Me Before You (Me Before You, #1)

by Jojo Moyes

“Come on, what’s the worst that could happen—I end up in a wheelchair?” It may sound stupid, but I couldn’t help but laugh. It was the closest Will had come to actually trying to make me feel better.

I read, and occasionally I glanced up and checked Will sleeping peacefully, and I realized that there had never been a point in my life before when I had just sat in silence and done nothing. You don’t grow up used to silence in a house like mine, with its never-ending vacuuming, television blaring, and shrieking. During the rare moments that the television was off, Dad would put on his old Elvis records and play them at full blast. A café too is a constant buzz of noise and clatter. Here, I could hear my thoughts. I could almost hear my heartbeat. I realized, to my surprise, that I quite liked it.

“I know my son.” “Our son.” “Yes. Our son.” More my son, I found myself thinking. You were never really there for him. Not emotionally. You were just the absence he was always striving to impress.

I am not usually good with strangers, but desperation made me fearless.

“Because I’d be uncomfortable. I feel like . . . I feel like they’d know.” “Who? Know what?” “Everyone else would know that I didn’t belong.” “How do you think I feel?” We looked at each other. “Clark, every single place I go to now people look at me like I don’t belong.”

“I just . . . can’t bear the thought of you staying around here forever.” He swallowed. “You’re too bright. Too interesting.” He looked away from me. “You only get one life. It’s actually your duty to live it as fully as possible.”

“You, Clark,” he looked down at his hands, “are the only person I have felt able to talk to since I ended up in this bloody thing.”

“Sometimes, Clark, you are pretty much the only thing that makes me want to get up in the morning.”

I motioned to her to shove over, and I climbed into bed beside her. She took another sip of her tea, and then leaned her head on my shoulder. She was wearing my T-shirt. I didn’t say anything about it. That was how bad I felt for her. “What do I do, Treen?”

“It has been,” I told him, “the best six months of my entire life.” There was a long silence. “Funnily enough, Clark, mine too.”

I realized I was afraid of living without him. How is it you have the right to destroy my life, I wanted to demand of him, but I’m not allowed a say in yours? But I had promised. So I held him, Will Traynor, ex–financial whiz kid, ex–stunt diver, sportsman, traveler, lover. I held him close and said nothing, all the while telling him silently that he was loved. Oh, but he was loved.