Through the Ashes (Life in Waves #1)

Prologue - Andie

I never fully understood fire until it claimed everything I loved.

Fire lives in two worlds. There’s the kind that burns between lovers.

The one that consumes your feelings and leaves you with a sense of passionate desire.

A fire that lights up your world with a touch and sends warmth radiating through your body with an embrace and promise of forever.

The kind that gives you the feeling of hope and love.

It lights your path and turns ordinary moments into heart-filled memories.

The other fire though, is nothing but destructive. It destroys and devours everything in its path. Rolling through your carefully constructed life and obliterating your hopes and dreams. Reducing everything you’ve worked for, everything you love, into ash.

Leaving you to choose, if you will suffer and live with the agony or if you will rise from the embers and piece your life back together, creating a new life filled with new memories.

Both fires transform you. Both leave you equally changed. The irony, though, is that you never appreciate the difference until you’ve felt both scorch your skin.

I’ve experienced both fires.

The passionate fire of love which made me feel invincible. Wrapped in Cody’s arms each night pressing my lips to his neck, and breathing in that scent of cedar and safety, foolishly believing we were untouchable.

God, what I wouldn’t give for that naive certainty now.

Because the second fire, the one that took my home, my husband, and my entire world in one violent night—has left me hollow.

A human-shaped collection of ashes somehow still walking, still breathing, when he no longer can.

People offer their sympathy, whisper about time healing all wounds, about finding strength I didn’t know I had.

As if strength is some consolation prize for having your heart carved out of your chest.

But in my quietest moments, when grief isn’t screaming quite so loudly, I wonder . . .

Can these ashes become something else? Not the life I planned, that life is gone. But something new. Something that refuses to let the pain define me. Can I rise from the ashes with purpose? I don’t know. But on some days, I find myself looking for the spark.