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Love at first sight isn’t a real thing—I know that. But there is certainly a something
at first sight. A jolt, a magnetic draw, a heartbeat that skips and a world that narrows down, focusing on nothing but the space between you and that other person. It’s a moment when intuition overpowers reason and butterflies burst to life inside of you, their delicate wings tickling your heart.
Life is too short to waste precious time on people who don’t appreciate and value you—family or not.
I want to cry again. Not from haunting memories, not from sadness. I want to cry because he feels the need to remind me that I’m safe when it’s impossible to feel anything but safe when I’m in his arms.
I want to cry because he feels the need to remind me that I’m safe when it’s impossible to feel anything but safe when I’m in his arms.
And that’s the thrilling appeal of Gabe Wellington—the draw of him. That’s what keeps me running into his arms, keeps me tethered to him, has me agreeing to an eight-hundred mile road trip across the country. He makes me feel like I can be anything. Do anything. With him by my side, I could fly.
“You look at her with love,” she says gently. “And she looks at you like she doesn’t know what to do with that love.”
A woman too in love with a dead man to see a future with me.
I spin her around, letting her fall against my torso, and I nearly collapse under the weight of it. Not from the weight of her, but from the weight of what she does to me. The weight of painful, one-sided love. It will forever be the heaviest thing I carry.
“I see you, Gabe,” she murmurs on a sleep-laced breath. “I only see you.”
“With you in the world, how can there be anyone else?”
He’s shown me a thousand times, a thousand different ways, that he loves me. But it’s these words that break through.
“Am I hurting you?” he asks. “No,” I murmur. “You’re healing me.”
It’s funny how life goes on, despite it all. The sun shines brightly when your mind is filled with rain and clouds, and music plays even when you can hardly recognize the melodies. Birds fly when you’re collapsed and broken, and you don’t understand how they can fly so high, so effortlessly, when you can’t even find your own footing, let alone your wings.
“I do love you!” she shouts, severing my words as she whips around to face me, her chest heaving. “I love you. But not with my whole heart, because my heart is no longer whole. I love you with the chewed-up, tattered pieces of it. The shredded remains
that have somehow kept me alive for this long. And you don’t deserve that, Gabe. You don’t deserve to be loved with scraps, with the bloody leftovers. That’s not fair.”
“I’ll take your leftover pieces. I’ll cherish those pieces. And I’ll spend my whole damn life doing everything in my power to make your heart whole again.”
“I don’t want someone who kills for me. I don’t want someone who dies for me.” Swallowing the emotion, she raises both palms and clasps my face. “I just want someone who will live for me.” My heart stutters.
“I would have waited forever for you,” I say, pressing a kiss to her temple. “Even if you never loved me back, I would have waited, and I never would have regretted a single second of it.”
