The Miles That Made Us (Journeys of the Broken Hearts #2)

Prologue

September – JAKE

THE GREATEST THING you’ll ever do is love.

That’s what they say, right? That was Nat King Cole’s whole point of “Nature Boy,” wasn’t it? The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.

Well, forgive me, but I respectfully call bullshit.

There’s nothing great about falling in love.

There’s nothing bold or brave about losing yourself so deeply in someone that you’re blind to all the shit that’s right in front of you.

All the signs that were there from the very beginning that you closed your eyes to, rose-colored glasses and all.

There’s nothing courageous about losing who you are, about handing over so much of yourself and dropping it into someone’s hand, all for them to wrap their fingers around your heart and squeeze until it bleeds dry. That’s not courage, that’s stupidity.

Love doesn’t save you. It doesn’t fix the broken parts of you or rewrite your story into some perfect fairy tale.

Love is a thief. It takes and takes and takes until you don’t recognize yourself anymore.

You become the shell of someone who once believed in forever, and the cruelest part? You’re the one that lets it happen.

And when it’s over, when the person you gave everything to walks away like you were nothing, you’re left with the wreckage.

You’re the one picking glass out of your skin, the shards of everything you built together that crumbled to the ground in one swift blow.

You just sit there, covered in blood, with no idea how the fuck you ended up in this hell in the first place.

So, no, I don’t buy it. Love isn’t brave, love isn’t beautiful, and it sure as hell isn’t great. It’s a gamble where the house always wins, and the prize for playing is losing pieces of yourself you’ll never get back.

The real greatest thing you’ll ever do is stop falling for the lie that love is anything more than a pretty coverup for a much more realistic word—destruction. And it is never worth it. Not even a little bit.