PROLOGUE

CASEN

Two hours ago:

After Reece drops me off, I can barely feel my feet as they drag across the lobby floor of my apartment building. It’s early and the brightness of the day pains my bloodshot eyes. My body feels feeble, dejected, and all I want is to curl up in Embyr’s arms and lose myself until this pain goes away.

I’m sorry. We did everything we could to save him. His injuries were just far too much for his body.

The doctor’s words play over and over in my thoughts, and the vision of Ian’s mother falling to the ground, I know, will never leave me. My chest aches with the sobs I’m trying to keep at bay, but it hurts. Everything hurts. I’ve lost one of my longest known and best friends.

I look around the living room. I have no memory of how I got to the elevator and through my door. Searching for my phone, I toss the mail I didn’t realize I grabbed from the mailbox down onto my coffee table and find it setting there. The envelopes scatter across the wood as I reach for my cell, wanting nothing more than to get in touch with Embyr. To tell her I need her more than air right now. My hands, hovering just above the phone, begin to tremble as I spot Ian’s handwriting on a large white envelope.

My mind starts to go to war with itself. I want to open it. I want to feel connected with Ian again, even if just for a moment. Read one of the last things he wrote when he was alive. But I also want to keep it secure and save it for a day when I don’t feel so devastated. Open it on a day when I’m not rushing to run toward the woman I have fallen in love with.

Do I really want to read about Annie when I so desperately need Embyr in my arms?

My curiosity over what the envelope holds wins.

Without thinking, my fingers slide under the sealed flap slowly – my mind must want to see what he found.

I reach in, pulling out a thick stack of papers. Clipped to the top is a note in Ian’s chicken scratch that reads I’m sorry, man. Call if you have questions.

My lungs lose every space of oxygen, knowing I can’t call him. He’s gone.

I lower myself onto the couch and take a deep breath, hoping it will calm the intense beating of my heart, but if Ian is apologizing, what I’m going to find can’t be good. Why didn’t he bring this to me himself? I just saw him the other day. I flip Ian’s note face down onto the coffee table and come across the first piece of information – a birth certificate with Annie’s name on it.

Annie Lynn Barnes, born on May 12th.

A faint smile appears for a brief moment before grief over Ian clouds it, and I hiccup a sob. My shaking hands place the copied birth certificate down on top of his note. Among the pile is information on her parents. Her mother’s suicide. Her father’s untimely death. Their will and the sale of the house she grew up in. I find her acceptance letter to Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina but my eyebrows furrow in confusion. At the top of the next piece of paper, it’s titled Petition for Name Change.

I graze over each typed-in entry until I find Annie’s name as the petitioner. Upon reading the legal document further my body temperature rises, and I can feel my blood begin to boil over. My anguish over the loss of my best friend is amplified by the betrayal of the girl who I have fallen so hard for. Annie Lynn Barnes is now Embyr Ann Quinn.

Papers fly around the room as I bulldoze through them. A notification of name change to WCU. Another one to her banks. A diploma with Embyr’s name on it.

My heart cracks even further when I see a young Embyr but grown up Annie adorned with a cap and gown in a picture from her college graduation.

Question after question fills every inch of space in my mind and before I can think twice, I pick up the lamp on my end table and launch it across the room.

Fifteen minutes ago:

With every single step toward Embyr’s condo, my feet feel heavier. Like my shoes are filled with cement and the bag I carry over my shoulder is full of rocks. I lower my head, taking a deep breath, before lifting my hand and banging on the door. The weight of the past twenty-four hours is crushing me, and I can’t hold the tears off any longer. She doesn’t answer so I knock harder then carelessly drop my hand to the side.

I hear the click of the lock and from my downward gaze I see the door swing all the way open but stay rooted. I try to compose myself by keeping my anger and my sorrow under control. I look up, seeing Embyr for the first time all over again. I want her to comfort me. To hold me. Tell me everything is going to be okay. I also want to scream at her beautiful face and fuck all the lies right out of her. But instead I say, “Ian’s dead. He died.”

She reaches for me and I am paralyzed in her embrace. “Casen, oh my God! Are you okay?” She notices my hesitation and immediately lets me go. Her touch feels wrong now, and I feel my blood begin to boil all over again. I walk over and set the bag down, lowering my head and curling my fists to my side so I don’t pick anything up and throw it.

“No. I’m not fucking okay, Embyr.” I roar, my voice much harsher than I have ever taken with her.

Her eyes widen, and she appears frightened. I never want a woman to flinch in my presence but right now I don’t give a shit. She looks up at me. “Is…is there anything I can do?”

I can’t answer her. I’m afraid that I’m going to lose my shit. My body is at war with my emotions. I’m pissed. I’m sad. I’m defeated. I’m broken.

“I’m so sorry, Casen. That’s terrible,” she tells me, her voice barely a whisper.

She wants to console. She wants to make all of it go away. I want that too, but she fucking betrayed me. “No. That’s not terrible.” I involuntarily cry out. “You know what’s terrible? Wanting nothing more than to find my girlfriend, the woman I am in love with, and have her comfort me during the worst fucking day of my life.”

She takes four steps forward and tries to wrap her arms around me again. “I’m right here, Casen. Let me do it.”

