Total pages in book: 44
Estimated words: 40635 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 203(@200wpm)___ 163(@250wpm)___ 135(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40635 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 203(@200wpm)___ 163(@250wpm)___ 135(@300wpm)
Chapter One
Mina
Six Years Later
"Hey. How are you?" Theia asks, worry evident in her voice as soon as I answer my ringing phone.
"I'm okay," I promise my best friend, staring out the window as Nashville passes by in blurs that make my skin crawl. I think maybe I'm lying to her. I feel wispy and insubstantial, as if a stiff enough wind might blow me away. "It's strange being back here again after all this time."
When I left town four years ago, I didn't intend on ever coming back. There were too many memories and too much pain painting every inch of this city. Everywhere I looked, I remembered him. I saw him. I felt him.
I couldn't take it anymore. So I ran all the way to California… somewhere I felt like I could breathe.
Funny thing, though, my lungs didn't hurt any less in San Diego. The memories didn't haunt me any less frequently, either. I just learned to live with Grayson's ghost constantly looming on the peripheral.
My gaze falls to the date tattooed on my wrist, tears blurring my vision. "It still feels like he's everywhere here," I admit, my throat raw. "I guess it always will."
"You never had closure," Theia whispers. "We see it a lot with families who lost a service member overseas on classified missions or those who don't have remains returned to them. They're frozen in grief because there's no resolution. They need answers or need to see a body to move forward but can't. It's called ambiguous loss."
I guess she probably understands the ins and outs of grief like this better than anyone. She works with the families of veterans at a nonprofit in San Diego. Her husband is a veteran himself.
"Black pit of loss would be more fitting," I mutter, only partially kidding. It is a big black pit…and I've been swimming in it for six years. Ever since Grayson flew to Mexico and disappeared.
I spent the first year praying for a miracle, hoping against hope that he'd come back. That he was being held hostage somewhere and that he'd materialize. I spent the next year harassing every official in Mexico City for information, trying to piece together where he went when he got off that plane and what happened to him.
All anyone could tell me was what we already knew—they found his rental wrecked with blood all over it. They dug around for a little while and then wrote him off as a lost cause, killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It wasn't good enough for me. I needed answers.
I looked for them everywhere, but no one could tell me anything. Eventually, I had to accept that he wasn't coming back. Grayson died in Mexico…and part of me died, too.
I'm not sure that I'll ever be ready to move on.
He was the love of my life.
He's the father of my child.
And he never even got to meet our daughter. Never even knew I was pregnant, actually. I found out about Brinley a week after he went missing. I thought it was just exhaustion and stress causing a stomach virus to linger. But it was Grayson's little girl growing in my belly.
It took four months before I could even tell anyone because I couldn't say the words out loud without feeling like I was going to splinter apart. I just kept clinging to hope that he'd come back and I could tell him first.
He never did.
I gave birth alone. I raised her alone. Every milestone, every birthday, every challenge I've faced alone. Because my husband vanished in Mexico.
If there's a guidebook that helps you heal from that, I haven't read it yet. And I've read a whole lot of books trying to navigate this grief.
"It would be more fitting," Theia agrees. "But you know therapists prefer fancy-pants words. Big black pit is not fancy pants enough."
"True." I smile despite myself. "Speaking of fancy pants…"
"If you're going somewhere glamorous right now in the back of a limo, we might not be friends anymore," she says, teasing me.
"I am, actually," I laugh quietly and then groan. "This is so bizarre."
"What?"
"I just inherited a law firm I don't want," I mutter. "Now, instead of doing school drop-offs and drinking cheap wine from the bottle, I have backstage passes to the biggest music festival in Nashville because I'm supposed to be meeting and greeting famous people who now kinda rely on me?"
My dad died six weeks ago, leaving his company to me. We weren't even on speaking terms and hadn't been since…well, since Grayson disappeared, honestly. He was the reason Grayson was in Mexico in the first place. Him and his need to control my life. If he'd just left us alone, Grayson would still be here. Brinley would have her dad. My life wouldn't be shattered to pieces.