Chapter 1

Michael was everything to me, my whole world, the man I met at our small town church, the one I prayed I' d spend my life with. He was the youth pastor, so full of light, or so I thought, and his words could make you believe in anything. I loved him for years, a quiet, burning love I kept mostly to myself.

Then the news hit me like a punch to the gut, he was leaving. Leaving the church, leaving town, to marry his "true love," and it wasn' t me. The words echoed in my head, a cruel joke. I couldn' t breathe, couldn' t think. This other woman, who was she?

A hot, ugly rage filled me, something I' d never felt before. Jealousy, pure and sharp. I did something crazy, something terrible. I found some local guys, rough types, and paid them to scare Michael, just to shake him up on his way out of town, to make him think twice, maybe. I didn't want him hurt, just...rattled.

But it went wrong, horribly wrong. They went too far. Michael got a head injury, a bad one.

When he woke up in the hospital, he didn' t remember anything, or so they said. Amnesia. Except for one thing, one person. Me. He looked at me, his eyes hazy, and said my name, Sarah. He said I was the only woman he remembered, the only one he loved.

My heart soared, even as guilt gnawed at me. He loved me. It was a miracle, a twisted, awful miracle born from my terrible mistake. I clung to it, to him. We eloped, fast, before anyone could talk us out of it.

My mother, sick as she was, didn't like it. She never trusted Michael's sudden "change of heart" after the accident, his laser focus on me. She tried to warn me, her voice weak but firm, "Sarah, this isn't right, something's off."

But I was blinded by what I thought was love, by the relief that he was mine. I pushed her away, chose him over her doubts, over her worry. I told myself she just didn't understand. Soon after, she died, and the guilt over that, over my last words to her, became another heavy stone Michael could use against me. I didn't know then how heavy all those stones would become.