Don't Forget to Breathe

by Sara Waxelbaum, Brianna R. Shrum

Genres: YA Romance

Synopsis

Zoe’s always had a plan. Ballet has been her past, present, and future for so long that she’s never even considered otherwise. It’s been the escape she’s always needed. Yet when senior year arrives, it arrives with a feeling of uncertainty she never expected—and a paralyzing fear about choosing the wrong future. 

Hanna’s rarely stayed in a place longer than a year. The greatest consistency she has is her piano playing, and her dad diving back into his Jewish faith every time her mom leaves on assignment. So when her senior year begins with yet another move to a new school, she’s not planning on putting down roots—she’s learned that hard way how that ends.  

But when the girls’ paths collide, everything they thought they knew is turned upside down. Their relationship could change them each forever—if they have the courage to let their worlds fall apart. 

An honest, messy, and very real approach to first love that focuses keenly on the queer and neurodiverse experience, Don't Forget to Breathe proves the power of overcoming fear to be wildly, truly yourself. 

Release date: October 21, 2025

Publisher: Harlequin

Print pages: 384

Sample

Prelude
Zoe

When I’m dancing, I’m flying. Music, muscles, movement. Everything else falling away like sweat. Head up, shoulders back, tall neck, long spine, elbows up, soft hands; don’t roll, don’t sickle; spot your turns, hold your turnout, square your hips, get your leg up, higher, higher, higher.

Higher.

Higher.

Reach.

Extend.

Lift.

Lengthen.

Smile.

Oh—and don’t forget to breathe. 

One
Hanna

Fayetteville, North Carolina, is the first place we haven’t lived on base. Ever since I can remember, I’ve woken up to reveille and ended the day facing the nearest flag for the retreat at five p.m. But this year, for whatever reason—maybe as some sort of peace offering for needing to move cross-country again, during my senior year no less—instead of defaulting to living on base, Mom and Dad had asked me what I wanted.

I don’t know why I asked for this. To feel slightly off-kilter everywhere I go. But I did.

The first movie I ever went to in Fayetteville was with this guy named Travis, who lives a couple streets down and is the kind of person who says, “Hey! How’s it going?” to everyone he passes in the neighborhood, expects you to respond, and cares about the answer. Friendly guy, obviously, almost overly so, but friendly even after he discovered I was a lesbian and he had less than no chance at getting into these boot-cut jeans, so points for that. There’s a reason he and his sister evolved into the two actual friends I have here.

Anyway, before the previews started, I stood up. Expecting the national anthem. Until I realized I was the only one standing and it was never going to play. Trav looked at me like I was from another planet, so I pretended I needed to pee, waited forty-five seconds in a bathroom stall, and missed the first two previews, which are my favorite part of going to the theater. And it always feels that way. I still stutter-step every day at five p.m., expecting taps to play and the flag to lower and cars to stop driving on the streets. I feel like I spend twenty-four hours a day stutter-stepping in some way or another.

Not here, though. At the piano. The scenery around me has changed every few years like clockwork, and this time, it’s changed in a way that somehow feels big. Bigger even than when we lived in Okinawa when I was in sixth and seventh grade. But this, the feel of my fingertips racing over simulated ivory—that’s the same everywhere.

Seventeen years flitting all over the world, and I am grounded here. By this. By the push of my toes on the sustain pedal, the decisive press of my fingertips on the keys. I push, and it holds, entirely steady. So I can dive down into the earth with the notes singing in my blood.

The first thing I do when I move to a new place is find somewhere to play. Something remotely grounding. And here, it’s been more than grounding; it’s been crucial. I don’t have a single piece of familiarity to fall back on—except the music.

I’ve played for theaters, once for a community orchestra. This time, it’s the dance studio. It’s small, so I guess it wasn’t surprising when I stopped in and found out that the little kids danced to recorded music. But my heart twisted in my chest. “You should have a pianist,” I told the director.

“She moved a few months back,” she said. “We haven’t bothered to find a new one.”

I just cocked my head and smiled and held out my hand for her to shake. She only made me spend eight minutes at the keys before she hired me. I realized, of course, that it was kind of an asshole way to go about asking for a job. But I called her ma’am when she offered, and I smiled with genuine gratefulness when I accepted, and I wasn’t lying. They should have had a pianist. And I just so happened to be one.

