Free Yours: A Standalone Contemporary Romance by Jasinda Wilder Page A

my thoughts.  
    The temptation to crack a bottle of Lagavulin is strong. My mouth waters. I want that drowning feeling. I don’t have to think, or feel. I don’t have to decide. All I’d have to do is drink, and drink, and drink.
    Wake up, and repeat.  
    Shit, the need to escape the chaotic welter in my mind is so strong I’m tempted to wade out into the frigid sea and swim until my arms and legs and lungs give out.  
    Great-Grandpa didn’t get this chance.
    Grandpa didn’t.
    Dad didn’t.  
    Why did I?
    Why do I get to live?
    Why couldn’t Dad have gotten a transplant? Why couldn’t I have grown up with a father?  
    I have no one. No one expects anything of me. No one is waiting for me. No one cares whether I come or go.
    No one cares.
    I made sure of that.  
    Jesus fuck—I can’t handle that line of thought for long. I head back up the stairs, amazed at how easy it is, jogging up those steps, feeling my heart beat harder and harder without hurting, without worrying, without getting dizzy or faint.  
    I wonder whose heart is in my chest?

    *   *   *

    I sit on the deck with a bottle of Lagavulin tucked between my legs. I’m weak. I’m so fucking weak. I shouldn’t be drinking. At all. That was, like, number one on the list of injunctions from the doctors. Yet here I am, on the deck, pounding it back like a fool.  
    I hear a door open, but it’s too late to hide the evidence, so I kick my feet up on the railing, cap the bottle, and sip from the glass as Mom comes out onto the deck.
    She’s dressed in her “casual” clothes, which means she’s only wearing like ten or fifteen grand worth of designer clothes rather than twenty or more. She’s got her hair—naturally blonde like mine—piled on top of her head, and a pair of Chanel sunglasses wedged into her thick locks. Diamonds on her wrist, fingers, neck, and ears. She’s wearing heels, even out here. Just a casual day at the beach.
    She takes one look at me, and goes into full freakout mode. “Lachlan Thomas Michael Montgomery! You’re drinking ?!” She snatches the bottle and, before I can stop her, upends it over the railing. “That has got to stop. You know this is the one thing you’re not supposed to be doing. The doctors were all very clear on that fact, Lachlan. Your liver has been through enough, and now it has to work even harder to break down the Cyclosporine and all the other medications.” She pauses to take a breath. “Speaking of which, have you taken your meds today?”  
    “Jesus, Mom. It’s a couple drinks. What’s the big deal?” I attempt to stand up and immediately regret it, because it belies my claim.
    She’s got tears in her eyes. “Because it could kill you. You’re alive , Lachlan.” She grabs my face, looks me in the eyes and whispers, her voice broken. “I lost you. You died. I was there—I watched you—I watched…I watched you die. But then we got the call to say that an organ donor had been identified, a perfect match for you. Because of that, you’re alive. Don’t waste it, Lachlan. Please …don’t waste it.”
    “I don’t know how not to, Mom.” I feel the words tumble out, unbidden. “It’s all I know how to do.”  
    “Well, it’s time to learn.” She turns away, placing the sunglasses over her eyes, hiding her own emotions. We’re a lot alike, in that way. “You’re the only man in our entire family to survive the defect. You owe it to them , if nothing else. You owe it to Thomas—to your dad. To Grandpa Michael. You owe it to me .”  
    “To you ? To YOU?” I’m shouting. “You took away my choice! I signed a DNR. I wanted to die. I didn’t want to be brought back. Or to be kept alive.”  
    “I wanted you to have a chance.” Again, her voice is a whisper, now barely audible. Her voice is smaller and quieter than it’s ever been, I think.
    “It was my choice, Mom.”  
    “I couldn’t lose you, Lachlan! I only had thirteen years with your father. I deserved