PROLOGUE
MARI
The stages of how a butterfly becomes a butterfly all seem so simple:
The egg
The larva (caterpillar)
The pupa (chrysalis)
The adult butterfly
How easy itis to list each stage, but then to skip to the transformation, especially since it’s kept under wraps until the reveal. We see the butterfly flitting from one spot to another, empathizing with her struggle but not truly feeling it. We admire the result but not the ugly phase that helped transform her into who she becomes—a winged beauty that represents life, rebirth, change, and…love.
I’ve always felt the stages of my own metamorphosis. From having it all—a mother who loved me—to becoming an orphan. From having a safe home to knowing nothing but destitution.From wishing for so much more than I had to having that wish fulfilled right before life kept me hostage as a chrysalis forever.
All of this by the age of twenty-one.
Each one of my stages were ugly, the beauty in the fleeting moments a taste of what I’d always hoped for. Over everything,I knew there was only one thing that would start the transformation of my life.
Love.
I craved it like I craved clean water, nutritious food, a good night’s sleep.
And that love hit me like a storm. It shattered every piece of me that I’d hastily put together, pieces that didn’t always feel like they were in the right place.
And now?
After that first shattering impact, the feeling, the sensation, began in the beating of my heart and then spread to my veins…my chest, my hands, my arms, my stomach, all the way down my legs and to my feet.
Love was not a soft thing for me, but a struggle that had started the transformation of my life.
I just hoped the man I’d vowed to spend my life with would be in awe at my wings, instead of ripping them away from me after I earned them.
1
MARI
My heart felt as unsteady as my feet. It wasn’t just the water beneath me that made me feel that way, either.
It was the man next to me,my husband,who sent the butterflies flittering around in my stomach, making my heart feel like it had wings. I knew he was into some bad shit, but I never thought he could steal the color of the water and use it as the colorofhiseyes.
