Page 1 of Seven Lost Summers
Chapter 1
Theo
Fivemonthsago,itfelt as if the weight had shifted off my chest, just a little.
Scarlet was on stage, alive in a way that made you forget we were still bleeding. That grin of hers—fuck, it glowed, as though she was made for that stage. For a minute, the past didn’t pull so hard.
And ten days later, Xander and Poppy announced they were having a baby.
A fucking baby.
I wanted to be happy. I did.
Nate and I both smiled, clapped, gave them that nod… fuck yeah, man, congrats, you did it.
A whole future stretched out in front of them. The kind we once believed we’d have too, back when we were still stupid enough to believe in forever.
We smiled. We laughed. Said we were happy.
But underneath it all, we were collapsing in on ourselves.
Nate and I have been carrying the same fucking weight for seven years. The kind that latches onto your ribs and festers, until you forget what it ever felt like to breathe without it.
We’re not living.
Not really. We’ve just been surviving without her. And some days, even that feels like a fucking lie.
Maybe it’s just today.
Or maybe it’s this time of year—how it cuts into me like it has a score to settle. Every time, it finds the softest part and tears me wide open all over again.
Seven brutal fucking years bleeding without her.
Bianca… the girl who transformed me.
She pushed me to stop hiding from the world. She fit into our hearts as if she’d been made for us. The universe got one thing right, only to rip her away and watch us burn.
I can’t remember what it feels like to have anything but this hollow, aching void where she used to be.
Today, on the anniversary of when everything fell apart, it slams into me as if it’s happening all over again.
Seven long years without her laugh, her smile, or the way she could walk into a room and quiet every storm in my head.
She was my anchor. Now I’m adrift, fighting to stay afloat beneath the weight of everything she left behind.
But life doesn’t stop.
It doesn’t give a shit about the wreckage it leaves behind or the lives it shatters. It just keeps moving.
All I can remember is how her laughter made everything seem a little lighter. And I’d give anything for just one more fucking second to hold her again.
She’s gone.
Taken from us. Ripped out of this world and no matter how many years pass that truth never gets easier. It lingers, an unbearable loss pulsing beneath my skin.
When Nate kills the engine silence swallows us.
We don’t move. We can’t. It’s the same brutal routine over and over. We sit here, trapped in this unbearable limbo, both of us knowing the second we step out of the car and walk to her grave it’s over. There’s no stopping it. No holding back the flood of pain waiting to drag us under.
