Chapter 1

My father had been in a coma for years. My mother kept herself alive by gambling.

She lost nine times out of ten.

On my eighteenth birthday, she surprised me with a brand-new dress. Then she dragged me to a poker room downtown.

She grabbed my arm and begged, "Emily, please, just do this one thing for me. Frank said all you have to do is have dinner with him. Just one dinner."

I fought against her grip, sobbing and screaming, "Mom! Mom, no! Please don't do this to me!"

Ryan Carter was the one who pulled me out of that room that night.

I was at the age where a girl falls in love for the first time, and he became my hero.

He was twenty-two that year, fresh out of West Point.

He carried himself with the kind of confidence that only belonged to a young man who believed the whole world lay ahead of him. He was radiant, almost blinding to look at.

Years later, he deployed overseas to serve his country. When he finally came home, we happened to be on the same flight.

I looked at the seat beside me, where a wooden box sat draped in a folded flag, and I whispered, "Ryan, we're home."

*****

Ryan's fists slammed into me over and over, each blow landing with a dull thud.

I curled up in the corner and shielded my head with both arms, glaring at him through the gaps.

I screamed at him, "Go ahead and kill me! Do it!"

He was out of his mind. I wished he would drop dead.

I refused to beg, because my begging only made him worse. The sound of me pleading excited him, and I learned that lesson a long time ago.

He was panting hard when his fingers dug into my throat, his nails breaking the skin. His eyes were bloodshot, and every vein in them had turned red.

Ryan snarled, "Emily! Where the hell did you just go? You can't leave me!" His grip tightened, and he hissed, "Walk out that door alone again, and I swear I'll kill you."

The pain was suffocating, but I clenched my teeth and refused to make a sound.

In that moment, I hated every inch of the hollow, wasted man in front of me.

I didn't know how much time passed before he finally wore himself out.

He staggered forward and dropped to his knees, his eyes blank and empty. Then he grabbed a glass from the table and smashed it against his own head.

The glass shattered right next to my ear, and blood ran down his forehead in a thin line.

He whispered, "Emily."

His clouded eyes drifted toward me, and his whole body went rigid. Then something in him snapped. He lunged forward and wrapped his arms around me, frantically wiping the tears off my face. His voice cracked into a sob.

Ryan cried, "Emily, don't cry. Please stop crying. I'm sorry! Just tie me up. Please, I can't take it anymore!"

He choked out, "Emily! Please, just tie me up! I love you! I swear I love you!"

Then he turned on himself, slapping his own face over and over.

Each hit landed harder than the last, until both cheeks were raw and bloody.

Scenes like this, hysterical and sickening, had played out so many times over the past five years that I had lost count.

I held him close and stroked his back the way I calm a frightened kitten, my voice soft and steady. "It's okay, Ryan. You're just sick, and once you get better, this won't happen anymore. I love you too, and I swear I'm never leaving you."

The truth was, Ryan really was out of his mind.

Six years ago, he graduated from West Point and volunteered for a UN peacekeeping deployment.

When fighting broke out near the refugee camp, his unit scrambled to evacuate civilians.

During the withdrawal, an RPG struck his armored vehicle.

Ryan suffered a severe head injury and slipped into a coma. When he finally woke up, he learned that every soldier in his vehicle had been killed. The news shattered him. He was diagnosed with PTSD, which triggered bipolar disorder.

No matter what came after, I thanked God he survived.

After he came home, his episodes were violent and uncontrollable. He would hurl anything within reach, and by the time the rage passed, the apartment looked like a war zone.

But through it all, he cooperated fully with his treatment. He took every hormone stabilizer the doctors prescribed and endured round after round of electroconvulsive therapy.

The medication made him gain weight and lose his hair.

The electroshock left him with splitting headaches that kept him awake for days.

I watched the man I loved transform. He had once stood six-two, a hundred and fifty pounds of sharp jaw and bright eyes. Now he was over two-fifty, his face bloated and gray, his gaze hollow and lifeless.

I begged him through tears to stop the treatment and give his body a rest.

He snapped again. And this time, he nearly killed me.

The doctors found multiple brain hemorrhages, thirty-seven healed fractures across my body, and several cracked ribs that had caused a hemothorax. I was barely alive.

When I opened my eyes, he was kneeling at the foot of my hospital bed, sobbing so hard he could barely speak.

He pressed his forehead to the mattress and whispered, "Emily, please don't leave me. Please let me keep going with the treatment. If I stay on the medication, I won't hurt you again. I swear."

That moment was seared into my memory forever.

How could anyone believe that the man who had used me as a punching bag once looked at me with eyes so bright they could have held the stars?

He wasn't always like this.

He never raised his voice at me, and he would never have laid a hand on me.

Ryan used to be untouchable. He had sharp eyes, a strong jawline, and thin lips that always curved into that confident half-smile. He carried himself as if the world owed him something, and standing against the light, he was almost blinding.

But looking at the man in front of me now, for the first time, a ridiculous thought crossed my mind.

What if I had the wrong person?

What if he wasn't my boyfriend at all?

Because how could the Ryan I knew ever bear to treat me like this?

I stared at him, my face drained of color.

I could understand the illness, but understanding didn't mean I had to forgive the pain it caused.

And somewhere deep down, I had started to pull away.

I cleaned up the mess in the room and made Ryan a bowl of oatmeal.

I followed the same recipe he always used, but it never tasted the same when I made it.

After letting it cool, I sat beside him and fed him spoonful by spoonful, the way you'd coax a four-year-old into eating.

The bowl was nearly empty before he finally spoke.

Ryan's voice was barely a whisper. "Emily, do you not love me anymore?"

I looked at him. His eyes were swollen and bloodshot, but they held the kind of love and hope I had spent my whole life searching for.

He swallowed hard and said, "Maybe we should just break up. I don't wanna hold you back."

My throat tightened. "Ryan, don't you remember how I practically threw myself at you just to get you to notice me? You're not allowed to leave me behind."