Page 11 of In Every Chapter

Greyson’s eyebrows flew up. “Jules?”

“My best friend. She . . .” I winced. I couldn’t remember exactly how I knew her. College? Roommates? It hurt too much to think, but I knew her. “She’s like a sister,” I whimpered pathetically against the tears.

“I’m going to give you something for the pain,” the doctor said.

My mind raced with thoughts faster than a skeet shooting competition, but I couldn’t catch a single thought that made sense. So, I tried to nod and ended up groaning. I glanced at Greyson. “Do you know Jules? She’s a Satterfield, too.”

His smile was soft. “She’s my baby sister. She was here earlier but had to step out for a bit. She’ll be back soon.”

“Okay.” I breathed deeply. I wasn’t sure I could sleep with a strange man in my room, but my eyelids were too heavy to care. “Wait . . . Greyson.” I mused over the name attached to a hazy thread of a conversation. “You’re the war hero who’s too busy to ever come home.”

Greyson stiffened, like my words were offensive. And maybe they were—I didn’t exactly have a working filter at the moment. “I’m no one’s hero,” he said gruffly.

My eyes had sagged shut momentarily, but I heard the steel of his tone. I’d hit some sort of nerve. Too bad I was too exhausted to press further because I had questions. Big ones. Lots of them.

“Why are you here?” I whispered.

“Because you matter to me. We’re married after all.”

“How do you know?”

“You’re wearing my ring.” Slowly, Greyson lifted up my left hand, wrapped in a bandage. A gorgeous oval diamond set in a filigree band glinted on my ring finger under the pesky fluorescents.

It wasn’t Jared’s ring. We were thrifty college kids, and Jared was proud of the small diamond solitaire he bought me. So where was it?

“Relax, Pais. It’ll be all right.”

For some reason, I believed him. “Don’t kill me in my sleep,” I murmured. Or at least I think that’s what I said. Too many crime dramas late at night. Because I might have said “don’t kiss me in my sleep.” I couldn’t be held responsible for my concussed conversations with a handsome man . . . the husband I couldn’t seem to remember.

Chapter four

Paisley

Ten years ago. . .

I shouldered my backpack and gripped the handle of my scuffed brown suitcase until my knuckles turned white. All my worldly possessions were right here. I’d shaken off the dust of Oregon with a good riddance and moved on.

My final act had been to send Mr. V, my old social worker, a postcard and tell him not to worry about me. He was one of the good ones and the only thing I’d miss about my home state.

And I’d picked Seattle—the University of Washington, specifically—for my grand adventure. Something in me couldn’t leave the wild call of the Pacific Ocean behind. I had salt in my veins despite the scars.

But I’d be alone. And that was what I hated most. Even if I should have been used to it by now after eighteen years of no one truly being in my corner.

“You got this, Paisley Grace,” I whispered, hand on the cold doorknob of my dorm room. “You belong here.” After working my tail off in high school to get a scholarship, I’d made it. I had a place here. On the other side of this door were my roommates, Juliet Satterfield and Sabrina Carville. I could do this.

Channeling Jo March’s bravery, I twisted the knob and ushered myself into a new chapter.

The inside of the room was fairly militant, not like the cutesy dorm rooms I’d seen on teen drama sitcoms one of my foster sisters had been obsessed with.

A bonafide Barbie wrestled with her fitted sheet on the bottom bunk of one of the beds, and “Goodbye Earl” blared through the room on a portable speaker.

My options were “fear for my life” or “I just found the Mary Anne to my Wanda” because I had to respect a fellow teenager who appreciated The Dixie Chicks.

Potential-Mary-Anne spared me a single glance and a grunt as I stepped inside. “Paisley McBride?” she asked, her voice huskier than I expected for her age.

“Uh, yeah.” I hiked my backpack higher on my shoulder. “How’d you know?”

She won the battle with the final corner of the sheet and faced me, standing straight up.