Allyson Reed finally has the life she wants in Massachusetts, but whenever Daxson Winters, the newest NFL superstar and love of her life suffers a gruesome injury, a dark piece of their past resurfaces threatening to destroy everything they've built...
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Allyson
I'd never really liked dead people— their deathly gray skin pulled tight against their bones with eyes open wide, like they're staring at me forever. It's not that I didn't respect them, I just sort of preferred them sealed inside a coffin under the ground, where they could rest in peace. I probably should've thought about that a little harder before accepting my invitation from Harvard University for medical school.
Despite the chemicals used to preserve her body for our gross anatomy class, her nails were still painted a soft baby blue. A small detail that never failed to make my mind race with a thousand possibilities. She could've been going on a date with her husband or maybe she had a little girl who wanted to paint them for fun. I unwrapped my fingers from the scalpel and it clattered onto the shiny silver table.
I couldn't cut into her.
My mind wasn't in the right place. Our professors had warned us that we'd have to grow tough skin to be in the field of medicine, but it seemed so cynical to only view her body as something for students to dig around in. I mean, at one point, she was a living, breathing woman—a woman not much older than me. She had dreams and plans too.
I tried to push away the thoughts that had been haunting me for months. A shaky breath escaped my lips as I worked to pull my blue gloves off and toss them into the nearby trash can.
"Ally." Kylie could never whisper because her voice always had a million reasons to shout and it echoed throughout the empty lab. "Shane and I are going to grab some drinks? You coming?"
I rolled my eyes and chose not to respond. Before lab I'd made it a point to tell her I had a ton of things to do, even going out of my way to show her my planner with everything I had to get done this weekend. Needless to say, Kylie was very intelligent, but bless her heart, I guess common sense wasn't a flower that grew in everyone's garden. My fingers pulled the zipper on the opaque plastic bag, zipping it back around my anatomy cadaver and sealing her away again.
Eventually, I'd actually make some progress in lab.
I sighed and wheeled my cadaver over to the large silver freezers which really made this place look like a morgue. Kylie's blonde hair fell into my peripheral vision, but I didn't need to see it to know she'd moved closer. She was a perfectionist who loved to hover, and it surprised me when she didn't give her thoughts on my lack of progress.
"Did you hear me?" Her high-pitched voice rang in my ears.
"Yeah, sorry." I shoved my cadaver back into the freezer and closed the door. "I just have a lot on my mind right now."
It'd been two years since Daxson and I made the move to Massachusetts. On the outside, it looked like we had our life together, but that was just a ploy for the media. We wanted to keep them out of our personal lives as much as possible.
