Page 1 of Severed Heart

Prologue

TYLER

U.S. PRESIDENT: PRESTON J MONROE | 2021–2029

Present Day

SWEAT SLICKED, Afew drops glide down my temples before I lift my ballcap to clear it with the side of my glove. Laser-focused on the door, I idle in the bucket seat as a welcome breeze sweeps over me. The slight chill at the edge of it indicating the end of summer as it caresses my heated skin.

Closing my eyes, I can picture her so vividly, peering back at me from the porch. Feet bare, hand raised over her brow in a salute to shield her silver-gray eyes from the sun, as the windswept tips of her long, onyx hair dance along the small of her back. A serene smile lifting her lips as I drew near—her expression, combined with the look in her eyes, rendering me speechless.

Love emanates from her being, from her every pore, where she stands in summons to me only feet away.

A love so pure, so tangible, and unconditional bouncing between us. The only safe space I have ever truly known beating inside her chest as I draw closer to it, pounding over the wood planks to answer her summons and feast on a love that blankets me. A love that protects me and brings me peace while keeping me whole. A love so mine, so ours.

A love and place we made together, against all odds. Our darkness mingling and molding, pouring our foundation, and erecting the frame while we decorated the walls with the memories we made. Filling every shelf and lining every cabinet, creating our forever home within one another.

The engine purrs beneath me as if telling me to get on with it while my recollection keeps me idle as I awaken memories. All of which I’m choosing to draw upon, bringing them from the recess of my mind where I’ve kept them safe and untarnished—not a second forgotten.

“Please don’t mourn me.”

As if I ever had a choice. As if either of us ever had control over anything in that respect—her ask impossible.

I know better now because I’ve lived long enough to know better. Which has me thinking that maybe she never discovered this secret before she left. Or maybe she did and just wanted to push her will and hope for me into her plea.

But on this, I consider myself the wiser of the two of us.I couldn’t make or keep that promise any more than she could change her fate against the cancer that ravaged her before it stole her last breath.

Just like I haven’t had a choice to breathe deeply since I watched her take it. I’m convinced at this point that my shallow breaths since her departure are part of the price for having such perfection. For having found true peace for a moment in time.

She once told me life could happen in a blink, but it’s a series of blinks that brought us together. It was lifehappening to uswhich ended with the same close of the eyes, leaving me on the other side of it without her.I understand that now more than ever. Because I know the difference between living your life and life happening to you, and they are distinctly different.

Living life is making choices—what to wear, when to eat, whether or not to cut your hair. These are the easy decisions we get to make—to have some say or a hand in.

Life happening to you is vastly different. It comes by way of a powerful reckoning force that cements your path for better or worse. It’s only in the wake of it that you realize the easy decisions are the only choices you have any real say in.

The hard stuff—the really hard stuff—that’s lifehappening to you.

And since I’m a contingency man, I’ve figured my way around allowing life to happen to me.

I’ve found the trick, the loophole, a way to take away the power it can wield over me, and now, I happen to my life and the lives of others.Not the other way around. At this point, it’s up to me to remember the blinks of the days before and after I mastered it.

Blinks I’m choosing to remember now.Some of them slow and meant to be savored. Many of them so fast it doesn’t feel like they’re real, but delivered by a force so powerful, it’s undeniable it exists. A force she prayed to and called God.

Something I never fought her on and still don’t exactly disagree with. While her faith was unshakable, mine remains in her—in us.

Either way, as I ready myself to happen to life in the years ahead, I close my eyes, summoning every close and clear of them that brought me here—that brought us together—before I’m forced to blink it all away.

PART 1

“ABOY BECOMES Aman when a man is needed.”

—John Steinbeck

Chapter One

DELPHINE

US PRESIDENT: RONALD REAGAN | 1981–1989