Break Free (Pacific Prep, #4)

by R.A. Smyth

I can understand, now more than ever, how Lawrence’s presence had such a debilitating effect on her. It doesn’t matter how much you tell yourself you’ve come to terms with your past, that you’re bigger, stronger, more powerful now. When you come face-to-face with that one thing, that one person that has always gotten under your skin, it tears through every barrier you’ve ever constructed, breaks apart every positive thought you’ve repeated to yourself, and strips you bare of the armor you’d carefully placed around you. It doesn’t matter if you’re five years old, twenty-five, or fifty. Trauma is trauma, and no matter how much you tell yourself you’re over it, that you’re stronger than the ghosts that haunt you, you’re always going to be weakened in their presence. They are always going to have a hold over your inner psyche. Which is why you need people around you, people you can rely on, can lean on, who can stand up beside you and remind you that you’re not that weak kid anymore.