Wish You Were Mine

by Tara Sivec

Genres: Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance; Military Romance

Synopsis

From the USA Today best-selling author of The Story of Us and Fisher's Light comes a new, standalone novel — a heartwrenching story about second chances that will make you fall in love all over again.

Five years. I would've stayed away longer if I hadn't received the letter. Not a day has gone by that I haven't thought about her, haven't missed her smile, haven't wished that things were different.

The last time I saw my two best friends, I vowed to not stand in the way of their happiness, even if that meant I couldn't be a part of their lives. Cameron James and her emerald-green eyes were too much of a temptation and I couldn't stay and watch them together. Cameron deserved better than me. She deserved him.

But now that I am back, things are different. I'm not going to stand by and watch the woman I've always loved slip away again. I'm done living my life with regrets and I'm ready to tell her the truth. And I'll do whatever it takes to show her that I always wished she was mine.

Release date: November 14, 2017

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 272

Sample

Prologue

Dear Everett:

If you’re reading this, I’m dead.

Sorry, that’s probably not the best way to start off a letter to my best friend, after my sudden and horribly tragic death. You’ll surely never, ever be able to move on, because I was such an amazing person, but there it is. You know I’ve never been one to mince words. And while we’re on that subject, you’re an asshole.

It’s been four years since we’ve seen you. FOUR. I get it, believe me, I do. The first time I met you, when we were ten years old, you told me you wanted to be a doctor. For sixteen years I listened to you talk about how you wanted to do something with your life you could be proud of. We’re all proud of you, Everett. Proud that you accomplished what you set out to do, proud that you took charge of your life and made something of yourself. But you can’t stay away forever.

I don’t know what happened between you and Cameron the night you left, but I know she hasn’t been the same since. Neither one of us has. The Three Musketeers has been missing one of its members for four years, and if you aren’t here already, it’s time for you to come home.

Yes, I’m guilting you into coming home because I’m dead.

Finished.

Gone.

Never coming back from the Great Beyond.

Do you feel guilty yet? You should. Because Cameron misses you, even though she won’t admit it. I’ve tried my best to make her happy without you here. She puts up a good front about not giving a shit that you’ve been gone for so long, but I know she’s lying. She needs you now, more than ever. She needs you to get that stick out of your ass, suck up the reasons you’ve stayed away from us, and come home.

I’m not going to be there to make her laugh, wipe away her tears, or cheer her on when she does something amazing. I am officially passing the baton over to you. It’s your turn now. You’ve traveled around the world, you’ve saved lives, you’ve become a goddamn hero to strangers. Now it’s time to be a hero back here at home, where you belong. It hasn’t been the same without you. We haven’t been the same without you, and now that I’m gone, you can make it up to me by GETTING YOUR ASS BACK WHERE YOU BELONG.

And just so you know, I read your box of wishes. You know the ones we swore we’d never, ever read until we were all old and gray. Dude, I’m dead, so you can’t be pissed at me for that. But I am so pissed at you from beyond the grave for never telling me about that shit. I mean, I knew, of course I knew. I’m not blind or stupid. But all these years when I thought you were just being an idiot and refusing to admit how you felt, or figured you must have changed your mind and moved on, you were actually admitting everything to those fucking stars! I’m your best friend and you didn’t even tell me. Is that why you stayed away for four years? If it is, you’re an even bigger asshole than I thought. It’s time to stop wishing on those fucking stars every year and make your dreams come true by actually doing something about it.

Brace yourself, because I’m going to say a few things now that will make me sound like a pussy. Just remember, I’m doing this for you and I’m still a manly man.

I know what it’s like to look at a woman and, suddenly, everything makes sense.

I know how it feels to love someone so completely that you have no idea how you survived before her.

I’ve had that love returned tenfold, and even though I know I don’t deserve it, I’ve done everything I could to make sure I don’t fuck it up. You know, aside from the whole dying thing, but what can you do?

Don’t fuck this up, man. Cameron has been hurt enough. She’s going to be hurting even more after I’m gone and I need you to pick up the pieces and put them back together. I need you to give her everything I won’t be able to anymore.

I’m sorry I won’t be there to see Cameron kick your ass for staying away for so long. Be careful, she’s developed a mean right hook over the years. But go easy on her, man. She’s going to pretend to be okay, pretend like everything is fine and she’s fine and her whole damn life is fine…you know how she is. Always more concerned about everyone else than she is about herself. But she needs you now, more than ever.

