact I’d been trapped by my own mind, by the fears that haunted my days and the nightmares that haunted my nights. I stuck with the safe choices because I thought I wasn’t strong enough for anything else.