I come here Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, play for the three- and four-year-olds, then the five and sixes. And after the instructor leaves, she turns off the lights for me and lets me play whatever I want.

The sun goes down earlier than I’m used to, so it’s surprisingly dark when I put my hands to the keys, which is how I

like it. Dad calls me a vampire for it; it is one of his most consistent dad jokes. And the relative quiet, even when the older class down the hall lets out and the chatter and shuffle of ballet slippers on wood disturbs it, is what I need to let the piece sink into my skin.

I settle into my current exercise in dexterity, Chopin rushing through my veins and fingers like a shot of espresso, and I’m playing so quickly I feel like maybe I’ll actually be sore tomorrow. Chopin is complex, but at some point you just kind of relax and move through it on instinct. Pattern. Like doing the quickest math. I’ve been in that zone for two minutes when I feel something intangible at my neck. The way you feel a ghost looking at you when you’re watching a movie in the dark—not like a murdery ghost. This isn’t the Haunting of Hill Studio. Like a cute one. Maybe a fucky one.

A girl can dream.

Hyperawareness. It makes my hands do something they never do—they stutter-step.

I look up, discordant sound ringing in the room, and a flash of insanely gorgeous curls disappears past the corner of the window.

That ghost has really nice hair.

I don’t keep playing; I can’t. It’s the ADHD. If I’m in hyperfocus, I can go for hours. But one errant ambulance siren (or hot girl ghost in the window) and I’m done for. The spell is broken.

Well, dinner calls. And I refuse to risk my life by being late. Not even for Chopin.

Travis and his sister, Grace, show up to my house twenty minutes after I do—at exactly 18:55. Dammit. Six fifty-five p.m., I remind myself. Because dinner is at seven on the dot. They both know to take their shoes off at the door the second they come inside.

Travis and Grace Soto are twins but refuse to acknowledge it. Trav happily claims the title “older brother” and Grace “baby sister” even though they’re only like eight minutes apart. Either way, they’re both seniors at Fayetteville School for the Performing Arts (Go Unicorns. Yup. Unicorns.), and they both focus on the theater side of things. Trav is into acting, and Grace is into acting in musicals, which they have each separately and staunchly told me are two completely different things.

Their matching wavy black hair and uneven smiles and the way they both wrinkle their noses when they’re annoyed—along with, weirdly, the exact shape of their particularly long hands—would have given away that they were 

siblings, if not twins. Though Trav’s frame is massive next to Grace’s small, curvy one (in fairness, he’s built like a refrigerator, so his huge shoulders are massive next to anyone’s), and Grace is good at Spanish (whereas Trav never did take the time to pick up much from his grandparents), it’s clear they share blood, and more than that. Siblings who are actually friends—go figure.

I met Travis first, on one of his neighborhood greeting-infested runs. Grace came along with that package, though, and she has a laugh that is legitimately infectious, something she proves at the table now, laughing high and long at something I didn’t catch. It’s then that I realize where her attention is focused. Somewhere along the way, Dad picked up a stray from the base to join his book club—Private First Class Matt Rodriguez. Now, he’s a fixture at the dinner table, more often at my insistence than at my dad’s. He also happens to look like Diego Luna in commissary clothes, and Grace is practically sweating out her eyeballs.

“You didn’t tell me he was going to be here,” she hisses at me through a smile as we head into the living room. It sounds more like hee-er, because Grace and Travis both have these strong Southern accents that draw out one-syllable words into long, musical things.

I raise an eyebrow. “I didn’t know.”

Grace narrows her eyes and turns to face me, hand on her hip. “I would have—”

“Would have what?” says Travis when Matt disappears into the kitchen. His eyes follow Matt, and he waggles his eyebrows, dimples popping. Travis is half boy, half mischief.

“Nothing.”

“Would have what, innocent baby sister of mine?”

Grace’s jaw clenches, her eyes flashing.

“You are a shining beacon of perfection, Grace,” I say. “It should give you no trouble getting into that guy’s BDU.”

“He’s twenty years old, Hanna.” She does a terrible job pretending to look offended.

