Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 86826 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86826 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
My Kylie.
She was just thirty when we met all those years ago, already so confident in a way I never was. There was nothing tentative about her, nothing cautious. She moved through the world as if it belonged to her, as if she had every right to shape it to her will.
It burned hot between us. Love should unfold gradually, but it took hold all at once. A conversation that turned electric, a challenge that turned into fascination, fascination into infatuation.
But beyond that, she met me head-on. And I loved her for it almost immediately.
After only a few months together, I couldn’t remember what it felt like to exist without her. The rhythm of my days revolved around her presence so seamlessly it felt inevitable, as though she had always been there, just waiting for me to catch up. She had a way of cutting through the noise, through the endless calculations and contingencies that defined everything else in my life, leaving something clear in their place. There was never any doubt… she was going to be my wife and in less than a year, she was.
And then there was Ben.
The memory of him comes softer, but no less powerful. I see him as he was then—small enough to fit entirely within the curve of my arm, wrapped in a blanket that seemed too large for him, his fingers instinctively closing around mine as though he had already decided I was worth holding on to.
I didn’t know I was capable of that kind of completeness.
Everything else—the expectations, the legacy, the constant, unspoken weight of my name—changed and felt smaller in the face of it. Not gone. Never gone. But pushed to the side, reduced to a secondary matter.
Kylie. Ben. They were the center of everything. They were what mattered.
Of course, my father saw it differently.
Even now, I can sense his disapproval, the cold precision with which he assessed her, as though she were a variable as opposed to the person I had chosen. He never needed to raise his voice. His disappointment was far more effective when delivered calmly, with that measured certainty that suggested he was simply stating a fact.
“She doesn’t understand our world,” he told me once. “And she never will.”
Maybe she didn’t.
But I did.
And I chose her anyway.
I chose her every time, despite the friction it created, despite the widening distance between my father and me that neither of us acknowledged out loud. Because when Kylie looked at me, she stripped away all of the expectations, obligations, and endless structure, and saw a simpler version of me underneath.
She saw me.
And she loved me so fully that everything around us seemed… negotiable.
And Ben—
Ben made it all worth it. Every silent tension that stretched between the life I had been born into and the one I was building for myself.
None of it mattered when I walked through the door and she was there, or when Ben reached for me, his entire world contained in that small, unsteady grasp.
Nothing else mattered.
The memory lingers, suspended in its clarity, and then—without warning—it gives way to a profound grief.
It moves through me with a familiarity that physically compromises me.
I try, instinctively, to hold on to the sound of her laugh, the feeling of Ben’s hand in mine—but they slip, distorted, pulled under by a force I can’t keep at bay.
Because I know where this goes.
I know what comes next. And I never let myself stay long enough to see it.
The pressure builds, rising too quickly, threatening to drag everything down with it—the warmth, the memory, all of it collapsing inward under the weight of what followed.
The dream fractures.
And just as the grief crests, as it threatens to pull me fully under—everything goes dark.
Chapter 11
Harper
Iplunge my hands into the soapy water, grab a glass and give it a good scrub before rinsing it. I keep my eye on the wall clock as I have to leave to pick up Julian in about an hour. The Vipers are playing the Boston Eagles at home tonight and I’m nervous, partly because I’ve become a big fan in a short time and partly because this is the first game I’ve driven him to since the one when he invited me to sit in the suite.
I have absolutely no expectations of such a repeat invite, but I can’t help but wonder if he will. I’ve decided that if he does, I need to firmly decline. I can’t keep letting him blur the line between employer and employee this way, because… well, it’s weird.
The front door opens abruptly and Dylan calls out, “Harper… you’ll never guess what happened!”
The glass nearly slips out of my hand, and I catch it at the last second as my heart lurches over the near catastrophe.
“What?” I turn toward Dylan, still barely gripping the glass. “What happened?”