I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was sick the last time we talked on the phone, but what would have been the point? It’s not like you could have done anything about it, aside from sitting here and watching me die. I don’t want you to remember me like this. It’s bad enough Cameron has to have this picture of me in her head for the rest of her life—I won’t do that to you, too. I want you to remember me as the devastatingly handsome, perfect specimen of man that I was. I want you to remember the good times, the laughter, growing up together at the camp, and me being full of life instead of confined to this fucking bed with barely enough energy to write this damn letter. Don’t you dare feel guilty about not being able to save me. I know you’re an amazing doctor, but sometimes, cancer wins.

Come home, Everett. Come home and finally do something about those wishes.

You can’t save me, but you can come home and save our girl.

Aiden

Chapter 1

How do you know when you’ve reached your breaking point?

Watching children die right in front of their parents’ eyes?

Telling someone that they’re sick, but you don’t have the resources to help them?

Seeing countless people get infections from unclean water and live in horrible conditions, and the only thing you can do is hand them pills and wait for them to get sick again?

Trying your hardest to travel to every third world country you could possibly think of to avoid going home, only to find out your best friend since you were ten years old died of pancreatic cancer?

And because you didn’t even know he was sick, you weren’t there to help. Never got a chance to apologize for being such a shitty friend. Never got a chance to say good-bye.

How much is too much?

I take another swig of vodka and let my head thump back against the wall, wondering how much more I can take. I’ve been trying to numb the pain with booze since I came back to the States. It works for a little while. The blur of vodka when it pumps through my veins makes me forget about everything for a few minutes.

A few minutes of peace.

A few minutes of not hearing the cries of babies or the pleas of mothers begging me to save their children.

A few minutes of not seeing Aiden’s face in my head, smirking at me and calling me an asshole.

A few minutes of not thinking about her.

One-hundred-and-eighty seconds when I can close my eyes and feel nothing.

With my ass on the floor and my legs sprawled out in front of me, I close my eyes and let the quiet oblivion take over, but it’s gone too soon. It never lasts long enough. Not anymore. Not after that letter he wrote.

That fucking letter.

I open my eyes and my body breaks out into a cold sweat when I see it crumbled up and tossed a few feet away from me. The letter I’ve been rereading for the last three months, ever since it showed up in my mailbox in Cambodia, exactly two weeks after Aiden died.

My eyes stay glued to the ball of paper, Aiden’s shaky and uneven handwriting peeking out of the crushed page. I bring the vodka back up to my lips and try to drink away the pain and misery swirling around inside of me. It doesn’t even burn anymore when it goes down, and I can almost fool myself into believing the water bottle I poured it in really contains just water. I don’t know why I bother trying to hide it at this point. My brother, Jason, has seen all the empty vodka bottles I’ve hidden under my bed and out in the garage behind shelves and boxes. In the trunk of my car yesterday, he found an entire box of empty liter bottles, which I’d meant to take out to the garbage dump and get rid of, but never got around to it. Probably because I was too drunk to drive there.

I laugh when I think about the intervention he had with me yesterday morning. He went in my trunk to borrow my jack for a flat tire he needed to change before he left for work, and saw that damn box of bottles. He made me promise to stop drinking. He made me promise to get help. Of course I agreed. He’s my baby brother. I live here with him in our grandparents’ old house until I can get back on my feet. A house my grandmother left to me when she moved away, the place Jason was forced to stay in and take care of while I was always gone. And he’s still here, taking care of the house and taking care of me instead of moving out and getting his own life. He puts up with my sorry ass day in and day out, and he deserves so much more than having a drunk for a brother who can’t get his shit together.

And I kept my promise. For almost twenty-four hours, I didn’t touch the one last bottle of Tito’s I had stashed on the top shelf of my closet. I gritted my teeth through the pain of withdrawal, and I threw up every ounce of water I tried to get in my system, but I did it. I pushed through it for Jason. I sucked it up for my little brother, who’d survived the same shitty childhood I had, but never got to escape like I did. I dealt with the shakes and the headaches and the puking and the fever so I wouldn’t have to see that same tired, disappointed look in his eyes when he got home from another day of work while I just sat my useless ass on his couch.

“You weren’t supposed to die!” I scream at the letter, still lying a few feet away, taunting me to crawl over to it and read the words inside again. “Why in the hell didn’t you tell me sooner?!”

