A Forever Kind of Love - Ellie Wade
2015 by Ellie Wade
All rights reserved.
Visit my website at elliewade
Cover Designer: Regina Wamba, Mae I Design, MaeIDesign
Editor and Interior Designer: Jovana Shirley, Unforeseen Editing, unforeseenediting
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
To my children—A, A, & K.
You three are the reason I was put onto this earth. I will do many jobs and have many roles in this lifetime, but being your mom is by far the most important and cherished one. I want so much for you, but most of all, I want you to be happy, to be kind, and to live a meaningful life. I hope you know that you are all more than enough just the way you are. You are each unique and special—a perfect little soul meant for great things. I hope you grow to follow your dreams and live a life full of gratitude. Thank you for supporting me while I follow my dream. I will always be your biggest fan. There are many kinds of love, but the love I have for you three is and will always be the forever kind.
♥
The road to happily ever after is paved with struggles, heartache, and hard choices…
but if we take the lessons from our journey and learn from them, our happily ever after will be so worth it.
—Jax Porter
I met my soul mate when I was born—well, shortly thereafter anyway. Our mothers were best friends, and that meant Lily and I, being only a month apart, were put together from the very start. I do not have a memory in my life that doesn’t have her in at least the backdrop. Most of my memories, especially the great ones, feature her front and center.
Lily is perfect.
I know people say that about the ones they love, but in this case, it is true. Of course she has some imperfections—she is human—but to me, even those are perfect. It’s hard to explain my feelings toward Lily because the word love doesn’t adequately describe them, not in the least. It is so much more than that.
She is everything.
She is the sun that rises in the morning, bringing with her a new day, shining her ray of light down on me. Her warmth engulfs me with a sense of love and peace that only she can give. She is the moon that graces the night sky, glowing bright, emitting a sea of tranquility to my soul.
She is every moment in between, every breath, and every heartbeat.
Every-fucking-thing.
She is all that I’ve ever known, yet therein lies the problem.
I didn’t just start loving Lily one day. I think I’ve always loved her in some way or another. Sometimes, when something has always been there, it is hard to recognize it for what it is. It is easy to take it for granted. I didn’t realize how deeply Lily had been ingrained in every fabric of my soul because I never had to feel her absence. And like any self-centered dipshit who hadn’t realized what he had, I fucked up.
It’s all so obvious now, but at the time, it was not. Isn’t it ironic that hindsight is always so crystal clear? I want to scream at my younger self, or more truthfully, I want to pummel his pretty-boy face for not seeing life—more specifically, my life with Lily—as what it was. I had everything I would ever need, and I was lucky enough to have it. It would have been helpful at the time to have a conscience, a smart one that could have guided me in the right direction.
But no, I had to figure it out on my own, in my own uniquely idiotic way.
I wish I had realized what was truly important in life. None of my priorities had actually mattered, and the choices I’d made to succeed turned out to be detrimental to my future happiness.
The thing is, once choices are made, and paths are altered, it is so hard to go back. Sometimes, it’s impossible.
I know this because I’m standing