Rush Too Far (Rosemary Beach #1.1) by Abbi Glines
PROLOGUE
They say that children have the purest hearts. That children don’t truly hate, because they don’t fully understand the emotion. They forgive and forget easily.
They say a lot of bullshit like that, because it helps them sleep at night. It makes for good, heartwarming sayings to hang on their walls and smile at as they pass by.
I know differently. Children love like no one else. They have the capacity to love more fiercely than anyone. That much is true. That much I know. Because I lived it. By the age of ten, I knew hate, and I knew love. Both all-consuming. Both life-altering. And both completely blinding.
Looking back now, I wish someone had been there to see how my mother had sown the seed of hate inside me. Inside my sister. If someone had been there to save us from the lies and bitterness she allowed to fester within us, then maybe things would have been different. For everyone involved.
I never would have acted so foolishly. It wouldn’t have been my fault that a girl was left alone to take care of her ailing mother. It wouldn’t have been my fault that the same girl stood at her mother’s graveside, believing that the last person on earth who loved her was dead. It wouldn’t have been my fault that a man had destroyed himself, his life becoming a broken, hollow shell.
But no one saved me.
No one saved us.
We believed the lies. We held on to our hate. Yet I alone destroyed an innocent girl’s life.
They say you reap what you sew. That’s bullshit, too. Because I should be burning in hell for my sins. I shouldn’t be allowed to wake up every morning with this beautiful woman in my arms, who loves me unconditionally. I shouldn’t get to hold my son and know such a pure joy.
But I do.
Because eventually, someone did save me. I didn’t deserve it. Hell, more than anyone, it was my sister who needed saving. She hadn’t acted on her hate. She hadn’t manipulated the fate of another family, not caring about the outcome. But her bitterness still controls her, while I’ve been delivered. By a girl . . .
But she isn’t just a girl. She is an angel. My angel. A beautiful, strong, fierce, loyal angel who entered my life in a pickup truck, carrying a gun.