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She cups the back of my head and pulls my mouth to hers to place a gentle kiss on me. Her lips feel like pillows.
"Want to know my secret?" she asks, and I nod. "Valentina has been dying to get a taste of her new husband."
My head falls back and I let out a full belly laugh.
I'm going to cherish the fuck out of her.
The end.
Turn the page for a preview of Stay With Me, book 1 in the Stay With Me series by Nicole Fiorina.
Prologue
“You stood before me, a memory,
but I was a stranger in your eyes.
Did you forget to remember
or remember to forget?”
—Oliver Masters
mia
I WOULD NEVER FORGET the day you slipped away. A small lift of your chin and our eyes met. I only saw emptiness in a place where a wistful vulnerability used to collide with wonder. Now, a hollowness of a bottomless pit. In your eyes, I'd never seen your shade of green so dim. It caused my stomach to fall into the same somber eclipse, spiraling faster and faster with no end, no walls, only darkness.
And then you averted your gaze.
The flesh from my bones, the blood in my veins, the oxygen in my lungs, all of it crumbled, breaking into small pieces yet still holding on by a thread—the thread was my heart. It pumped on auto-pilot as if it couldn't associate with the rest of my body. It’s thumping sounded in my ears, and I wished it would stop, but my heart was not ready to let go. It continued with the same steady beat, refusing to give up what was right in front of me. Maybe your eyes will return to mine, I thought—well, prayed.
And I waited.
Two seconds passed.
Then three—waiting as my body weakened from your disconnection, and my heart continued to pump.
Four.
And then your back was to me.
Whatever we’d had no longer existed, but I remembered everything clearly, and it wasn't fair. Could I have accepted the hollow look in your eyes over the wonder? Surely, anything you had to offer would be better than nothing. If only you had turned back around. Had you even noticed me?
And then you took a step in the opposite direction.
You were gone, left in obscurity and I couldn't bring you back, but my heart still maintained a steady beat, pumping along to a rhythm of crimson hope. "Stay with me," you had said over and over. Who would have thought you would be the one to take a step into oblivion? I'm screaming now, can you hear me? Why didn't you stay with me?
I didn't get to kiss you goodbye. You were gone, and even though you were only twenty feet away, I missed you. It was entirely possible you'd wake up and turn back around, or I'd wake up.
Either way, it was a nightmare.
I forced my eyes closed. I couldn't watch you walk away, each step drawing more distance and less of a chance of you coming back. The darkness was better, anyway, and if I held my lids closed tight, I could see stars. I focused on the yellow and orange horizon behind my eyelids, pretending it was a sunset through the bitterness. The only warmth was the water gathering in the corners of my eyes. The tears struggled for a moment, fighting the same lie as my beating heart.
I wished I could switch places with you, because I didn't deserve a world once blessed by your light, and you didn't deserve this at all.
But this is what I deserved.
In the beginning, I’d thought you'd be fun, and I’d thought I could leave you effortlessly. It was me who ripped hearts out, but now mine was the one bleeding. The walls surrounding me had been durable, indestructible, before you.