Trav says, “Look, I know that’s a little young for you—”

“Oh my goddddd,” Grace moans, tipping her head back to the ceiling. I mean, she’s right; Trav rides her constantly about thinking

older guys are hot. Like, significantly older guys.

“—but he seems like a good guy,” Trav finishes, as if he was never interrupted.

“Can you please be disgusted by anything having to do with my love life?” Grace says. “Or lack thereof? Like a regular brother?”

Travis disappears for a half second and comes back with an apple. He takes a massive bite and says, “Officially, I am. It’s very, very gross. But in this case—”

“Do not.”

“—Matt’s hot.”

Grace rolls her eyes and folds her arms over her not-tiny chest. “I hate both of you.”

“Me?” I say, pressing a Victorian hand to my chest where my pearls would have gone. “What have I done?”

“Nothing,” she says. “That’s the problem.”

“Am I supposed to stand in front of you and Gd and claim that your taste in men is totally age-appropriate? Because—”

“Hanna!” It’s less my name and more of a squeaked expletive. In the last month I’ve been here, I’ve learned how to read which of Grace’s pleas are real and which are her playing along with the joke—this is the latter. I shrug, a grin slipping onto my face.

Trav’s got a mouth half full of apple when he points at her and says, “Isn’t your lock screen that really chesty shot of Rhys Da—”

“UGH. I’m LEAVING.”

“He’s literally fifty!” Trav calls after her.

“Oh, come on now,” I say, following her into the dining room. I throw my arms around her neck from behind and kiss her on the cheek (that’s how you know it’s not a come-on). “You love us. Me, specifically. You love me.”

She rolls her eyes, but I don’t miss the little smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

It’s 7:01 when we sit down at the circular table—Trav and Grace on either side of me, Mom next to Trav and Matt next to Grace, Dad directly across from me. Mom’s asking the boring, routine questions that parents are required to ask: Ready for the new quarter to start up? Any extracurriculars? Are you seeing anyone? (Grace blushes when she says no, and it’s so obvious she’s trying not to look at Matt that I have to cover my mouth not to snort.)

wn, I can tell something’s off. I don’t know what it is, but it’s putting me on edge.

She always sits with perfect posture, but tonight, it’s like she’s frozen that way. She keeps smiling when Grace goes on about the musical this winter, and Matt tells this story about a mountain they had to run when he went to boot camp in Georgia. And she laughs with everyone else when Travis recounts the story of how, when we first met, I invited him over for lunch and let him get through four full bites of an MRE before I told him that wasn’t what we really ate.

But it’s there. In the stiff set of her arms and the smiles that do nothing but move her mouth. And more than that, it’s in Dad. The second I see him look at Mom, I know.

I fucking know.

And suddenly it’s like I can’t get everyone out of the house fast enough. Matt leaves, and I tell Grace and Travis that plans are canceled. I go into the formal living room and sit down to wait. Because I’ve heard it too many times. The front door closes, and one-two-three seconds later, Mom walks in and says, “We need to talk.”

“Dammit,” I whisper under my breath. “When?”

Mom stands straight and brushes a lock of honey-blond hair behind her ear. Dad appears in the room like a ghost; I didn’t even hear him. “Now, we figured.”

I stiffen. I have to physically bite down on the urge to roll my eyes, because they will both actually murder me if I do. “You know what I’m asking.”

Dad sighs, because yeah, he does know. They both do.

So I say again, “When?” because we’ve been through this song and dance enough times that yes, I recognize it.

Mom meets my eyes dead-on and says, “Eight days.”

And I choke. “Eight days? Eight days. That’s not . . . Last time you were deployed, they told us three months in advance.”

“I don’t make the rules, Han,” she says.

I look up at the ceiling. This is a thing I should be used to. A thing that should no longer rip me up. “How long?”

“Six months.”

I don’t ask where. I used to, when I was a kid. I’d print off pictures of wherever she was and tack them to my wall. And Dad would take me up to the roof and tell me we were looking at the same stars as Mom, which at the time I found desperately romantic.

Now, I don’t . . . I don’t know.

Different hemispheres have different constellations, you know? No matter how enthusiastically Dad likes to point out the ones that overlap.

