Prologue
ELIZABETH
Where do I even begin?
It’s funny how life plays out sometimes. I think the ancient Greeks had it right with their belief that the Fates controlled everyone’s destinies. Those fickle bitches. They’ve been pulling the strings of my life and tying them into twisted knots since the day I was born.
I was a woman destined to love more than one man. Two of them were my childhood best friends. Jayson Jameson and Ryder Cutton. My moonlight and my starshine. Two boys who became my everything. Jayson was my first love. The boy who would climb the tree next to my house and crawl through my window. He was my first kiss. My first time. Our love was one of youth. Exciting, reckless, and doomed to shatter into a million jagged pieces.
Ryder was my forever love. The man I chose to spend the rest of my life with. The man who loved me so much, he was willing to let me go in order to find my happiness. As fate would have it, my happiness was with him. Ryder and I were soulmates in the truest sense of the word. Soulmates recognize their other half. It’s an internal instinct that surpasses logic or reasoning because it just is. From the day I met him when I was nine years old, myheart knew Ryder was mine, but my soul knew he would be my forever.
And then there was Fallon Montgomery. The cerulean-eyed villain in my love story. Or so I thought. Our destiny would become another trick of fate. The villain turned hero. The beautifully damaged man whose darkness somehow saved me and destroyed me in equal measure.
My life has been shaped by these three men, their love the most magnificent watercolor painted upon the canvas of my soul. A love with the ability to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary and the broken into beautiful.
I just never knew the road to love would be paved in so much heartbreak.
Chapter One
ELIZABETH
A Beautiful Memory of Forever
I feelhim before I see him, his presence eliciting an electric pulse that is as tangible as lightning striking the ground. Ryder’s warmth presses up against my back, his arms banding around me from behind, so strong and solid. He drops his chin to my shoulder, his lips against my skin.
“Sorry I’m late.”
“On the contrary, you’re just in time,” I tell him as the sun slips below the horizon. There has not been a sunrise or sunset we haven’t seen together since the day we were married. “How was your day?”
He softly kisses my neck. “Long. Exhausting.”
The garage is busiest on Saturdays, and I hate that he has to work on weekends. He takes Sundays and Mondays off instead.
Turning in his arms, I gently push him down onto the patio loveseat, then hike up my sundress and straddle him. “I picked up dinner from Ruby’s.”
Ryder’s hands automatically curve around the cheeks of my ass, and he pulls me in. Tangling his hand in my windswept hair, he pulls me down for a kiss. Soft. Sweet. Perfect.
“Remind me to drive into Highland tomorrow and pick up a part I need for Knox’s bike,” Ryder yawns out.
I take his lower lip between my teeth and pull. “No working on Sundays,” I remind him.
He retaliates by tickling me until I’m begging for mercy.
“Flubberjizz,” I relent, breathless from laughing.
“You are so goddamn beautiful.” Those copper eyes heat, and my body immediately reacts, knowing exactly what’s coming.
“And you are still the most handsome man I’ve ever seen.”
Standing up with me, he slides me down his body until my feet settle on the patio floor. “Dance with me,” Ryder whispers near my ear, and I go up in flames with desire for this man.
Taking his phone out of his back pocket, he swipes to his music app, and within seconds, Sia’s “Helium” starts to play. Our song. The song we’ve danced to a thousand times.
We press our cheeks together, and I curl my hand around his neck, letting my fingers caress through his soft, thick hair.
“What do you want to do for our anniversary this year?” he murmurs in my ear before he begins kissing the skin underneath. I can’t think when he does that.
I make a humming sound when his mouth descends to the dip of my shoulder.
