Tangled Threads Excerpt

***Tangled Threads takes place prior to The Shattered Ones (Book 1 of The Aftermath).***

Our apartment was sparse, to put things politely.

We didn’t have a couch, the bed was a mattress we’d dumpster-picked from a wealthy neighborhood, and all our dishes were mismatched. Still, even with the leaking roof, smell of weed from the neighbors, and a kitchen window that didn’t close all the way, it felt more like home than the dorm ever had. Patchwork curtains fluttered in the breeze from the broken window, and there was almost always a half-completed jigsaw puzzle on the thrifted coffee table. And between Tara’s shifts at the diner and my studies, there was us.

“You ever wish it was different?” I asked Tara one evening, both of us sitting with our feet swinging over the edge of a bridge spanning the river. It was stupid to ask, but there was something important on my mind and I needed to banish the doubts before speaking my piece. “If we’d stayed home, we could’ve…”

“No,” she interrupted. “We wouldn’t have. I’d still have dropped out, we’d have gotten married right after you graduated, you’d be working some dumb job and I’d already be three months pregnant. Our lives would be set. No changes, from high school until the day we died. Now”—she passed me the soda we’d been sharing—“our lives are ours, to do whatever we want with.”

“Right.” I scowled at the bottle before taking a gulp. It wasn’t settling well in my stomach, and I knew exactly why. “Now you’re the one in the dumb job, working godawful hours and—”

“Not forever.” She tipped her face to the setting sun. “Just until you finish school. I know that’s a while, but before we know it, you’ll be a nurse and then we can get married.”

I set the soda down between us. Now or never, Caleb. “About that…”

Her brow furrowed and her tone went sharp. “There’d better not be a ring in your pocket. God only knows you’d have to sell a kidney to afford that, and I’d like your internal organs to stay right where they are.”

 “There isn’t. Just listen.” This didn’t feel romantic, but the unease that had been growing for the last few weeks was enough to make me squash the disappointment. “I don’t have a ring, but we can’t keep going like this. It—” I ducked my head. Sleeping next to her every night was way better than anything I’d ever dreamed of, but conviction had set in almost as soon as familiarity. “It’s not right for us to keep pushing this off when we’re already living together. I know your parents aren’t happy about it, and I’ll bet my dad would’ve already ripped me a new one if he knew we hadn’t made things legal yet.”

I pulled a tangled mess of purple, blue, and grey embroidery floss out of my jacket pocket. “Here. They say a cord of three strands isn’t easily broken. And I’d like to make this more official than just ‘someday.’” Tara stared at the river, expression as hard as the piling we had our backs against. Then her shoulders relaxed and she turned to me with a rush of exhaled breath. “You know I’d take you with or without a ring, and never mind what anyone said.” She plucked the thread from my grasp and began untangling it, laying the strands across her legs as her feet began swinging. “But I won’t lie, it’ll be nice to make it official.”

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