The water bottle of vodka crinkles in my hand when I squeeze my fingers around it and angrily bring it up to my mouth, chugging it until it’s almost gone.

Aiden’s voice is buzzing in my ear like an annoying housefly you can’t swat away. It just keeps coming back and coming back, pushing me over the edge until I want to cover my ears and make it stop. The alcohol isn’t working. His voice just won’t go away.

You’re an asshole.

I hope you feel guilty.

Come home.

Come home.

Come home.

I am an asshole. I do feel guilty. And I’m home. I got on the next flight out of Cambodia as soon as that damn letter arrived, not even bothering to call home, just wanting to get back here before it was too late. I acted without thinking and of course I was too late. Two weeks too late to say good-bye, too late for the funeral, too late to make amends, too late to do anything but pick up a bottle and try to forget all the mistakes I’d made. It’s been exactly three months and two weeks to the day my best friend died in his sleep when his body just couldn’t fight anymore. Three months and two weeks to the day that he stopping existing.

I’ve spent every waking moment since I got home trying to forget about the pain Aiden’s death caused, and then a few hours ago a box of photos fell from the top shelf of my closet when I was looking for something. It came crashing to the floor, spilling memories of Aiden all around my feet. Aiden laughing at me during a game of basketball when we were ten, Aiden smiling at the camera with his arm wrapped around one of his many dates when we were in high school, Aiden smirking as he holds up his college diploma. Every memory of him seeped into my brain and squeezed the life out of my heart until that fucking letter I’d shoved into the back of my dresser drawer started taunting me to read it again. I could almost feel Aiden standing next to me, telling me I deserve to be miserable for the shit I’ve pulled. I was trying to do better and he just shows up in my brain, provoking me and pushing me to fuck it all up, make me forget about the promise I made to my brother until nothing else mattered but taking a drink so I could make it all go away. I came home, just like Aiden wanted, and all I want to do is leave.

“Do you really want me to take care of our girl now, Aiden?!” I shout toward the ceiling. “I bet she’d be really happy to see me show up at the camp like this.”

I laugh at my words, wondering if it’s the booze or my fucked-up head that’s made me start talking to myself like a crazy person.

“You weren’t supposed to die. You were always supposed to be here,” I mutter, my throat clogging with tears when I look over at his letter again.

I took everything for granted, and I have no one to blame but myself. I walked away from my two best friends and never looked back because I was a coward. I always thought in the back of my mind that one day I’d be able to get over my shit, get over how I felt about Cameron, come back home and they’d both be waiting for me, ready to forgive me for being an idiot. But now that’s never going to happen.

Aiden is never going to be there with a smirk on his face and a sarcastic comment at the ready. Cameron is never going to forgive me. For not being there while Aiden was sick, for not doing everything I could to try to save him, and for not going to her right when I got home.

I should have gone to her. We should have been able to mourn Aiden together, but I couldn’t deal with my own pain, let alone hers. I still can’t deal with my own pain.

No one understands what it’s like to come back home after you’ve been on the other side of the world, experiencing horrors no one back here sees or even realizes is happening. People here live in their happy little worlds, going about their happy little lives, and they forget there are men, women, and children without basic necessities, like clean water, so they, too, can have those happy lives.

Jason doesn’t understand, even though he tries to.

No one understands what it’s like to be back here. What it’s like to have nothing to do with your free time but think and feel guilty about the people you couldn’t save in another country, or the person you should have saved right here at home. To feel like you’re constantly living in a nightmare where every thought and every memory is a film reel of all the ways you fucked up.

I’m so tired of feeling this pain. I just want relief. I just want to feel nothing at all. My eyelids grow heavy and my vision starts to blur as darkness and the sweet bliss of numbness covers my body like a warm blanket.

“Goddammit, Everett! Son of a bitch…”

I hear my brother’s voice, and even though it sounds muffled and far away in my drunken brain, I can still hear the anger in it. I don’t even realize I’ve slumped over onto my side until I feel Jason’s arms come under me and slide me back upright against the wall.

“Open your eyes. Open your fucking eyes!” Jason shouts close to my face.

The darkness surrounding me disappears when I blink my eyes open as his palm smacks against my cheek.

Sadness, worry, anguish, and fear.

That’s what I see written all over my brother’s face as he looks at me and shakes his head. I want to apologize to him that he found me like this, but what’s the point? He’s found me in similar situations many times since I got home, and my apologies aren’t worth shit at this point.

