27 Truths: Ava's story (The Truth About Love Book 1) (29 page)
Read 27 Truths: Ava's story (The Truth About Love Book 1) Online
Authors: MJ Fields
“You’re wrong, baby girl. You are wrong because you have me. You have us,” he says as Mom and Logan come into the bathroom. “You have yours and T’s babies. It hurts, and it’s hard, but in the midst of death, there is life.”
“It hurts,” I cry. “It hurts so badly.”
“You don’t want to die, Ava,” he says, and the fear in his voice shakes me.
I shake my head. “No. No, I just want to see him again. I didn’t get to say good-bye, Dad. I didn’t even tell him I loved him before I was carried out of that room.”
“He knew, and he wants you to live, Ava, just like Collin wants Tessa to. When you love someone, you don’t want them to be miserable; you want them to be happy. So if not for you, be happy for those babies and T, Ava. Allow yourself to be happy.”
***
After that outburst, it takes a week before I can convince them it was due to a dream and that I’m fine.
Dad agreed to go home, but at a moment’s notice, he would be back. He made me promise I would go to the Cape for Labor Day.
Mom was easier to convince. She hired a nanny to come in for five hours a day to allow me to rest and help with laundry.
When everyone was gone, I sent Casey home for the night with a promise I would call if I needed anyone. Otherwise, I would see her at eight so we could get Chance to the doctor.
That night, I close my eyes and remember page twenty-seven and all the pages before that. In our journal is all the truth that matters. He left me that without even knowing he would, and on page twenty-seven, I wrote,
Our love is forever, Thomas Hardy. Yours, mine, and our children’s... forever.
My promise to him.
“You are the truth about love,” I whisper to Hope and Chance as they sleep. “There is no greater love than that.”
Just like life, true love doesn’t always come to us in the way we anticipate, dream, or expect.
Just like life, losing something we cherish doesn’t mean that all is lost.
Just like Ava’s father told her, life doesn’t end in death. I believe that love in its truest and most breathtakingly beautiful form comes from within and grows when mirrored by those who are able to give it back.
Just like millions of people in this big, beautiful, and somewhat broken world, love lives in hope.
The greatest love in my life came to this world much earlier than expected, tiny and beautiful. Her eyes are blue and full of love, dreams, and kindness.
What I hope I can show her is the beauty in herself, in this world, and in people who are different. And, in differences, there is beauty.
Keep dreaming, hoping, and loving,
XOXO
MJ
Expect another book in the Truth About Love series in October 2016.
(Title to be announced.)
While you wait, follow MJ and Lucas Links on Facebook to get periodic updates on the Ross, Links, Hines, Abrahams families.
Feel free to post or message your truth about love.
Want to read more about these characters?
LRAH Legacy Series (These families’ stories are intertwined starting with The Love series, they move to the Wrapped Series, the Burning Souls series, and end in Love You Anyways. Many more series will spin off from these characters already written and each will be a standalone series but for those of us who love a story to continue I recommend reading in this order.
The Love Series
(Must Be Read In This Order)
Blue Love (free everywhere)
New Love
Sad Love
True Love
The Wrapped Series
Wrapped In Silk
Wrapped In Armor
Wrapped In Always and Forever
Burning Souls Series
Stained
Forged
Merged
LRAH Legacy Additions
Love You Anyway
Love Notes
USA Today
bestselling author MJ Fields love of writing was in full swing by age eight. Together with her cousins, she wrote a newsletter and sold it for ten cents to family members.
She self-published her first contemporary, new adult romance in January 2013. Today she has completed seven self-published series,
The Love series, The Wrapped series, The Burning Souls series, The Men of Steel series, Ties of Steel series, The Rockers of Steel series
and T
he Norfolk series
.
MJ is a hybrid author and publishes an indie book almost every month and has over 40 self-published titles. She is also signed with a traditional publisher, Loveswept, Penguin Random House, for her co- written series
The Caldwell Brothers
.
MJ was a former small business owner, who closed shop so she could write full time.
MJ lives in central New York, surrounded by family and friends. Her house is full of pets, friends, and noise ninety percent of the time, and she would have it no other way.
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