“No, no! I did it! I did everything I was supposed to!”
I couldn’t see what was happening around me. I felt electric shocks to my heart, and it made me feel faint. With every shock, the fainter I felt. They shocked my heart until I felt nothing, heard nothing, and saw nothing but light above me.
EPILOGUE
I was struggling against the tube in my throat, so afraid of everything that had just happened. Was I alive? Was I dead? Was I in Hell? I didn’t know.
“Bea, Bea calm down. You need to relax.”
I was choking on the tube, and the nurse began to take it out. I was instantly aware of how broken I was. All the bones in my body were sore and I was pretty sure there were some that were fractured. I looked down at my legs, and one was pretty bloody and bruised, while the other was in a cast. One of my arms was in a cast, and my neck was in a brace.
“Bea, your brother is coming right now. So is the doctor. I’m only a student. I’m not really supposed to say anything.”
Yeah, because saying that was comforting. When my brother and the doctor came in, I could tell Ben had been crying. I could tell that he thought I was good as dead, and seeing me in pieces on a hospital bed probably didn’t help.
“Bea, you’re lucky to be alive.” The nurse gave me a cup of ice chips and told me not to try to talk. My neck had been slashed by broken glass, nicking a vocal cord. I was lucky to have everything intact and to have not have bled out. Someone was watching out for me, they said, and now all I could do was heal. I had to heal.
***
After weeks of rehab, months of learning how to walk again because my legs had been crushed, learning to talk carefully because my vocal cord was damaged, I was gradually healing. Stitches were removed, leaving new scars—many scars I would never be able to escape. When William tried to visit me, I refused to see him. He wasn’t the one I needed…I needed Splinter. Unfortunately, Splinter wasn’t here. He wouldn’t be here for a while.
When I was cleared to leave the hospital, I went back to school and moved in with my brother. I wanted to be close to him, and my main means of transport had been destroyed. Every last thing of Everett was now gone, including his car. Maybe he could finally rest easy, but I didn’t think his car living its inanimate life on Earth kept him from resting in peace. Maybe me driving it did.
I tried to ignore William’s phone calls until one day I gave up and answered.
“Marry me,” he said.
Surprised by the words that came out of his mouth, I couldn’t speak.
“I know I told you to choose and you never did, or maybe you did and it wasn’t me. Please, marry me. Marry me and we’ll have a life together.”
“You’re only saying this because I almost died.”
“You did die, Bea. I was at the scene where they found you. They pronounced you dead at the scene, but you had a pulse that was barely there. I need to make sure you’re safe. I need to protect you.”
A wave of something unknown to me washed over my senses, and I said the simplest words, yet they were filled with power and strength.
“I don’t need you to save me. I’ll save myself.”
With that, I hung up the phone and decided that maybe I wasn’t a newborn, freshly born into the world covered in blood and shit. Maybe I was the phoenix. I died and came back to life by a one in a million chance. I burned to the ground and rose up from my ashes. I was still sprouting feathers and learning how to fly, but I knew that it would all come back to me. I was getting my life back. I was fighting for real. The one thing I had left to do would take time.
I needed to find the strength to truly love myself before going back to Splinter. I couldn’t love him if I couldn’t love myself, and that was the hardest thing to admit. As I remembered the image of my inner child wearing a bloodstained dress and screaming at me, I knew what must be done.
I must find myself and be reborn.
BEFORE YOU GO…
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Acknowledgments
To Mom: Thanks for showing me what true strength is and always being there to piece me back together until I was able to do it myself. I am forever grateful for you and I’m incredibly blessed to call you mommy.
To Dad: Thanks for loving me even when I wasn’t yours. You made me yours, and I wanted to show my appreciation by doing a little shout out in my book. You mean the world to me. I love you.
To Cary: Thanks for being the most incredibly sweet, kind and loving best friend a person could ever dream of. 11 years (12 since we always skip a year ahead) doesn’t feel as long as it really is. All I know is that I have all these memories with you, and I want to keep making memories with you. You are my rock. You are my soul sister. I can’t do a single thing without you, and I’m glad we’re in this together.
To Kris: I love you so very much. You make me feel like a goofier, geekier, punnier person than I already am. I’m glad I met you when I did, and that we will get married when the time is right. No words can tell you how much I love you and who you are as well as what you mean to me.
To Christine: Thank you for listening to all the spoilers of my book, my life, and helping me dredge through all the crappy stuff, focus on the good stuff, and make sure I’m always closer to the line of sanity and bringing me back to that line when I fall off the wagon. You are important to me…I mean you’re my therapist. You need to be important. I’m just glad you support me when I’m crazy and insane, as well as when I’m my normal dose of crazy and insane…you call it being “cute”. Thanks a bunch.
To Megan: Thanks for helping me through all of this even during the publication process. We were on a timeline, and you still were able to keep up with the task. I don’t think it would have been the same without you. See you next book.
There are plenty of more people I know I should think, but it’s 1AM and I’m tired. My brain can’t begin to list all of the people that deserve thanks for making this book possible. But don’t worry—if you don’t see your name, it is written in my brain as well as my heart. Thank you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alexandra Moore is a twenty-something author of New Adult and Young Adult novels. Outside of writing, she is a Rheumatoid Arthritis Warrior, and is a huge advocate for young writers of all creeds and walks of life, as well as a big supporter of people with chronic illnesses of all kinds. Ellen Hopkins, author of Crank, Burned, and Impulse to name a few, often inspires her writing. Because of this, she has learned to write honestly about what hurts the most. When she isn’t emotionally invested in her work and writing the next big project, she is spending time drinking Starbucks, watching Grey’s Anatomy on Netflix, Reign, and Game of Thrones. She claims to be the Mother of Dragons—but will settle for Mother of Hedgies and Fictional Characters. She also enjoys spending her time with her best friend Cary, and her fiancé Kris.
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/authoralexandramoore
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/amooreauthor
Instagram:
https://instagram.com/a.m.author
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Warning Signs (Broken Promises #2) Page 13