Perfect Match
Leia Stone
Copyright © 2020 by Leia Stone
Cover art by Murphy Rae
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Epilogue
To twins everywhere and the close bond they share.
Chapter 1
Millie
I remember the exact moment that Colin became an organ donor. We’d been standing in line at the DMV, at the tender age of eighteen, and he checked the box. Just like that, he changed the course of our history.
“Don’t do that!” I’d whisper-screamed. “I heard they won’t revive you if you get in an accident or something.”
He’d only chuckled. Even then, I was hopelessly in love with him. He was dating Molly Springer at the time, and so I hadn’t told him yet, but I was.
“If I’m gone, I’m gone. I’d want others to live on.” I had no idea that moment would change everything.
“Ma’am.” The nurse brought me back to the present.
She was trying to hand me the bag of Colin’s clothes and shoes and wallet … and whatever he’d had on him at the time of the crash, but I didn’t want them. That would make it final.
“Ma’am, are you sure you don’t want me to call counseling services?” Her face lined with worry.
A shrink? A stranger was going to tell me how to be at peace with the fact that my husband, my soulmate, was dead the day after our wedding? The love of my life? The man I’d been in love with since I was sixteen?
No fucking way.
I reached out and took the bag from her. “I’m fine. His parents are flying in. And…” I’d lost my train of thought—What was I saying? Why was this bag so heavy? “And I’m fine,” I repeated. They’d had to sedate me when they first told me about him. But that Xanax was wearing off now and reality was hitting like a ton of bricks. It was deep and heavy and earth shattering.
His parents had just gone back to Phoenix this morning and we were set to leave for our honeymoon tomorrow night. How was this possible? He couldn’t be dead. We had shit to do. Like have kids, grow old together … be married more than a damn day!
Colin.
My chest gave a sharp pang of sadness as a sob formed in my throat and I half wondered if I’d die of a heart attack right here.
The nurse was older, early fifties, and a deep frown pulled at her lips. “Look, I’m sorry about your husband, but he saved a life today. The person who got his heart was a perfect match.”
One life. He checked that fucking box eight years ago and traded his life for someone else’s. They said that maybe his corneas could be transplanted but everything else had torn or exploded on impact. Except his heart. His fucking heart miraculously survived, which was so Colin. And now someone else had it and they would go on and have an amazing life, while Colin went into the ground.
“Thanks,” I mumbled and turned to leave before I lost my shit again and they put me on a seventy-two-hour-hold.
“Ma’am, do you have somewhere to go?” Her voice trailed after me and I just raised my hand and waved her off.
I hadn’t called Julie yet. The police had showed up at my apartment and the first thing I did was call Colin’s parents and then my own, and then they sedated me because I’d lost my mind. I vaguely remembered tearing a poster off the hospital wall when they had me ID the body. Nothing felt real and yet everything was too real.
I didn’t want to tell Julie. I didn’t want it to be real.
But I was legitimately afraid to be alone right now. I just wanted to die. I wanted to die and be with Colin. And those thoughts scared me.
I took off out the hospital doors and onto the busy New York streets and hailed a cab. I barely remembered getting inside, barely remembered giving directions to my best friend’s place. Julie was a nurse at the very same hospital I’d just come from. She had tonight off but in the morning she would go to work in the same place that my childhood sweetheart, and brand-new husband, had died.
A sob formed in my throat and I wished I’d asked for a prescription of Xanax. I didn’t want to feel anything right now. I probably should have called Julie and told her I was coming, or at least texted her, but my brain wasn’t working right and before I knew it I was on her doorstep. The doorman knew me and just let me in, and time was weird. I wasn’t in my body. Nothing made sense. I was floating out in the universe searching for Colin, searching for anything that would make this pain stop. I just needed to wake up from this awful dream.
With a shaking hand, I rang the doorbell of her apartment and waited.
It was ten at night, she had a seven a.m. shift tomorrow. She was probably asleep, or worse, screwing her boyfriend John at this very moment.
The door opened and Julie stood there, brows drawn together, brown hair mussed from sleep. When her gaze fell on the hospital bag in my hand, her fingers came up to her mouth.
“Millie … what’s happened?”
She knew.
Fucking nurses, they just knew.
I had also just realized that Colin’s blood was on my fingers from when I’d tried to hold his hand, when they made me identify the body. That had been a world class mistake; his cold rigid hand
