Bring Down the Stars (Beautiful Hearts Duet #1)(92)

For you, I would

capture the candlelight

in the palm of my hand

Give my breath

to give it life

A whisper,

‘My love’

So that it may grow

Bright and hot

And burn me



For you, I would

drink the salted oceans

Until their depths

Were swallowed

into the depths of me

How deep it is, this life

This love, for you

I cannot touch bottom

I never will



For you, I would

mine the stony earth

Until it relinquished

The secrets of time

Cracks in the stone

wrinkles of the Earth

As she turns her face

to another new day

And so I wish to live

Every one of mine

With you



For you, I would

be myself

At long last

I would live in my skin

And breathe my words

in my own voice

Tinged with the accent

Of a child calling to a car

that will never stop

And in the fading echo

Nothing remains but the truth

of me

that is the love

of you



I have loved you with both

Hands tied behind my back

Bound with pen and ink

Paper and words

Sealed with someone else’s name

until this moment

in which I am nothing

but a man

who loves a woman.

There is nothing left to say

Except to give

all of my heart

For you



End Book I





Beautiful Hearts Duet book II, Long Live the Beautiful Hearts

coming soon…





Prologue


Connor


My lungs sucked in air, bringing consciousness and chaos rushing back to me. And pain. A fuck-ton of pain.

My vision was blurred as if I were underwater. I couldn’t move, my body pinned down by something heavy on my chest; I could hardly gasp for those first shallow breaths. Gunshots, shouts, and mortar fire sounded distant through the ringing in my ears. My left arm was heavy with a deep, stabbing pain.

I blinked hard, forced myself to focus, and found the anchor that was pressing me down was Wes.

He lay facedown on me, his helmet on my chest, unmoving. I couldn’t see his eyes, his helmet obscured him. I didn’t know if he were alive or dead.

Alive. He has to be alive.

Terror like I’d never known, whipped through me, carrying adrenaline on its currents.

“Wes,” I croaked. “Wes!”

My gaze darted all over, assessing. A pool of blood, seeping into the sand below him, sent another current of dread racing along my veins. I struggled to sit up, and pain ground steel teeth into me. Trembling as if it were freezing instead of pushing 120 degrees, I turned to see a length of jagged shrapnel lodged under the skin of my forearm, up to my elbow.

“Ah, fuck.”

The ugly wrongness of it scared the shit out of me, but I brushed it aside.

Wes.

I took a quick inventory of our situation. We were at the southern edge of the village, most of the structures behind us. The fight was still happening, but had moved eastward; through blasted shells of homes, I saw figures moving in and out amid the smoke and dust.

Wes and I were exposed with no cover. A crater smeared with blood and a little kid’s sandal only eight yards away. The memory of running toward the owner of that shoe, to get him behind some cover—to save him—came back to me. I reached for him…and that’s all I remembered, but I knew what had happened next.

Wes had chased me down, carried me away from the explosive I didn’t see, and saved my ass.

A sob tried to tear out of me, as the other half of the truth battered me. Wes had shielded me with his own body and been shot multiple times as we lay exposed on the dirt street.

And now he’s dead.

“Wes,” I cried. “God, no…”

Biting back the agony in my arm, I scooted out from under my best friend and gently eased his head to the ground. Wes’s eyes were closed, his mouth slightly open. I put two fingers to his throat, and tears stung my eyes to feel his pulse, faint and too slow, but there.

“Thank fuck…” I said on a sigh.

I walked on my knees to inspect his wounds, and a fresh current of fear ripped away the relief. A bullet hole on the back of his thigh had nearly bled him out, dampening his fatigues down to the boot. Around his waist and under his body armor, at least three more gunshot wounds had torn through camo and flesh; a shattered fragment of bone in his hip showing.

“God, no, come on, Wes. No…”

I had to force back the nausea and tears of what I was seeing and focus. We were exposed. Ten yards behind me, a pile of rubble was the closest cover. My panic and fear subsided and my training took over.

I crouched on shaking legs, stood over Wes’s head, and gripped his rucksack with my right hand to drag him to safety. I gritted my teeth and pulled. He scraped across the gritty sand an inch or two. Too slow. Too heavy.

I sucked in three deep breaths quickly, clenched my jaw and pulled. Gunshots rang out not a dozen yards away, and an explosion showered us with debris. Adrenaline, not strength, got me moving. After a few agonizing moments, I had Wes covered behind the rubble. I fell to my knees beside him.