Paradox Love: Paradox Love Book 1 Read Online Free

your chest will go away.  And you’ll move on.  Trust me, you will. 
    After your assessment, you’ll have a retreat.  A retreat allows you to take a break from all of this.  A break from every lesson and challenge, every heartbreak and difficulty.  You’ll reunite with old friends who can’t wait to see you again.  Everyone loves the retreat.  You will, too.  And during your retreat, it’ll become even more clear why you’ve got a different path than Luke.”
    She nodded, just to show she was listening.  She believed him, every word.  She would move on and they’d make her forget.  There were others here that Gabe promised were old friends.  She just didn’t understand it all right now, because she hadn’t had her assessment.  She got it.  It did make sense.  But she didn’t want it.
    “Why can’t you just tell me everything right now?  Why can’t I wait for Luke right here?”
    “Luke is on another level.  We don’t think of it as above or below really, but he’s just not as far along as you.  It’s hard to accept right now, but you need to let him go, so that he can have his chance, too.  He’s got his own circle of friends.  He’ll be okay.”
    She could not fully enunciate to Gabe the true magnitude of the pain, but he could see it on her face. 
    “Grace, we need to get you going here.  I want you to have some relief.”
    “No.”
    “No?  Come on now.  I know it’s hard.  I really know you, Grace.  I know it’s tough.  You’re advanced.  You love with great intensity.  But you’re carrying too much pain here.  We need to help you get through this.”
    “No.”
    She was stubborn, this girl.  She always had been.  But not quite like this.
    Grace stood up, just to see if it would help the pain.  She forced herself to breathe slowly and then wondered aloud, “Am I breathing?  Is that what I’m doing?  Is this air?”
    “Not exactly.  You feel like you’re still breathing, but you aren’t.  It’s residual.  The pain is residual.  If you’d just let me help you move forward, you’d get an explanation, and relief.”
    Okay, it was residual.  Still, she kept trying, breathing slowly in and out.  Standing wasn’t helping.  She sat down again.  There was a bowling ball in her chest.  That was the only way to quantify it.  A bowling ball of brokenness. 
    Now she knew why her heart had hurt so badly sometimes on Earth.  She was holding on to so much fear that it was too good to be true.  And that fear brought the pain.  The intense, enormous, horrific pain.  Everything in her, every scrap of wisdom was screaming at her, “Go get your assessment!” 
    But her heart, swollen with grief was speaking, too.  “No.”  Over and over and over again.  “No.”
    For a time, she totally zoned out on Gabe, although the word continued flowing from her lips.
    “No.  No.  No.  No.  No.”
    Gabe looked like he was growing a chest lump himself.  His face, which had originally been so chipper and happy to her see her had actually changed as well.  Now there was concern, and sympathy, and no doubt a tinge of bewilderment.
    Grace sat there across from him and continued, “No.  No.  No.  No.  No.”
    “Oh Lord,” he whispered, with more seriousness than she’d heard him speak before.
    She was still breathing slowly, but her mind was racing.  “I want to go back.  I have to go back.”
    Gabe looked up.  She’d finally said something other than, “No,” and he didn’t quite catch it.
    She looked directly into his eyes again.  She knew instinctively that speaking sincere words while looking directly into Gabe’s eyes was effective in getting her point across.  She couldn’t explain how she knew, but she knew.
    “I want to go back.”
    And again, his expression changed and she saw the thoughts move around in his head.  She could see that he was already gearing up to say no way.  He opened his mouth to speak, but she jumped in ahead of