Prologue
Six Years into the Future
I watch through the window as the snow falls; thick, fat flakes dancing in the air as they drift to the ground. It’s the first snowfall of the year and I’m excited to get outside and build a snowman.
Winter doesn’t officially begin until December twenty-first, but as soon as the temperatures start dropping and the trees become barren of the colorful fall foliage, it’s wintertime to me, regardless of the date of the winter solstice.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it is,” I reply, snuggling deeper into his side, my head resting atop his chest and my fingers tracing heart shapes over the cotton of his T-shirt. “You hungry?” I ask.
His arm tightens around my middle. “Later. I just want to hold you a little while longer and watch the snow.”
This man. So romantic.
I prop up on an elbow and bring his face to mine, feathering a kiss across his lips. He sighs and I kiss him again.
“I love you, sweetheart.”
I love it when he calls me that.
“So, is today a lazy day?” I ask him, laying my chin on his chest. It’s Saturday and we have the entire weekend to look forward to. “Looks like we’ll be snowed in for a couple of days. Roads are a mess.”
“Yeah, but snowy roads sure are a hell of a lot of fun in a Hellcat,” he replies.
I burst out laughing because he’s absolutely right.
I remember the winter after Ryder got his car.
It was on a day with several inches of packed powder covering the ground.
The snowplows and salt trucks had already been out and had cleared the major roads.
Ryder suggested going to the Fields, a local dirt track that was built on an abandoned farm field where the kids from both Fallen Brook and Highland went to race bikes and cars.
Jayson, Julien, and I all piled into Ryder’s SRT Hellcat, and he drove us out there.
We spent the rest of the afternoon being whipped and spun in three-sixties as Ryder slid his car around the track on the snow.
It was awesome. Ryder’s dad, Randy, wasn’t as impressed once he found out.
“We can build a snow family, watch Christmas movies, and drink gallons of hot chocolate.”
“Sound perfect,” he says.
“But first—” I say, carefully rolling off the bed. I had been waiting for him to wake up.
Padding across the wood floor, my bare feet already feeling the chill of the air, I pull a large hardbound photo book from the shelf.
Returning to the bed, I sit down and prop my back against the headboard, pulling up the thick goose-down duvet to cover us again.
I lean forward so he can wrap an arm around me, and I nestle by head on the crook of his shoulder.
“Which one are we looking at today?” he asks, running a hand along the glossy, front cover and down the spine.
“The summer of our cross-state trip.”
Years ago, I started using one of those online sites to create hardbound photo books.
It felt like it took forever to gather and upload every picture I could find of me, Ryder, Jayson, and Julien from the time we were kids.
There were thousands. Fallon gave me copies of all the photos he had as well; most of them were of him and Ryder together, and of course there were the ones of me and Fallon on our world trip of ‘Finding Elizabeth.’ Painstakingly, I cataloged the pictures in chronological order, then made photo books for every year.
They take up three shelves on the bookcase in the room, like a compendium of our lives gathered in giant tomes that resemble an Encyclopedia Britannica collection you would only find now in public libraries.
“Ready?” I ask.
Turning his face toward me, he kisses the tip of my nose. “Ready.”
Opening the cover, a smile blooms across both our faces when we see the first picture. The one of me and the guys standing on the beach, the green ocean waters of the Atlantic the perfect backdrop. So many great memories.
Once upon a time, I used to hate my memories, fear them.
It was after the car accident that took my parents from me and left me in a coma, only to wake up and not remember the first seventeen years of my life.
I had to build a new life for myself with the help of my uncle, Daniel.
But that new life came with old friends—the boys I grew up with.
The boys who loved me. New me fell in love with Ryder, even though old me had been Jayson’s.
And then there was Fallon. The villain who became the hero.
The months that followed my car accident were a confusing and tumultuous time for all of us.
Mistakes were made, mostly on my part. My sister, Hailey, returned after running away and being gone for nine months.
Our lives were thrown off course by so many obstacles strown in our path.
But through all of it—the good times and the bad—Ryder, Jayson, Julien, Fallon, and I prevailed.
Nothing could break the nexus of the love we shared or the bonds of our friendship.
And we would need each other and the strength of that love to bolster us up in the year that followed. The year that ripped us into fragmented, broken pieces. But also, the year that glued us back together, stronger than before.