Re Reading Novels & Stories

My breathing echoed loudly in the confined space, uneven and shaky. I inhaled and exhaled as my hand tightened around the piece of paper still clutched between my fingers. Slowly, my gaze dropped to it again. That note. Those words. I had already read it more times than I could count, yet I still found myself unfolding it once more, my hands trembling slightly as my eyes scanned the lines again. And again. And again. As if somehow, the words would change. As if maybe I had imagined it. But no matter how many times I read it, it remained the same. Unchanged. Real.

And the dying trees, weaving among the green trees, are the result of his next brother. After a moment, harmony with nature mother. His mom was back to reality, she remembered what her main goal came here. She walked strongly on the high heel, entered the house. Daisy was leisurely reading the book next to the living room window, some thick books were placed on the old table, there was a pot of tea on the smaller table. Elin still didn’t speak. Daisy just glanced and said, “There are no rooms for rent here anymore. Then Daisy continues to focus on the book in her hand.” “Is Avis here?” Dash asked.

After Susan left, Cecilia sat at her desk and started handling her work emails. Before this, Cecilia hated dealing with matters related to StartReading Literary. To her, StartReading Literary was an insignificant company; she did not care about it, unlike Zach who valued StartReading Literary because of Madelyn. Then, the Editorial Department of StartReading Literary received documents of approval from Jardin Corporation. The entire department instantly erupted with excitement.

XARION'S POV The report in front of me has been open for forty-five minutes. I know this because I checked the clock when I opened it, some optimistic part of me believing that if I put a timestamp on the exercise I'd feel more accountable to actually reading it. That part of me was wrong. I've read the same paragraph four times. I know this because the words are numb in the way that things become numb when you keep looking at them without absorbing them, like a word you've stared at so long it stops looking like a real word and becomes a meaningless arrangement of letters.

Some vice president of Loser Club you are. "Hey, Emily, wait for me. I'll only be a minute," Jane called after her. Jane didn't know if Emily would wait or not, but then she saw her friend slide down to the floor just outside Ms. Reed's door. "Jane," Ms. Reeds spoke stiffly. "I don't quite know how to say this to you. But I would rather you read the shortest possible book, as Emily did, rather than rely on plot summaries to pretend you read something you didn't read."

**Sam's POV** I read it again. And again. My eyes kept going back to the same words, like maybe I hadn't read them right the first time, like they might change if I just kept staring long enough. They didn't. They sat there on the page exactly the same way each time, black ink spelling out the end of a life I was still, technically, living.

“Read it.” He sat down. He opened the folder. I watched him read. The first page went fast. The second page slower. By the third page his hand had stopped moving. By the fourth page he was gripping the edge of the paper so hard his hands were shaking. He read the whole thing without speaking. Every page. Every line. When he reached the last page—Reed’s signed statement—he stared at it for a long moment. Then he pushed the folder back across the desk, stood up, and walked to the window.

My brain kept circling back to it, itching to see what new headlines had popped up. Reid, of course, was the picture of self-control. He read an actual book—one of those heavy finance ones with a title that made my eyes glaze over—and barely glanced at his phone. Meanwhile, I had to physically sit on my hands at one point to keep from reaching for mine. “This is pathetic,” I muttered, flopping onto the couch beside him. He smirked but didn’t look up. “You were the one who wanted this.” “I thought it would be fun.”

She found the lever exactly where she'd expected it, in finish what you are, and she noted that finding it changed nothing, because she'd already known it was there on the first read. So the second read had not been verification. She made herself look at that straight. She had read it twice, and the second read had given her no information the first hadn't, which meant she had not gone back for data. She had gone back because the sentence with her name in it was the first time in months that someone had treated the question she could not answer about herself as though it had an answer, and the answer he offered was come and we will finish you, and some part of her had wanted to read that aga

But she wanted me not him. Hell, how is Alice? I haven’t seen her since I came back. Did she find her mate? Does she have pups now? My heart sinks and I start to feel the tingling sensation in my arms as I used to feel when I was about to lose control. Thinking about the past had this effect on me. I stopped the car and started taking deep breaths. I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing. Five in, hold two, four out. Breathe Leon, breathe. After a while, my breathing got better and I opened the window to let the cool morning air in.