Prologue
June
Texas
Age ten
Iscribbled down the “The End” and a huge smile broke outon my face. The stars twinkled outside my window, and my heart felt so full that I wasn’t sure my chest could contain it.
I closed the notebook that now held my first-ever story. I ran my hand over the title—“Her Prince.” It was twentywholepages about a prince and a fairy princess and their treacherous journey to save their lands. And on the way, they fell in love.
Of course they did.
They loved each other deeply, like my mama and daddy. It was because of them that I wanted to write about love. Mama would tell me about seeing Daddy when she was eighteen. She said, just by looking at him, she knew he was the love of her life—the boy she was going to marry. Daddy said the same for him,love at first sight. I wanted that for me so badly. I wanted to meet a boy who was kind but brave, like Daddy, strong but always showed his love for me on his sleeve.
Sighing, I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to imagine the boy who I would meet, the one who would hold my heart in his hand. I tried to think of the color of his hair, his eyes; tried to guess his name… Nothing came to me—just a blurry outline of who hecouldbe—but I could imagine the butterflies that would swoop in my stomach when I would see him.
A smile pulled on my lips, and when I opened my eyes, I gazed out of my bedroom window at the full moon outside. In this part of rural Texas—a small, country town, home to only two thousand people—the thought of my future love seemed so far away, so big and out of reach. But when I ran my hand over my notebook with my finished story inside, that dream didn’t seem so unattainable anymore.
“Love,” my mama said, “is the most powerful thing in the world. It can heal and it can grow in the most unlikely of places. When all is lost, love blooms.”
Lying back on my bed, I stared at the bright moon, its glow lighting up the neighboring ranch, and whispered, “I want a love like my mama and daddy. Please, Moon, when I’m old enough, send me someone to love.”
CHAPTER 1
June
Texas
Age seventeen
“I’m so sorry…but there’s nothing more we can do.”
The words hit my ears in pieces, like scattered drops of rain. Numbness spread along my limbs until it rendered me immobile. Dr. Long’s sorrow-filled face blurred before me as my eyes seemed to lose focus and every inch of my body froze.
I’m so sorry…
Dr. Long’s voice repeated in my head like it was caught in a wind tunnel, circling and echoing, trying to reach my shocked heart. I was trapped in some kind of cocoon. A distant, loud wail could be heard outside of it, but I couldn’t move to see where it came from. I caught a flash of movement in my periphery but couldn’t shift my eyes to see what it was. I heard crashing, then a deep, sorrowful cry filling the room, like it had been ripped from the depths of that person’s soul.
…but there’s nothing more we can do.
My heart began to pound, Dr. Long’s words still trying to break through, along with the outside cries and wails clattering at my impenetrable walls.
I shook my head, tried to think, tried to get my bearings, but it was no use. My breathing came quickly, and I distantly felt wetness falling down my cheeks. A hand wrapped around mine, clutching it tight like they would never let it go. I blinked and blinked again, trying to focus, trying to find my way back from this frozen, shadowed state. Then the comforting feel of my mama’s arms wrapping around my neck hurtled me back into the present, until the doctor’s office slammed back into twenty-twenty view. Until the raw rasp of my daddy’s broken cries whipped around me and my mama’s shaking arms seemed to ground me. I gasped and allowed the cool air from the air conditioning to inflate my lungs.
Dr. Long still sat before me, and I stared at his sorrowful face.I’m so sorry…but there’s nothing more we can do.
I waited for the heavy weight of reality to push down upon me, for the cries and screams to rip from my mouth, for the anxiety that I’d been fighting for so long to take me in its unyielding grasp. But none of it came. My mama cried into my neck, my daddy dropped to his knees before where we sat and encased both Mama and me in his strong arms, but I was completely still. There was no shaking. No cries or screams. Just…stillness.
I was going to die.
I was seventeen, and I was going to die.
After all the fighting over the past couple of years—the chemo, the drugs, the panic attacks, all the pain—it was coming to an end. I was surprised to find that there was a morsel of relief to that. No more pain, no more medication, no more needles, just the realization that it was time to let go.
“June,” my mama whispered, lifting her head from the crook of my neck.
As I stared at her, my lips began to tremble. Not for me but forher…for my daddy.