Mom’s and my skies are not the same.

“Hanna.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say.

“It’ll be fine.”

I meet her eyes. “Yeah. It’s fine. It’s always fine.”

I retreat the second I’m allowed and climb up onto the roof alone, like I’ve always done. These stars are mine. They’re not hers, they’re not ours, they’re sure as hell not the U.S. military’s. They’re mine.

I curl up in my hoodie, knees to my chest, and cry like I always do over this.

Wish I had a piano here.

I really, really wish. 

Two
Zoe

It’s Sunday morning. This means a few things: I don’t have ballet until 11:30, the marching band doesn’t have practice, and Jay and I are at Alternate Universe, the student body’s favorite coffee shop. Just like every Sunday morning. And it’s October, which means it’s finally not a thousand degrees outside, and also marching band competition season. Even though there’s no band practice, Jay’s poring over the packet of papers that maps out every formation in their show, making notes, and telling me how the clarinets are going to hate it, but they might have to switch to a jazz run for this one move, and should he let Carter have the baritone solo next week, and the color guard coach wants to change some of the choreography in the middle song, and how are they going to be able to learn that by next week?

I’m not in marching band, but after two or three non-band kids and I managed to maintain friendships freshman year amidst the chaos of football and competition season, we all got (affectionately) labeled “band groupies.” And in the three years since, I’ve learned a few things: marching is more complex than it seems, the politics are positively Medicean, and the dynamics of interpersonal relationships are unknowable, like the void.

But Jay and I? We are used to it. We’ve managed to maintain a friendship for a half dozen Nutcracker seasons and three marching seasons. Why should dating be any different? How much has really changed in the last four months, anyway? We hold hands and kiss now, but he is still Jay. He is still one of two best friends I’ve had since middle school, one of two people who didn’t abandon me when things got weird or hard.

So this? Easy.

Besides, it makes sense to me—the way it takes over his life, the way it becomes ninety percent of his personality. The way he loves it down to his bones.

Because that’s how I love ballet.

It doesn’t matter that dancing and marching are worlds apart. I get it. I get him. Jay and I, we think the same. We speak the same language, even when we can’t agree on the topic.

And when we can’t agree on the topic, I still love watching him talk. I love his face, in both a scientific and a sentimental way: he’s expressive in a way that I don’t think I’ve ever been, and you can see how much he cares, how deeply he loves, in his eyes and in the way he moves his hands, fine-boned and long-fingered like—

I blink. That girl, the pianist from the studio—she slides into my head like a glissade. My cheeks flame, and I have to look away from Jay, because—

Well. I know why. I just don’t want to, like . . . transmit it somehow. Even though telepathy isn’t real. That isn’t the point. The point is that even looking at Jay while thinking it feels dangerous. Like I’m going to give something away.

I’m not going to give anything away. Jay may have a terrible poker face, but I have nothing but a poker face.

Then his foot nudges mine under the table, and I look up sharply. “Zo?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you want a refill?” The way he asks it, it’s like he’s asked it a few times already.

Maybe he has. Maybe I’ve been too busy not thinking thoughts, so I’ve tuned out the rest of the world.

His eyebrows go up.

Zoe, speak words. “No, thanks.” 

s empty coffee cup to the barista. Jay drinks more coffee than any human I know; personally, I try to keep my caffeine consumption to a minimum. Realizing you have to pee halfway through a two-hour dance class and then having to fight with tights and a leotard before you get any relief is not as much fun as it sounds.

Lesson learned, Madame. Thanks.

Jay calls my name from the bar, and I look up; he’s pointing with an exaggerated thumb to the barista, Mya, the pretty Black girl who was my lab partner last year. She’s waving at me, so I wave back, kind of surprised she remembers me. I didn’t realize Jay knew her, but of course he does, because everybody knows everybody here. There’s no way to get lost in anonymity.

“How do you know Mya?” I ask Jay when he slides back into his seat across from me.

He blows across the top of his coffee and says, “She’s in orchestra. Viola. Her brother Omar is in the pit. Freshman. He’s pretty good. I think Austin will let him march in the line next year. Cymbals, probably, unless he’s willing to march five bass drums instead of four, which I think he should, but it’s more complicated than it sounds.”

