“Do you always smile during natural disasters?” I whispered.
“Only when I survive them,” he responded.
When I see him in my dreams, to this day, that is the same smile he wears. Confident, unaffected, and completely unshakable. The earth itself had no power over him. I knew then, and I never once forgot over the years to come, that Cole Hunter was something special. He was the kind of boy who could walk right into the fire and the flood and come out unscathed.
He would come out stronger.
I was thirteen years old at the time, and had an overly active imagination, but I couldn’t shake the feeling in my gut that he was somehow responsible for the earthquakes. I know, it sounds like a load of nonsense. But if you had seen the look in his dark eyes, you would have felt the same way.
You would have known that boy was capable of anything.
Chapter One
Lifting the large mug to my face, I dump half its contents down my throat. As I lower the beverage back to my desk, there is a slight tremor in my fingertips, but that is to be expected when you consume enough caffeine every morning to kill a small child.
It is difficult to be awake. It is difficult to be here.
I can always tell how long I will tolerate being in a place by the number of books on the shelves. When I’ve read them all, it’s usually time to move on. Glancing at the bookshelf in my boyfriend’s bedroom, I can’t help wondering why I’ve stayed here long enough to read all of the books multiple times. My job prohibits me from having any access to the Internet whatsoever, so books are all I have.
For the first time in my life, I feel trapped.
I’m stuck. Actually stuck. Me—the queen of running away.
Of course, I could always buy new books, but that has never been my style. Collecting sentimental possessions would anchor me to my surroundings. If I let myself get attached, when I inevitably need to leave, it will only hurt more for every item I leave behind. This is a lesson I had to learn the hard way.
Turning away from the bookshelf, my eyes fall on the dreary city outside our bedroom window. A thick, heavy fog blankets the capital, obscuring the buildings from view. Although it is gloomy, I am grateful that I don’t have to look at the architecture this morning. I always remember similar buildings being sketched in pencil on sheets of white paper, by a pair of strong hands. I see superior buildings being born in a pair of stormy eyes, and the wheels spinning in a complex mind, determined to bring abstract ideas to reality.
My brother. I exhale sharply.
Every time I think of Cole, I feel like I have been punched in the gut.
When I don’t think of him, it’s a little better. I only have the vaguely empty sensation one might feel after losing a kidney or a lung. The body can function without a few spare chunks of meat, but there is an awkward period of adjustment before the loss becomes normal—before one stops wondering whether they really can go on with their insides mutilated.
When will this become normal for me? Five years have passed. I thought I would have made peace with his absence by now, but I am always conscious that something has been ripped away. At first, we continued to exchange letters, and that made things bearable—but when Cole stopped replying a few months ago, I started to lose my mind. Does he still care? I’ve written him dozens of letters, and they’ve all gone unanswered.
This radio silence is killing me.
“Don’t be selfish, Sophie,” a male voice says from behind me in the room.
I am startled from my thoughts as I turn around to see the muscular, half-naked man tangled up in the bed sheets. Zack reaches up to rub his eyes before opening them, and brushes some of his disheveled, sandy-brown hair away from his face so that he can look at me. He smiles. Lifting himself up on his elbow, he gestures to the alarm clock on our nightstand.
“Big day today,” he reminds me. “I’m gonna need a cup of that good stuff, too.”
If it were any other man on earth, I would toss my ceramic mug at his head for implying that I should make him coffee. But Zack recently lost a leg in Afghanistan, and some days he can’t even get out of bed due to pain—and not just the physical kind. I know that the simple act of making him coffee makes his day a little easier to face.
“I think we’re out of grounds,” I say guiltily as I stare at the few drops remaining in my mug.
“Of course we are, you coffee-slut,” he says teasingly. “I picked up a new can. It’s above the fridge.”
My shoulders relax with some relief. “You’re a saint. I could really use another cup.” As I head to the kitchen, I try to convince myself that this is why I stick around. Zack isn’t that bad. His skills as an ex-sniper might be useless in this boring civilian life, but at least he has the good sense to remember to pick up coffee. Standing on my tip-toes, I open the cupboard and retrieve the canister. I can already smell the delicious, freshly ground beans as I peel back the lid, but I am startled by a gleam of light that causes me to nearly drop the can on the floor.
In the center of the coffee can is
