FRACTURED: A Broken Series Companion Novel (Damaged, Book 4) (PREVIEW)

ONE

RYAN

I was dead for one minute and ten seconds.

One minute and ten seconds without life. Without a heartbeat. Without breath. Without thought.

The details surrounding my passing are still a bit fuzzy, but some days, I think I can still hear the screams of fear tearing through the forest canopy, feel the burn of the billowing heat on my back, even hear the shrill cry of the machine announcing my death.

After the doctors managed to restart my heart, I spent the next four weeks in a coma, not able to breathe on my own, relying on them to keep me alive. And through it all, my family, friends, and the woman I love were there by my side, holding my hands, encouraging me to wake up. It wasn't until two weeks ago that I finally opened my eyes, breathed air into my lungs, and asked my parents to make every single one of them leave.

I hadn't wanted to see their pity...her guilt. Instead, I convinced my mom and dad to feed everyone the story that I was still comatose and that they needed time with me alone. It was plausible enough, and it gave me the much-needed time to escape the inevitable, uncomfortable encounter between me and the two people I wanted to leave behind the most: my ex-fiancée, and the man she chose to love instead.

After providing my body as a shield for the girl I gave my heart to—taking the brunt of an explosion with the skin on my back while watching my future escape in the arms of her last love—I'm pretty confident I'm getting smoke blown up my ass by well-meaning doctors, telling me I'm lucky to be alive. Clearly, our perceptions of "lucky" are measured on two vastly different scales. And my ability to see the glass half-full has been left back in the woods where I became a human firework.

I realize few people get to experience death and live to tell about it, and I'm sure this is where my lucky characterization comes from. But, at the moment, I'm finding it hard to feel the gratitude I'm supposed to be feeling. My heart is still too damaged. Or more accurately, missing. It's in the hands of the bane of my existence, Gavin Hunter, and it's fucking killing me all over again. It's killing me knowing that Hannah's probably with him—right now—giving him the love she used to give me.

Even so, despite the outcome I've been given, I wouldn't change my decision to protect her. It was an instant reaction. Instinct. My only concern was for her and her safety because, as I proved, I love her more than life itself, and I wouldn't hesitate to do it again.

I know she didn't deliberately hurt me—though it doesn't make the pain hurt any less. She loves me. She just loves him more. It's a fact I'm not ready to forgive just yet, and I claim my right to be bitter while I have plenty of time to stew in the shitty truth, grasping onto the one small relief in my dismal immediate future: the medication fed through my drip.

Usually, the strong drugs are enough to take away the majority of my physical pain and provide me with the reprieve of induced sleep. When they work, they allow me to go to a place where my reality is hidden behind the wall of medicated bliss, and I'm surrounded by rainbows and unicorns instead of facing the fact that the broken body lying here is mine. Though today, their capacity to dull my pain just isn't cutting it.

Every time I try to open my eyes, they feel weighted with heavy moments. Love lost. Shattered friendships. Broken bones. The past several months of my life have been so filled with "what the hells?" and "why mes?" that I'm convinced I'm stuck in a sadistic nightmare, a life not even close to my own.

I spend most of my days staring at the minimally decorated, pale blue walls of my room, peering out the large window that allows the sun's morning glow to cast orange hues everywhere. But once noon comes around, the room's cool hue returns to remind me of my solitude, and I wonder if my bland scenery will ever change. Once I'm overwhelmingly bored with the monotony of my four walls, I blankly stare at the footboard of my bed.