I want to tell him that I don’t want this crutch of alcohol. I don’t want to need it, feeling like it’s the only way I can survive the pain. The pain in my gut, the pain in my head, and the pain in my heart. Without drinking, it all comes back until I want to claw at my skin and scream until my throat is hoarse. I open my mouth, but the words won’t come.

He sits down next to me and kicks his legs out in front of him, mirroring my own.

“What was it this time? Flashback? Bad dream?” Jason asks quietly, listing off all the excuses I’ve given him over the last few months when he’s smelled the alcohol on my breath or found me passed out on the couch.

I lean forward to grab the letter from Aiden, but the room spins and I have to quickly lean back against the wall before I puke. Instead, I lift my arm and point to it.

He looks away from me to the crumpled-up ball of paper, letting out a big sigh before reaching over to grab it. I watch silently as he uncrinkles it and smooths it out against his thigh. I stare at his face, blinking a few times to keep it in focus, as he reads through the letter.

“Jesus Christ,” he finally whispers. “Where did this come from?”

I clear my throat and look away from him to stare at the opposite wall in our grandparents’ living room before answering him.

“It came when I was in Cambodia. Two weeks after he died.”

Jason doesn’t say anything for a few minutes, and I take the time to look around the room. I always loved this house growing up. An old farmhouse on the outskirts of Charleston, it was filled with happy memories and good times, the complete opposite of the home we shared with our mother in New Jersey. I looked forward to spending every summer here with our grandmother. She baked us cookies, she fed us home-cooked meals, and she paid attention to us. She loved us and she cared for us and she did everything she could to make us happy.

This house that was once full of dreams now feels like hell. I can’t stand these four walls that surround me, caging me in, not letting me get away from the memories and the pain.

“I’m sorry, Everett. This letter is…shit. I don’t even know what to say about this thing. Why didn’t you tell me? Is this why you’ve been drinking yourself into a coma since you got home?” Jason asks.

“It is what it is,” I shrug, ignoring the drinking comment. “He’s right. I’m an asshole, but there’s nothing I can do about that now.”

My brother scoffs, pushing himself up from the floor to stand over me. It hurts my head to look up at him. The overhead light is shining in my eyes and stabbing into my skull, and I curse when I have to shield my eyes to see his face.

“I know I’ll never understand everything going on in that head of yours. I know I’ll never be able to sympathize with all the shit you saw over there. And I know the sadness I feel about Aiden being gone is nothing compared to what you feel,” Jason tells me. “But enough is enough. You were doing something you loved over there and you didn’t know he was sick. Even if you had, you couldn’t have done anything about it. He had the best medical team money could buy, flown in from all over the world. What he had, even your fancy medical skills couldn’t have fixed. You’re still alive and you need to start fucking acting like it. I’m sorry that letter hurt you, but I’m not sorry Aiden wrote it. He’s right. You need to get your head out of your ass.”

I can feel anger start to replace my buzz, and I clench my hands into fists in my lap. I don’t want to hear this bullshit coming out of his mouth. I know I deserve it, but I don’t want to hear it.

“What the fuck happened to the promise you made me yesterday?” he asks, snatching the water bottle out of my hand and hurling it across the room.

It smacks against our grandmother’s oak curio cabinet filled with her good china and drops to the floor, the last few sips of vodka leaking out onto the hardwood floor.

“It hurts,” I whisper, looking down at my balled fists, unable to look him in the eyes anymore.

“Of course it hurts, you dumbass! It’s called alcohol withdrawal for a reason. It’s not supposed to feel good, but I guess you don’t even want to try,” he fires back.

Jason squats down next to me and grabs my chin, forcing me to look at him.

“I’m sorry Aiden’s gone. I’m sorry you’re hurting and you feel guilty for not being able to save him. But screw you for not even trying. I was too young to remember losing Dad, but watching Mom fade away and drink herself to death was bad enough. You can go fuck yourself if you think you’re going to leave me behind, too. If you won’t do it for me, do it for Cameron. She lost Aiden, too, you know. What do you think will happen if she loses you as well?”

With that, he gets up and walks away. The angry stomp of his construction boots banging against the hardwood floor makes me drop my head into my hands to stop the damn thing from feeling like it’s going to explode.

I want to go back to the people that need me, but my employer won’t let me.

I want to stop hearing Aiden’s voice in my head, but he won’t let me.

I want to drown myself in booze, but my brother won’t let me.

