With One Last Kiss

Prologue

Prologue

The end of my life wasn’t far away.

It was the truth. I laid on the floor staring up at the ceiling, which appeared to rotate in a clockwise manner, waiting to die.

My eyes struggled to remain open due to their heaviness. Not because I didn’t want to close them, but because when I did, my life would be well and over.

The sleeping pills mixed with the liquor invaded my body. When the concoction finally worked as it should, well, my life would be no more.

And nobody would be coming to save me.

Honestly, there wasn’t anybody close enough to me to gather I needed actual saving. Even if they understood the pain stabbing at my heart, I never showed it. Hiding behind a weak smile and an “I’m fine” attitude seemed to make others exhale with relief. Fine with me, since it kept them from saying ridiculous and unhelpful platitudes.

As if that mattered.

No amount of love would save me, because love is what would kill me. Literally. Being in love was an affliction, and there was nothing worse than having it to the degree I did.

The love of my life and I had the kind of love story that divided people. They sighed with envy, rolled their eyes with exasperation, or walked away in disgust.

We were great together and hated to spend time apart. Our love for each other was a lock around each our hearts, preventing us from letting go or allowing anyone else in. But we both tried anyway and failed.

That was me and my love from the moment we met. No matter how hard we tried to forget the other when the pain became too much to bear, we couldn't.

Once we chose each other despite all the reasons not to, everything changed. Loving each other through the good times became enough to get us through the bad ones.

He was the other half of me, in a way nobody else ever managed to become. We needed each other even when we couldn’t stand to remain in the same room together.

We were poison—toxic. We were the disease and its cure. We fought against the inevitable—both with each other and against one another. Neither of us ever won a battle.

Of course, we never knew how much loving each other would change the course of everything. Or how much it would affect us for the rest of our lives either.

Nobody who saw me now would believe I loved him much at all. They would think me selfish for killing myself after he died... for taking away a second person they loved instead of only having to deal with one loss.

But they didn’t know how much it hurt every inch of my body inside and out to not have him on this planet with me.

Some people make it back from the death of a loved one. Not me. I ached to take my last breath like an alcoholic who yearned for one more drink.

I would never breathe easy without him again.

And when the time came to move on like I knew he would want, it wouldn’t happen. Not because my promises meant nothing, but because I needed him more than the world had or would ever have need of me. If there was a heaven, I would see him there; if there wasn’t, then perhaps we would meet again in a new life.

Then again, even if nothing happened after I died? Even if death began the moment I drew my last breath of life and led to nothing else? Didn’t matter because I would be dead and never have to experience the pain of missing him ever again.

No redemption for me. This wasn’t the start of a love story, after all; it was the finale.

And the truth was that nobody could save me from the decision I made to end my life. The pain had increased with every passing moment since his death and was now at an unbearable level.

So, before I closed my eyes forever, I wanted to remember it all. The beginning, the middle, and the end. The good, the bad, the ugly. As well as the love-making that gripped my soul and lingered without remorse or regret long past its occurrence. The laughter, the tears, the fights, the making up, and the joy of living as well as the pain.

Because our romance hadn’t ended when he took his last breath. The only happy ending to our story would be when I drew my last one as well and joined him six feet under.