Sunkissed Hearts

Prologue

Harper grabbed another empty box and started to fill it with old law textbooks. A glint of light caught on her wedding ring, and she stared at her hand. The ring was only a few grams, yet it felt like a tether, holding her to the Earth.

When she’d first gotten married, it had felt foreign on her finger, yet exciting.

It had represented the everlasting love that she’d had for Kelly, her brand-new wife.

Their love had no beginning or ending, just like that ring.

It had codified the years they’d spent together, all leading up to that moment when they’d pledged their futures together.

After years of marriage, her ring had begun to feel like part of her body.

When she took it off to shower or lift weights, it felt like she was missing something.

If she forgot to put it back on, the depression in her skin and the tan line left the ghost of a ring all day while she was in the office, and she longed to go home in the evening and put it back on. She just felt off without it.

After she was blindsided by the devastating and senseless accident that stole her life, her ring weighed a lot more, like a lead weight that pulled her into the depths of despair.

In the months since Kelly, her wife and soulmate, had passed away, she’d lost so much weight that now the ring swam on her finger, and she could barely keep it from falling off.

Yet, she couldn’t bear the thought of removing it. It was the physical link—in every moment of every day—to Kelly. The only one she still had.

Chicago, their condo, their routine…had also become a weight belt like the ones she and Kelly had used when they’d learned to scuba dive in Costa Rica.

But rather than allowing her to find weightlessness like in Playa del Coco, it was holding her down in her grief, and she’d begun to fear she might never break the surface again.

She’d finally had to accept that she couldn’t keep living their old life.

In their condo. She couldn’t keep working at the same law firm where they’d both made partner and had offices a few feet from each other.

Every morning, when she opened her eyes, her loss clawed at her.

Every time she got on the “L” and had to sit next to a stranger, she was reminded that her forever seatmate was gone.

Every time she walked past the office that was once Kelly’s and saw the man the firm had hired to backfill her position, it felt like thousands of tiny glass shards were scraping every square millimeter of her skin.

She couldn’t live like that anymore. So she spun her wedding ring one more time for good luck, taped the box of law textbooks Kelly had insisted they keep, and got ready to move south.