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 recognizeyourself anymore. You become the shell of someone who once believed in forever, and the cruelest part?You’rethe 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.
Therealgreatest 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.
Side A
The Miles You Run From
Track 1
“I Don’t Want to SeeTomorrow” Nat King Cole, 1964
October–JAKE
“MR. COOPER?”
My eyes go wide, and my brows shoot up. I look left, then right, scanning the tiered lecture hall for any sign of what I’ve missed while blanking out.Again.
I clear my throat. “Yeah?” When he shoots me an eyebrow-hiked glare, I readjust my tone. “Yes, Mr. Stanley?”
I fix my attention on the white-haired old man standing at the bottom of the expansive room. He reminds me of Mr. Feeny so much, I half expect Cory Matthews and Sean Hunter to walk through the door any minute. His sagging, aged skin settles into a permanent scowl. Mr. Stanley moves his wire-rimmed glasses down the bridge of his nose. He’s clad in yet another plaid wool suit, even though it’s nearly eighty-five degrees today.
“Do you know where we are, Mr.Cooper?”
Damn, he even sounds like Feeny.
“Yes,” I lie. I have no fucking idea where we are, but I can bet my shitty little life it’s exactly where we were the last time I took this class.
Fucking ridiculous. I was supposed to have graduated already; be months into my career by now. Instead, I’m retaking a class I’ve already completed—all because I missed one exam that was a big percentage of my overall grade, big fucking deal. Feeny Number Two could’ve let me make it up like the rest of my professors, rather than screwing me sideways.
I had a plan. I had everything lined up perfectly—the school, the job, the girl.
I was supposed to graduate in May and sail off into the sunset by June. I was already working my way through a paid internship, and I knew I was getting the job by the fall. Life was perfect. I had no doubt in my mind that success was in my line of sight, waiting for me. Waiting forus.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
The moment I opened that door, the air cracked, the tension thick and weighted. Painfully brutal. I’m pretty sure my soul left my body and hovered overhead, watching my shit show of a life crumble to the ground.
My jaw tightens, teeth grinding as the crushing memory replays.
“Hey, man, I’m E.” He held his hand out to me and I stared at it, dumbfounded. The ringing in my ears, deafening.
“What the hell is going on, Sydney?” My heart cracked with each syllable. My mind raced to piece the last few years of my life back together, running in every direction before it landed on her, while she just stood there—trembling.
