Page 24 of Little Pieces of Light

Xander

I rested my phone on my chest and stared at the ceiling, wondering what the hell I’d done.

“Because she’s my friend.”

Einstein called the speed of light a universal speed limit.

Nothing was faster, and that gave the universe some order.

I could consider my marriage “proposal” on the same order of magnitude.

The distance between Emery and me would be a protective boundary—her in California, me in Massachusetts.

We almost couldn’t get farther apart and still be in the same country.

That incontrovertible fact would bring order to my universe, where right now there was only the chaos of my heart reaching for what I knew it could never really have.

Helping to make her dreams come true was nonnegotiable. I’d do whatever it took—even marrying her if I had to—to let her escape her terrible father and live her own life.

Another paradox: Sacrificing my happiness for hers would be the hardest thing I could do, and yet there was nothing easier.