Tristan: Finding Hope (Nova #3.5) by Jessica Sorensen Read Free Book Online Page A

throat. I have no makeup on. The sun is descending behind the mountains, but I refuse to turn the bedroom light on. Without the light the screen is dark, and I look like a shadow on a backdrop. But it’s perfect. Just how I want it. I tap the cursor and the green light shifts to red. I open my mouth, ready to speak, but then I freeze up. I’ve never been one for being on camera or in pictures. I’d liked being behind the scenes, and now I’m purposely throwing myself into the spotlight.
    “People say that time heals all wounds, and maybe they’re right.” I keep my eyes on the computer screen, watching my lips move. “But what if the wounds don’t heal correctly, like when cuts leave behind nasty scars, or when broken bones mend together, but aren’t as smooth anymore?” I glance at my arm, my brows furrowing as I touch the scar along the uneven section of skin with my fingertip. “Does it mean they’re really healed? Or is that the body did what it could to fix what broke…” I trail off, counting backward from ten, gathering my thoughts. “But what exactly broke… with me… with him… I’m not sure, but it feels like I need to find out… somehow… about him… about myself… but how the fuck do I find out about him when the only person that truly knew what was real is… gone?” I blink and then click the screen off, and it goes black.
    *     *     *
    May 27, Day 7 of Summer Break
    I started this ritual when I got to college. I wake up and count the seconds it takes for the sun to rise over the hill. It’s my way of preparing for another day I don’t want to prepare for, knowing that it’s another day to add to my list of days I’ve lived without Landon.
    This morning worked a little differently, though. I’m home for my first summer break of college, and instead of the hills that surround Idaho, the sun advances over the immense Wyoming mountains that enclose Maple Grove, the small town I grew up in. The change makes it difficult to get out of bed, because it’s unfamiliar and breaks the routine I set up over the last eight months. And that routine was what kept me intact. Before it, I was a mess, unstable, out of control. I had no control. And I need control, otherwise I end up on the bathroom floor with a razor in my hand with the need to understand why he did it—what pushed him to that point. But the only way to do that is to make my veins run dry, and it turned out that I didn’t have it in me. I was too weak, or maybe it was too strong. I honestly don’t know anymore, what’s considered weak and what’s considered strong. What’s right and what’s wrong. Who I was and who I should be.
    I’ve been home for a week, and my mom and stepfather are watching me like hawks, like they expect me to break down again, after almost a year. But I’m in control now.
In control.
    After I get out of bed and take a shower, I sit for exactly five minutes in front of my computer, staring at the file folder that holds the video clip Landon made before he died. I always give myself five minutes to look at it, not because I’m planning on opening it, but because it recorded his last few minutes, captured him, his thoughts, his words, his face. It feels like the last piece of him that I have left. I wonder if one day, somehow, I’ll finally be able to open it. But at this moment, in the state of mind I’m stuck in, it just doesn’t seem possible. Not much does.
    Once the five minutes are over, I put on my swimsuit, then pull on a floral sundress over it and strap some leather bands onto my wrists. Then I pull the curtains shut, so Landon’s house will be out of sight and out of mind, before heading back to my computer desk to record a short clip.
    I click Record and stare at the screen as I take a few collected breaths. “So I was thinking about my last recording—my first—and I was trying to figure out what the point of this is—or if there even had to be a point. “I rest my arms