No one will just fucking let me be.

My brother has no idea what he’s talking about. Cameron will be fine without me, just like she’s been for the last four years. She doesn’t need me. She’s never needed me.

Everyone needs to just fucking Let. Me. Be.

Chapter 2

Wishing in the past…
Ten years old

My name’s Aiden Curtis, I’m ten, and my daddy’s rich,” the kid who just walked up to me says.

He’s as tall as me, and we have the same dark brown hair and blue eyes, but his clean black dress pants and fancy white dress shirt prove his daddy really is rich. I feel like a bum standing in front of him in a pair of dirty and tattered jeans that are two sizes too small for me and a T-shirt stained with grease and mud.

I want to punch him right in the mouth, but Grandma always says I should never be the one to throw the first punch and start a fight, but I should always throw the last one and defend myself.

“Is your daddy rich, too?” Aiden asks, grabbing the basketball out of my hands and tucking it under one of his arms.

I really wish this kid would hit me already. I don’t care if his family just moved in down the road and his parents are friends with Cameron’s parents, which means he’ll be here at the camp all the time. I still want to punch him.

“Aiden! Don’t be mean. Everett doesn’t have a daddy anymore.”

The scowl I was shooting at Aiden quickly turns into a smile when Cameron walks up between us. I don’t really like girls. They’re loud and annoying and always giggling, but Cameron is okay, even if she is just a baby and only seven. She’s always covered in dirt, always has hay stuck in her hair from the horse barns, always getting in trouble for climbing trees too high, and she can whoop my butt in every activity here at camp, including archery. It should be embarrassing that a little girl can shoot arrows and play basketball and swim better than me, but for some reason it isn’t.

“You’ve got hay in your hair again, Cam,” I tell her, pointing and laughing at the pieces sticking out from her messy ponytail.

She just shrugs, puts her hands on her hips, and turns to face Aiden.

“You should apologize to Everett,” she informs him.

It doesn’t even feel weird that I’m letting a girl stick up for me. I’ve known Cameron since she was an actual baby. She wasn’t even a year old the first time my grandma brought me to the camp her parents own. I’ve spent every summer with her for the last seven years. For some reason, out of all the hundreds of kids at the camp, Cameron has always stuck to me like glue. And since she’s good at sports and stuff, it’s not annoying at all. It’s like having a girl for a little brother.

Aiden immediately wipes the smile off of his dumb face as Cameron keeps glaring at him, and he gives me a sad look.

“I’m sorry about your dad. If you want, my dad can buy you whatever you want if we’re friends. He’s got a lot of money.”

I think about the PlayStation all my friends at school have that my grandma says we can’t afford, the one my mom doesn’t even know I want, and I immediately agree to Aiden’s friendship request. It doesn’t take much for a ten-year-old to lose interest in a fight.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” I ask.

“Rich!” he replies with a laugh. “What do you want to be?”

I look down and kick a rock away with the toe of my shoe.

“A doctor, like my dad was. But I can’t. My mom doesn’t like it when I talk about being like my dad,” I tell him quietly.

Cameron moves closer to me and rests her head against the side of my arm.

My dad was a doctor for the Army. Ever since my dad was killed in the war when I was three, my mom hasn’t been the same, which is why I spend so much time with my grandma, why she started bringing me to Cameron’s parents’ camp. My mom gets really upset when I talk about being a doctor like him, even when I tell her I don’t want to be in the Army and that I’d never die like he did. I don’t want to be a soldier, but I want to save people like him. She cries a lot and locks herself in her room for days, so I don’t talk about it anymore. But it feels good to be able to say it out loud to someone else and not feel bad about it.

“You can do whatever you want when you get older. I can’t wait until I get older and no one can tell me what to do. If you want to be a doctor, you should be a doctor. You can give people shots and cut them open and you’ll be so cool and be so rich. Doctors make a lot of money.” Aiden smiles.

“You think being a doctor will make me cool?”

Aiden nods. “Definitely.”

I smile at him. “Okay, we can be friends.”

“Yay!” Cameron cheers, clapping her hands together and jumping up and down. “Aiden and I have been playing when you’re not here, and I’m so happy you like each other, too. Now we can all play together! I’m gonna make a wish on a star tonight that we’re going to be the bestest of friends forever and ever and I know it will come true!”

Aiden and I both laugh at how happy Cameron is. He hands me back the basketball and asks if we want to play a game, wh. . .