“Don’t fucking touch me, Embyr!” I shout, gently shoving her away from me. Turning to my bag, I open it up and pull the package Ian sent to me. My next words come out harsh. “Or should I call you Annie?”

Embyr moves without hesitation, running into the kitchen, shattering a glass in her haste to grab some water. This must be the result of her many panic attacks. She leaves the glass on the floor and fills another one, gulping every ounce of it down. I stand there, watching her get caught up in her web of lies.

She turns to me, her knuckles white as she tightly grips the glass. “Casen.”

I stick my finger toward her in warning. “Don’t you say a fucking word! Not one word.”

“You have to let me explain.” She begs, side-stepping the shattered remains of the glass. It reminds me of my heart – shattered.

I toss the envelope her way. “Explain what? Explain all of that? I highly doubt you can dig yourself out of this hole.”

“I was going to tell you, I promise.” She pleads.

“When? WHEN? After I fell in love with you?” I shake my head in disbelief. “Well too fucking late. I did.” My feet move, but I’m too angry to know what I’m doing. Memories of the past few weeks, our talks, our dates, the sex, flash through my mind. I don’t understand her at all. “Was this all a game to you?”

She attempts to get me to take a seat but I’m too heated for it. “If we could just sit down and talk I can tell you everything. From Patrick to Evan. I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

What? Patrick and Evan. Why even bring that up? Unless… “Did you do that to them? Did you set them up?”

Her face pales. “Yes, but please. Let’s sit down.”

I stalk toward her, getting right in her face. This is much deeper than I thought it was. “Yes? Did you fuck over Thad and Wesley too? Is that why Wesley is suspected in setting the fire here?

“Wesley?”

“Yeah, Wesley. My friend at the station told me he is a suspect. Care to tell me why?”

She flops back down into her chair. “I was blackmailing him. He was seducing a student.”

Rage consumes me. I can’t control my anger much longer. “Un-fucking-believable! So, all that shit? It was all your doing? This is so much more fucked up than I thought.”

“I’m sorry.” Embyr starts to lose control of her tears. Her skirt suit wrinkles in the process of her breakdown. I don’t care. I just can’t process any of this right now.

Walking back over, I upend the opened bag and dump its contents out. “Here is your shit. I don’t want it tainting my house.”

“Casen. Let’s please talk.” Her cries are now racking her whole body.

“Do you know how much of a mind fuck it is to get home and have a letter from the best friend who just fucking died in your mailbox? Then open it up and find out the girl who you wanted to contact for years, the one you wanted to make amends with for all the shitty things she went through in high school, was right under your fucking tongue the night before. To find out the woman you love, who has been underneath you and beside you, has been lying to you for weeks now? The first person I opened up to.”

Her green eyes are drowning in shame. “I was going to tell you.”

“When, Embyr? When were you going to tell me? When I told you about what our friends did to you in high school.” The next words gut me to the core when I say them. “When we got married? After our first child or our second because Lord fucking knows I could see myself marrying you.”

I could see it. See her walking down the aisle dressed in all white but that vision is now jaded. All I see is red.

“We can still have that, Casen.” She pursues me, but I thwart her. “We can get through the hurt of Ian and of what I did and move on. Move past it. I’ll do anything I can to make it up to you.”

My stomach tightens with nausea. Oh my God! “Did you have something to do with Ian getting shot?”

Her eyes open wide in shock. “No! How could you even think I would do something like that?”

“Because I don’t fucking know you or what the fuck you are capable of!” I yell. “You set out on this revenge scheme and who the hell knows what you had on the agenda for Ian, Reece, and me. Though I believe breaking my fucking heart into a million pieces would have done me in…is doing me in.”

She continues to beg me. “Can we just start over, please?”

Deflated, I tell her, “Go get my stuff out of your room. I need to go. Ian’s parents are waiting for us at his apartment.”

She leaves me in her living room and I pace back and forth waiting for her to come back. I shake my head, commenting to myself how I’m never going to see the inside of this place again. The balcony where I made her come for the first time. The couch we nestled up to one another while we watched a movie. The place where I thought I fell in love with her. I’ll never see it again and that thought burns my soul. It shakes me, scares me to think that I won’t be with her anymore. I just can’t process all of it and then I turn to find a picture of us in a small four by six frame. We took it the night of Ian’s birthday party. I pick it up and allow a tear to fall down the side of my face. I wipe it away, torn between the moment it held and the betrayal behind it. I still love her, but I can’t trust her. She’s lost me. We’ve lost each other.

A crash in her room alerts me, and I’m annoyed with how long it takes to grab the menial number of things I’ve left here. I call her name out, frustrated.

When she doesn’t answer me, I walk back toward her room and find her crumpled up on her bathroom floor, my stuff scattered around her.

“Look at me.” I command her but she doesn’t comply.

Fuck this.

I reach down, grasping her chin between my fingertips. Her eyes are filled with black tears and for a moment I feel as though I might regret this. I can’t let this go though. I’m torn between what I know I need to do and what my heart wants me to do. My anger wins out. “Never mind. I don’t want my stuff. It’s tainted. Don’t you ever come near me ever again.” And then my love for her breaks through. I kiss her gently on the forehead, my lips burning in the process and I leave her on the floor.

I’ve lost two people today. One was taken, the other was by their choice.