OTHER CONTEMPORARY NOVELS BY SAMANTHA TOWLE
When I Was Yours
Trouble
REVVED SERIES
Revved
Revived
THE STORM SERIES
The Mighty Storm
Wethering the Storm
Taming the Storm
The Storm
PARANORMAL ROMANCES BY SAMANTHA TOWLE
The Bringer
THE ALEXANDRA JONES SERIES
First Bitten
Original Sin
Copyright © 2016 by Samantha Towle
All rights reserved.
If I Should Die reprinted from Thomas Gray (1771).
Visit my website at www.samanthatowle.co.uk
Cover Designer: Najla Qamber Designs
Editor and Interior Designer: Jovana Shirley, Unforeseen Editing, www.unforeseenediting.com
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Jodi Marie Maliszewski, this one is yours.
And so is Liam.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
My seat belt is fastened. Window shutter is down.
I have a window seat. I hate window seats. Because I hate flying. No, actually, that’s wrong. I don’t hate flying. I’m afraid of flying. So, sitting by the window with the view of clouds and sky for the next six and a half hours, reminding me that I’m thirty thousand feet off the ground, is going to be torture for me—not that I don’t deserve torture. I deserve everything I have coming to me. And in the grand scheme of things, flying on this plane really doesn’t matter.
But in my defense—yes, I’m defending myself against myself—fear is not rational. It doesn’t give you a choice. It just is. So, yeah, I’m afraid.
Still, I know what matters is the reason that I’m on the plane. I’m going to London—the place I have always wanted to go. I’m going to see where my mother was born and grew up, where my parents met and fell in love. And, while I’m there, I’m going to complete my list.
The list.
I pull the piece of paper titled Things to Do If I Live from my bag. It’s the list I wrote when I was sixteen years old, and I had a life-threatening brain tumor.
I have one of those again—a brain tumor, I mean. Well, I’m almost ninety-nine percent sure. The symptoms are here again—the severe headaches, vomiting, and fatigue. I just haven’t actually gone to my doctor to have it confirmed. Because, if I do, Dr. Hart, my doctor, she will want me to have surgery and radiation therapy and take endless amounts of medication.
She’ll want me to fight to live.
And I don’t want that.
I just want to complete my list while on the trip I was supposed to take with my family before they died, and then…
I don’t know what’s at the end of that sentence. Actually, yes, I do know. Death is what’s at the end of that sentence.
Death and relief. Relief because I’ll get to be with my family again.
I plug my headphones into my cell and put the buds in my ears. I select the Music app on the screen, find the song I want, and hit play.
The sound of Coldplay’s “Paradise” starts to bleed into my ears.
This song was played at my family’s funeral. I listen to it regularly, not to only torture myself—because I deserve to be tortured—but also to remind myself of what I did, what I stole from my family—their lives. It’s not that I need the song to remember because what I did is always there. The knowledge that my mother, father, brother, and sister all died because of me is with me every single second of each day.
But what this song does remind me of is that I will get to see my family again, and when I do see them, I’ll be able to tell them how very sorry I am. I’ll be able to beg them for their forgiveness.
I’