He keeps going, and I’m happy to let him, because it makes him happy to talk about it. Just like he’s happy to let me talk about ballet, even when he has no idea what I’m talking about. I guess that’s just what neurodivergent love is: info-dumping to each other. But while I sit, my feet have little minds of their own, flexing and pointing in my canvas flats under the table. Fifteen more minutes, and we’ll drive over to the studio, so I’m not thinking about Mya, or her brother getting into the drumline, or the complexities of percussion arrangement. I’m thinking about the sand-slide of toes across Marley, about the drip and slip of sweat down my neck, at the small of my back, about the uniform line of legs and hands and chins and bun-topped heads.

I’m not thinking about Jay.

I’m thinking about flying.

“Have you picked an audition piece yet?” he asks.

I try to hide my flinch by shaking my head. I must have succeeded well enough, because he doesn’t mention it.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” I say.

Lie.

“I don’t know if I’m even going to audition anywhere,” I add.

Lie.

Why am I lying about this? I don’t lie about anything. I’m garbage at lying. It’s just—that’s what came out.

His brow furrows, and he leans into the table. “What do you mean? Zo, you’re awesome.”

. . . am I, though? Or am I just obsessed with it? Am I wasting my time and everyone else’s because my brain doesn’t know how to think about anything else? Nothing I’ve ever read in any document on autism has ever said special interests are something you’re good at.

I don’t like to think about this, because I don’t like the implications of it. It makes me emotional, and I don’t care for that. Especially not in public. Kids get to have meltdowns whenever they want and that’s just Kids Being Kids, but lose your shit one time in Target at eleven years old and you spend the next three years being treated like hysterical glass, like it hadn’t been three days before Christmas and the first year I danced the part of Clara and I had to keep walking down narrow aisles made narrower by people and carts and merchandise that had spilled off the shelf and the giant wall of TVs weren’t synced up and different parts of the store had different music playing and I could feel the fluorescent lights on my skin—yeah, sure, who cares about any of that.

The point is, if I can’t keep it together while I talk about this, I shouldn’t be talking about it. Not here, anyway. So I shrug. “It’s a lot of pressure for something that I don’t even—” I want to tell him the entire truth—I mean, why wouldn’t I? But something stops the words from coming out of my mouth. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him frown, so I try again: “I don’t even know how realistic it is, you know? Like, what’s the success rate of people trying to be professional dancers?”

He says, “Well. Sure. That’s the thing about wanting to work in the arts.”

My face must do something that makes him uncomfortable, because he reaches across the table and twines his fingers with mine. “Hey. I don’t mean—Zoe. Your happiness is the most important thing. You’ll be great at whatever

 you want to do.”

Whatever that is. I’m seventeen. How am I supposed to know what I want to do for the rest of my life? Take ballet out of the equation, and I don’t even know who I am.

Except Jay knows. Jay wants to be a high school music teacher.

And Grace knows. Grace wants to be a nurse.

Me?

I feel my edges crumbling. I’m afraid the smile I give him is too weak to be convincing, so I just say, “You wanna get out of here?”

His eyebrows go up, like he thinks I mean it some other way, and I roll my eyes. He laughs and says, “Sure. Little early, though, isn’t it?”

“Hi,” I say. “Have we met? I’m kind of an overachiever.”

“We use the term ‘nerd’ where I’m from.”

I point at his shirt: “all about that” written over a bass clef.

“What?” he says. “I don’t want any treble.”

“You’re the actual worst,” I say, but I’m laughing as I stand up. “Come on.”

“I’ll throw your cup away if you grab me a lid?”

I don’t know why he does this every time, but he does. Jay always throws my cup away, and I always get him a to-go lid. It’s one of those routines we should’ve settled into by now, but he keeps bringing it up, making me think about it, making it uncomfortably present. Familiar habits should be easy, memorized, not articulated every single time. Imagine if Madame had to go out onstage with us for every performance and shout “five-six-seven-eight” over the music.

I wave to Mya as I grab Jay’s lid; she’s steaming milk for a latte, so both her hands are occupied, but she tips up her chin in acknowledgment.

