Why had she stuttered? Why had she ever questioned… him? Them? Anything? She’d been cowardly and selfish. Self-preservation had been more important than the man who had stood before her, more than once, and told her how it would be. Him and her. Forever.

However long forever lasted. The slow beeps and the high-pitched alarms sounding around her announced that the grains of sand in the forever hourglass were settling at the bottom.

The sirens died. The vehicle came to a sudden halt, then the driver floored it in reverse. Before the driver had parked, the back doors flew open, and medical personnel rushed in.

A man crawled over Jared, unhooking wires and continuing to work on him while others unlatched the gurney and pulled it free. Sugar pulled her hand from Jared’s, and a woman placed it across his chest without looking up.

Off he went, with his medical team working hard. No one had asked her to follow. Sugar watched his tethered body lie unresponsive, and she remained frozen in the back of the ambulance. She couldn’t swallow the grenade-sized bulge in her throat. Tears came harder and faster, until she dropped to her knees amid discarded bandages and empty sterile package wrappers. Sugar held her shaking hands in front of herself. She squeezed her fingers together tightly and then turned over her dark-crimson-dyed palms. The vivid creases and lines in her skin were sketched by Jared’s dried blood. She remembered years ago watching her mother study her palm.

A short love line and a long life line. That’s exactly what you want. Long term-love isn’t worth it, Lilly. It doesn’t exist. That’s the lesson I hope you take from me. Fall in love, and one day, you’ll be me. Years drowning in a marriage, wishing to hell you hadn’t done something so stupid. Men never stay true, and neither should you.

Sugar traced the lines on her palms, crying until her vision blurred and burned again. Her mother was wrong. Jared would’ve stayed by her side. And God help her, she never would have regretted a lifetime of moments with him.

Don’t ever give your heart away.

“No,” she moaned, because she already had given it away, and losing her heart to Jared was the best and worst decision of her life.

Hell, it wasn’t a decision. And he wasn’t dead… yet.

“Get it together, Sugar.” She jumped to her feet and threw open the ambulance’s cabinets and drawers. Tossing packages and wrappers around her, she searched and searched and searched. Alcohol swabs. She grabbed a handful and tore open the tiny packets. They were of little use, but she scrubbed clean her love line and her life line. The tiny squares dried quickly as they rouged, and she let them hit the floor, opening more packets, repeating the process of ridding her palms of the dark shading.