Prologue
The Day I Died
My name is Olivia and five days ago, I died.
No, this isn’t some metaphor or dramatic exaggeration. My heart stopped—flatlined—for five whole seconds. Clinically dead. And if there’s a heaven, I didn’t see it.
What I did see were eyes. Warm, honey-colored eyes. A face came with them, yes, but it was the eyes that held me, gentle and bright, like sunlight through amber. In those final seconds, that’s what I saw—what I clung to.
But let me back up.
It was January. The holidays were finally behind us, and I was relieved not to see my extended family again until Thanksgiving. Don’t get me wrong—I love them. But “overbearing” doesn’t even begin to cover it. Their presence is like gravity: heavy, inescapable, constantly pulling me back to where I don’t want to be.
I was on the edge of something new. College was just a summer away, and freedom was so close I could taste it. The more I reached for it, the more my family clutched at me, as if they could anchor me with obligations, traditions, and guilt.
Then came the day everything changed—the day I died.
And the boy with the honey eyes?
He changed everything, too.
