Page 1 of I Was Always Yours (RCA: Royal Crown Academy)

PART I

The Past

Prologue

Sixtine

I fell in love when I was nine years old.

I know what you’re thinking –what can a nine-year-old possibly know about love?– and the answer is nothing.

Not one thing.

In fact, at the time I thought I was having a heart attack.

The year before, I’d seen my Granny have one right in front of my eyes. She’d stood up from the couch in our Paris home where she’d been reading and had fallen dramatically to the ground in the middle of our living room, her hand frantically clutching the area above her left breast as she’d croaked at me to call for help.

I didn’t go back into that room after I ran to get my dad and Granny never walked out of it either, so naturally when I felt my heart squeeze painfully, I pulled from my only frame of reference and assumed I was dying like her.

I distinctly remember the feeling.

The way my heart that had been beating so normally all my life, so quietly tucked away behind my rib cage never to be thought or worried about, had suddenly skipped a beat that day.

All my synapses had momentarily stopped firing when I laid eyes on him for the first time and the world narrowed down around me until only the two of us were left.

Comfort seeped into my bones as if my soul recognized him from a past life and awareness spread throughout my body as he carved himself into my heart with no effort at all.

I wish I could say that I’d fallen in love with his personality or his intelligence. At least then I’d have a way to rationalize this inexplicable connection between us and the hold it’s had over me for years.

But I didn’t and I can’t.

All it took was one look into his terrifying black eyes and I was a goner. Unbeknownst to him, he’d reached into my chest cavity, ripped my heart out and kept it squeezed firmly in his deadly grip.

He took possession of it on a typical August day, and he never gave it back, not even when he discarded the rest of me like I meant nothing to him.

He might have safeguarded my heart with more attention if things had gone differently, who knows. I’ve spent countless sleepless nights obsessing over thosewhat ifsand have found that they’ve brought nothing but additional heartache. Because I know the truth.

We all know how the legend goes.

Girl meets boy.

They fall in love.

They get married.

And they live happily ever after.

The fairytale. The ending that every girl wants, that every girl dreams of.

For a brief moment there, I foolishly, naively, allowed myself to dream that’s what our destiny was. That our friendship would evolve into something more and we’d be together forever.

The reality is that our story ended before it even began, with blood at my feet, tears on my cheeks and my broken heart held forever captive in the hands of someone who’d never wanted it.

Chapter 1

Phoenix, age 10

August

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