Chapter One
Bowen
The world owes you nothing.
There, I said it. And I hope to God you actually listened because it’s the best piece of advice you will ever receive. It took over thirty years of my life, five days of surviving the unimaginable, losing the woman I loved—not once, but twice—and then facing the horrific, paralyzing, and utterly impossible task of moving on without her before I finally figured it out.
The world owes you nothing. Not even a final goodbye.
When I proposed, I imagined we’d grow old together. If my mother’s side of the family was any indication, my rich brown hair would have fallen out while hers would have faded into a timeless silver. We would have held hands, rocking on a porch swing while a ball of fur roughly the size of a football played fetch with our grandkids. One night we’d go to bed, she’d curl into my side, whisper I love you, and then we’d drift off into the afterlife together.
I mean, not that I’d planned our deaths or anything, but we all had romanticized thoughts on how we’d go.
This was never how it was supposed to end. Though not many things in the storm of our relationship had gone as planned.
The world owes you nothing.
It had given us even less.
To adequately convey my journey through hell, I’ll need to start at the end.
The very end.
The last time I saw my Sally.
“Are you just going to sit there and mope the whole flight?” she snipped.
I gritted my teeth and tried—unsuccessfully—to cross my legs in the suffocating confines of the middle seat. I was six-foot-four to her five-foot-nothing, yet she had settled into the one on the aisle as soon as we’d found our seats.
Such was life with Sally.
After a muttered apology for bumping the snoring man on my other side, I flicked my gaze to the Bloody Mary in her hand. “Sorry, is my mood killing your buzz?”
Her blue eyes sparkled in the glow of the reading light. “It really is.”
I shook my head and went back to mindlessly flipping the pages of a magazine I’d bought at the terminal back in Colorado. I’d picked it up with hopes it would be a distraction from the cyclone raging within me on our way back to Atlanta. The minute she ordered that drink, I’d known it was a lost cause.
Her hand came across the armrest and landed on my thigh. “Bowen, stop. It’s not a big deal.”
It was the truth. Compared to everything we’d been through, our house could have been swallowed by a sinkhole and it wouldn’t have been considered a big deal.
Honest to God, I was lucky to still have her at all. It had only been nine months since we’d met, but we’d lived a thousand lives in that time. Unfortunately, that also meant we’d died almost as many deaths.
Terrifying, tortuous, agony-filled deaths.
We’d also found love though—immeasurable amounts of it.
I stared down at her engagement ring. I’d cashed out a huge chunk of my savings account and still had to open a line of credit with the jewelry store to buy the three-karat princess-cut ring. The payment was roughly the same as I paid for my truck each month, but the tears in her eyes as she’d sat in her hospital bed, clutching it to her chest the day I proposed, made it all worth it.
She was worth it. Every day, every tear, every worry-filled minute shaved off my life.
I’d do it all again.
If only I weren’t so fucking helpless to save her. I loved that woman. Whole heart. Whole soul. Bend me, break me, crack me open and she would have been there. No matter how bad it got, she was always a part of me.
I wasn’t sure anymore if she could say the same.
“Bowen,” she whispered, just as she’d done so many times before. It was a plea. One she knew I’d answer no matter the situation. No matter how mad I got. No matter how much I feared losing her again.
My gaze instinctively lifted to hers.
She smiled and the sight caused an ache in my chest. It was a lie.
Fuck. I missed her smile.
“Baby, I’m okay.” She tilted her head to her drink. “I hate flying. That’s all this is.”
That was a lie too.
My shoulders fell and a loud breath tore from my burning lungs, but I let myself pretend, my mind going back to a time when it could have been the truth.
I thought of the nights we’d shared multiple bottles of wine and made love, laughing and moaning under the covers until the sun crept across the horizon. She’d rested peacefully in my arms. No nightmares. No crying in her sleep. No insomnia. Just even breaths, her head on my shoulder, and her body wound around mine so tightly it was like a second skin.
But that was the past.
The unreachable, insurmountable past.
The plane jerked, forcing me back to the present.
“Shit.” She moved her hand off my thigh to grasp her drink as it sloshed all over her. “Crap, crap, crap,” she chanted, using a cocktail napkin to dry the dark-red pool of tomato juice on her white pants.
For a moment, I sat there and watched her struggle. It wasn’t the most chivalrous thing to do, but I was all out of grand gestures.
She unbuckled her seat belt and lurched to her feet, her phone along with a handful of ice cubes from her lap falling to the floor. “Damn, this is going to leave a huge stain.”
The plane jerked again and she stumbled forward, crashing into the seat in front of her before I could catch her arm.
“Dammit, sit down before you get hurt.”
Ignoring me, she bent over to fish her phone from under the seat. “Hit the button for the flight attendant. I need some club soda and a lemon. STAT.”
“No, what you need is to sit down.”
I gave her arm a tug and dragged her down to the seat. Using the tip of my boot, I swept her phone toward her. Aforementioned lack of chivalry aside, I was no contortionist; leaning over to pick it up was out of the question.