The ride to the studio is quiet until Jay’s favorite Mountain Goats song comes on, and then Jay’s grooving, terribly, at the wheel of his decade-old Taurus wagon, and I’m laughing, and I forgive the annoyance of the coffee shop. His hand slips from the wheel to mine, his fingers soft except for the tips, roughened by catgut and steel strings.

He pulls into the lot and puts the car in park, and as I’m reaching for the door handle, he says, “Hey.”

I turn to him. His eyes are sweet and earnest behind his glasses, brown shot through with gold.

ve you, too.”

He grins like he can’t help it, like sun breaking through the clouds, like he can’t believe how lucky he is. He leans forward and kisses me, just a brush of his lips, his stubble sandpaper-scratchy.

I say, “I’ll text you when I get home, okay?”

“Sounds good. Don’t have too much fun without me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

And then I’m in my leotard and tights, bunched at my ankles and waist, pointe shoes laced up, stretching out my hips against the floor, the wall, anything that will stay still, and the annoyance is gone, the confusion is gone, everything but five-six-seven-eight and chassé and pas de bourée and sweat and breath and length and strength and spot and spin, and everything everything else is gone, out of the studio, beyond the mirror, past the audience we can’t see. We beat on basics today, drill fundamentals, just to remind us we’re never too good to skip beginner classes. Madame pokes and prods and adjusts and thumps her cane on the Marley floor until our muscles burn and tremble.

And when we’re dismissed two hours later, laughing and smiling like we’re drunk (we are, I think), bags repacked and sweats on over tights, long-sleeved tops over leotards even in this heat, my heart is so full of love and light and belonging that I just want to drag my fingers over everyone, everything in this studio. This is mine, it all belongs to me, I think—I know—in this moment, and I belong to it.

My friend Lena grabs my hand and says, “We’re all going back to Bailey’s house.” I’m close, I’m so close to saying yes, riding high on this uniformity, this camaraderie, but we pass the last studio, and I stop.

I stop everything: I stop walking, laughing, smiling, listening.

I stop breathing.

The last studio in the hall, the one right before you get to the office, is almost dark. The only light is whatever sad, filtered fluorescent light can bleed through the little window in the door and stain the floor.

The studio’s not so dark that I can’t see the girl at the piano. The same girl as last week. Seems silly, I guess, to identify someone based only on what I can see here—short, blond hair that won’t stay behind her ear, some kind of black pants, some kind of gray shirt—but it’s her. No question. The way she’s playing the piano, it’s instantly recognizable. Because she’s not just playing—she’s breathing life into hammer and string. She’s just pressing keys, but she’s not just pressing keys. I can hear the music coming out of the studio, and it wraps around my lungs like fingers, and it’s nothing simple, nothing that might have guided and accompanied the eight-year-olds who have their class in here. It’s nothing like the Chopin she was playing last time. This—this is brutal. Romantic. I don’t recognize it.

“Zoe?” Lena says. “Earth to Zoe?”

She’s still playing, this girl, whoever she is, her eyes closed as she sways over the keys. Her whole body is working as hard as her fingers, carrying her up and down the staff. Carrying us both.

Someone’s brown fingers snap in front of my face, and I blink.

Kamala says, “You get stuck in a loop, girl?”

“No,” I say, because maybe that will get them to leave me alone so I can keep listening.

“She is pretty good,” Lena says. 

It didn’t work, so I try, “This is one of my favorite pieces.”

“Sure,” Kamala says, like she knows I’m lying. “I’ll be outside.”

And then she and Lena are gone, and the only thing separating me from this girl is a layer of glass, a wooden door that never swings shut as much as it should.

Jay closes his eyes when he listens to music that affects him like this, but I—I don’t. I don’t do that right now, anyway, because the way she’s moving, the way she’s playing is just as important as what she’s playing. She was cute while she was playing the Chopin. Pretty. Hot. Whatever. But right now—she’s fucking beautiful? And I—

She stops. Sits stock-still. The silence is as pounding as the music was. I can hear the ringing in my ears that I only ever hear when I’m the only one who can’t fall asleep.

Her hands: paused.

Her head: tilted.

I forget to breathe.

She stands.

I’m gone. ...