𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐋𝐈𝐅𝐄 ✔️

Chapter Forty-Seven

White.
A bright white.
A white so bright that I felt my retinas burning inside of my eye sockets.

Slowly and carefully, I let my eyes flutter open, though squeezing them shut again when the harsh light burst in. Frowning, I tried once more, opening them to see nothing but a blurred white sky.

The more I concentrated and waited, the more it cleared and my vision became more focused. I soon realised that I wasn't looking up at a white sky, but a white ceiling. It was then that I started to hear all kinds of things, things I wasn't aware of at my first blink.

Beeping, frantic talking, doors opening and closing, heels clicking against floors—they were all noises that burst in just as suddenly as the white light had.

I titled my head slightly, trying to see what was going on. All I could remember was Alessia Trent. The darkness, the pain, the emptiness—the knife, and my death, and her death.

I was awake. Had that been a dream? I felt different; perhaps it was because I knew that this wasn't Alessia's room—especially not with all the commotion.

It was then that I thought about the possibility that I was in a hospital, that maybe Alessia was found, and here I am, alive. Or...maybe this was the afterlife.

All ideas were halted when I heard one singular word—a name.

"Olivia?"

I frowned—Olivia. It was a name I knew, and a name I knew well. I had once worn it and shouldered the weight of it, but then it all changed—then I became Alessia. I was Alessia and I had her life.

"Olivia, honey," I frowned, attempting to locate the voice. It was so distinctively familiar, and I was instinctively drawn to it. After a while of hopelessly looking, a face ghosted into my vision. I furrowed my eyebrows, trying to concentrate and make the image clearer.

When I did, it was someone familiar to me. She was my mum. She was Olivia Clark's mum.

In a moment of vulnerability, one that I knew would cause a massive disaster, I whispered, "Mum?"

She was still Olivia Clark's mum, but I wasn't Olivia Clark, and so that word shouldn't have fallen from my lips.

But she did not look angry; she seemed relieved, tears spilling a thousand by a thousand. "Oh, honey," she said, brushing my hair back away from my face before tracing the lines of my cheekbones. "You're okay," she whispered.

I frowned. "What..what's going on?" I asked her, glancing around again, expecting to see the real Olivia Clark standing around somewhere.