Beyond These Walls (The Walls Duet #2)(80)

He nodded, placing a soft kiss on my forehead. “Okay.”

I heard his footfalls trail down the hallway as I took one last look around the room. My eyes settled on a tattered old journal of my mom’s. It was something I’d found the other day while going through her nightstand in search of a bottle of lotion.

She’d told me stories of her Someday List over the years, and she’d even shown it to me when I was younger. It had been years since I last saw it, and when I’d found it again, I’d secretly taken it from its spot and brought it back to my room to look at it.

Opening it once more, I looked through the pages of wishes and dreams she’d once had, all crossed out throughout the years. Some remained—“A life still being lived,” she’d once explained—but it amazed me how many she and my father had managed to make come true since her years in the hospital.

As my eyes settled on one left untouched, I thought about my birth story—how I’d come to be, how they’d risked everything to make sure I had my place in this world. She should have put herself first, after everything she’d gone through in life. She’d deserved it after all. But my mother had never taken the easy way and because of this . . . here I stood.

With a shaky hand, I grabbed a pen off my clean desk and crossed off one of the last remaining wishes on my mother’s Someday List.

SAVE SOMEONE’S LIFE.

A small smile tugged at the corner of my mouth as I quietly placed the journal back in the drawer. With one last glance toward the bedroom that had kept me safe for the last eighteen years, I took the first step into my future.

My parents had always taught me life is what you make of it—you just have to be brave enough to spread your wings and fly.

So here goes nothing.