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Chapter One

JULIAN

They say you never come back fro felt foreign, like I wasn’t supposed to be inhad alteredand when it returned, it didn’t quite fit in the body that woke up

I snorted into my whiskey as the people around oing to jolt awake in the casket if they were too loud

She was dead

Dead

I’d just seen her a week ago at the hospital; she’d been suffering with gastroparesis, a disease that est food and so so well, and then one minor infection sent her into a doard spiral that even the best doctors money could buy couldn’t fix Couldn’t help Couldn’t save

An infection Like a paper cut that gets ugly and red and refuses to go away, that’s why she lost her life, not even the fucking disease but a side effect

It was like she knew soht before she died, she’d made me promise to reconcile fully with the very twin brother who had stolen my life

While I was in a coma

How’s that for a blockbuster movie?

And that ridiculously beautiful and intelligent woman had told me she loved er person—out loud It was the last time I saw her, the last time I held her hand

Her hands were cold now

Placed at her sides perfectly, her ed around her head like she wasfor her prince to rescue her, though we all knew the ugly truth My father had been h their ht money meant he didn’t have to suffer consequences and that love could be bought He had no idea that the price would always be so he could never afford

“How are you holding up?” My brother Bridge’s voice interrupted hts and intense concentration in the direction of the room that held our mother’s body

I didn’t want a viewing

Neither did Bridge