She folded her upper body over my lap and blindly patted around the floor. I fought the urge to run my fingers through the back of her hair. In the beginning, it would have been a no-brainer. I’d have curled forward and suggestively whispered in her ear, “Since you’re already down there…”
She would have grinned up at me, her whole face filled with mischief as she traced a finger over my zipper, ignoring anyone who dared to watch her as she replied, “You mean down here?”
I’d have grabbed her hand and made her stop even though I was the one who had started it. Sally had no filter. She always took it one step too far. I’d loved that about her when we’d first met. It was fresh and exciting, a far cry from the stuffy women I’d dated in the past.
But now, she was in the past too.
We were in the past.
Although, it wasn’t fair to say she was the only one who had changed. I was a different person too. The trauma of thinking you’d lost your soul mate would do that to a man.
I worried about her. Not more than I should, but probably more than was healthy. My sister had nagged me for months to talk to someone, but I’d felt like such a hypocrite, rushing off to therapists and doctors while she sat at home, playing with our dogs and testing out new recipes.
Still, one of us had to get help. Someone had to be the better half in this relationship. Currently, we were just two people—broken and even more broken.
And in love.
Irrevocably.
And terrified.
Constantly.
My stomach churned as I thought about what would happen after we got home. She’d go back to smiling all the time and touching me every chance she got. Then one day, I’d wake up and she’d already be awake. At first, I wouldn’t be sure if it was because she’d gotten up early or if she’d never gone to sleep. As the days passed, the answers would become clear while she slowly faded into a hollow pit of nothingness right in front of my eyes.
She’d insist she was fine.
I’d have a nervous breakdown waiting for her to fall apart.
And then, two months later, we’d be right back on this plane, headed to the very same post-traumatic stress treatment facility she’d left way too soon.
It wasn’t her fault. None of it.
Unfortunately, I’d learned over the last few months that my feelings of helplessness often manifested in frustration. I wanted to help her. I wanted to fix us. But all I could do was sit in the middle seat beside her, a mere passenger on her journey.
The flight attendant arrived with a stack of napkins and a trash bag. I watched, numb and emotionless, as they joked about the pilot owing her a new drink.
There was a whole chaotic process of the flight attendant retrieving a bottle of club soda, then a lemon, then a woman behind us piping up to say lime actually worked best. The man in front of us teased that we were close to a fruit salad. Then the male flight attendant came over with a towel and informed us that if we added a little gin to all that soda and lime, we might forget about the pants altogether.
They chatted and laughed and carried on like everything was so damn normal.
It wasn’t though.
They had no clue that beneath those beautiful eyes and bright smile was a fucking tragedy.
And there was not one damn thing I could do to make it better—for either of us.
The plane shook again and this time it was accompanied by a stomach dip. The pilot was on the overhead speaker in the next beat, informing us that we were beginning our descent into Atlanta and the rest of the ride might be bumpy. Equal parts relief and dread washed over me.
We were almost home.
Fuck, we were almost home.
Leaning my head back, I closed my eyes. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t watch her fake it anymore.
Yet, I would.
Day after day.
Until I took my final breath. Because not having her in my life wasn’t an option. It would suck. It would hurt. It would shatter me. But I’d do it. I would fucking be there for her.
At least, that had been my mindset before I realized the world owed me nothing.
There had been so many times over the last few months when I’d told myself we were at rock bottom. Things couldn’t possibly get worse. However, being engulfed by the flames of hell once didn’t mean you were exempt from them in the future. The odds of lightning striking the same place twice were so small it should have been an impossibility. But it must have happened at least once for there to have been odds at all.
As I listened to Sally clicking her seat belt and the flight attendant collecting trash up and down the aisle, I was oblivious that it was about to happen again.
If I’d known—if only I’d fucking known.
I would have grabbed her face and told her that, despite everything we’d been through, loving her was the single best thing I’d ever done in my life.
I would have dropped to my knees and begged for her forgiveness for not having been more patient when she’d needed me.
I would have kissed her and made sure she knew that, no matter what happened, there would never be a day when I didn’t love her with my whole heart.
I would have pulled her into my arms. I would have made sure she wasn’t scared. I would have made sure my Sally went out of this world cocooned in the very same unconditional love she’d always offered me.
We weren’t a hundred years old after having spent the better part of a century together. We didn’t have kids, much less grandkids. There was no porch swing. There was no crawling into bed together before whispered I-love-yous. But dammit, if I had only known it was the end, I’d have gone with her. Wherever it was, whatever that looked like. I just wanted to be with her.
However, I didn’t know.
So, when she leaned in close, the scent of alcohol ghosting over my cheek as she murmured, “Come on, Bowen. I know you didn’t fall asleep that fast,” I pushed her away.
I didn’t even open my fucking eyes to steal one last glance.
“Leave me the fuck alone, Sally.”
Yeah. That was what I said to her. The very last words I said to the woman I loved more than my own life were “Leave me the fuck alone, Sally.”
And hers to me?
She sighed, kissed my cheek, anchored her hand to my thigh, and mumbled, “Right. Love you too, jerk.”
The world owes you nothing.
I knew this because, not ten minutes later, it stole my entire life.
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