Ember (32 page)
Authors: Mindy Hayes
I grew up in San Diego, California exploring my interest for singing and playing the piano. I first discovered my passion for reading when I had to make my first flight alone to South Carolina to visit my, then, fiancé. My love for writing followed shortly after. My husband and I have now been married for six years and live in Summerville, South Carolina.
You can find me:
Blog: mindyhayes.blogspot.com
Facebook: facebook.com/hayes.mindy
Twitter: @haymindywrites
Me After You
New Adult Contemporary Romance
Coming Winter 2013
Prologue
I
stare at his casket, completely numb. I know I should feel something. My heart should be shattering, but the space where my heart should be feels hollow. My chest rises and falls, but I don’t know what’s powering it. I haven’t been able to breathe for days. The air is locked in my lungs with no escape. I must be suffocating.
I don’t understand. Why is he in there? He’s supposed to be on this side of the wooden box. With me. He’s supposed to be holding my hand, comforting me the best way he knows how, with the brush of his thumb over mine. But no one takes my hand. No one even says a word to me. They skirt around me like I’m surrounded by a force field.
They told me it had to be a closed casket. They couldn’t put his face back together to make the man I know. The man I knew.
Knew. I hate that word.
I don’t even get to look at his perfect face one last time. The last image I have of him is not the way I want to remember him.
Bloodied.
Swollen.
Broken.
He wasn’t supposed to die yet. He wasn’t sick. He wasn’t old. It wasn’t his time. How could it have been his time? My brain doesn’t understand. I don’t understand. Why was it his time?
They begin to lower him into the ground and I hear an excruciating sound. It’s piercing. Guttural. Desperate. My hands cover my ears to mask the sound, but it doesn’t help. Not even a little bit. Someone make whoever is creating that agonizing noise stop. Please make them stop!
When someone wraps strong arms around my body, struggling to hold me still and shushes into my ear, I realize it’s me.
“Sawyer, breathe,” the voice soothes. I don’t even know who it is. “C’mon, Soy. Breathe with me.” The voice is so calm. How can it be so calm? I can’t place who it is, but my brother is the only one who calls me Soy.
I gasp for air that doesn’t exist. I keep screaming no, but no one even asked me a question. Is that really going to be the last thing I say before he’s officially out of my sight? There’s a wet film over my eyes I can’t see through. I can’t see them lower the wooden box with my husband inside.
“I love you, Grayson,” I choke. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
The voice softly repeats my name over and over, telling me to breathe. But I can’t. The emptiness is strangling me.
There’s nothing they can say. Nothing can calm me.
He’s gone.
Nothing else even matters now.
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