Monster Mine (34 page)

AndAndAndAndAnd.

And I wished I could have spared them
all of that.

I wished I could have told Luke that
good men have to fight in hard wars. They have to do things that
burden them and torment them and hurt them. And all those bad
things they know they’ve done are actually the reasons they are
such good, good men. Hard things weigh on good men because they’re
capable of carrying it.

I wished I could have told Ollie that
her mother would be proud of her. I wished I could take her face in
my hands and stare into her eyes and tell her she was everything
her mother could have ever hoped for her. She would have to face
down so much in the future—her father and resistance against the
changes she’d made to Fear University—but I wished she knew she
would face it all with the grace and goodness of her mother, and
also with the fierceness and the power of her father.

She had a monster’s heart.

And I would tell her that was the very
best, most wonderful thing about her.

She was our monster. All of ours. And
we loved every bit of her for it.

And Hatter.

My whole heart. I wished. I wished. I
wished.

I wished when he was kneeling on the
ward floor, grasping my hand, that I could pull him up and hold
him. I wished I could kiss him and tell him I still saw him. I
would always see him, no matter what. I wished he knew the
fractured parts of him, of his mind, didn’t define him, even though
he spent every day of his life making them so. I wished I could
have told him his friends would love him no matter what. We didn’t
need the mad Hatter he’d created; we just needed him.

I wished it all and so much
more.

I wished the world for
them.

And now.

Now, Ollie walked into my room with
Luke’s hand in hers. Hatter glanced up from his chair next to my
bed and nodded at them. Ollie and Nyny exchanged glances over
Hatter’s head. Nyny shook her head slightly. Ollie’s stomach
sank.

We all knew the unspoken
words:

Brain damage.

I was already gone.

My desperate attempt to save us all
had killed me. The machines were keeping me alive.

On the other side of my bed, holding
my other hand, was Gran. My mother stood behind her. My father had
left to take a quick nap in their room. My brother was somewhere
outside, helping, because he could only think of Seth when he was
in the ward. I understood. I wished I could have given him a hug
and told him it was okay. The room was crowded anyway.

My Gran’s soft Filipino prayers had
become such a fixture that they were like the wind: felt, but not
always heard. Just a current that circled around the
room.

And.

And.

And.

But
.

But when Gran’s prayers stopped
mid-word, everyone noticed. They all stopped. When she stood,
raising my hand to her lips and squeezing it tight enough to nearly
break the bones, and when she cried out softly with tears in her
eyes, everyone froze.

But she smiled.

“
There you are,” she
whispered to me, laughing, crying, smiling. “There you are, sweet
girl.”

Hatter rocked forward, his eyes
flashing from my Gran to me.

He and Gran had gotten along well. I’d
known they would. She nodded at him, tears pooling in the edges of
her wrinkled, beautiful smile.

“
Sunshine,” he choked on
the word as he staggered out of his chair. He leaned over me,
taking my face in his hand, and kissed me. “I love you. I love you.
I love you.”

His eyes searched my face.

“
Sunshine,” he
wished.

And I opened my eyes.

Acknowledgments

First of all, thank you, Nate, for
dealing with my crazy when I’m on deadline. Wylla, Drax, and Mandy,
thank you for making sure my days are never boring and for having
to go to the bathroom right when I finally sit down to write. Big,
huge thanks to my indie team: Najla Qamber Designs for the amazing
covers, Jessica West and Arrowhead Editing for the epic editing,
Stephanie Kelley for reading this book a billion times and talking
me off the ledge, and to my Facebook reader group and my Reviewers
Club for loving this series as much as I do.

About the Author

Meg Collett lives deep in
the hills of Tennessee where the cell phone service is a blessing
and the
Internet
is a myth of epic proportions. She is the mother of one giant
horse named Elle and three dogs named Wylla, Mandy, and Drax the
Destroyer. Her husband is a saint for putting up with her ragtag
life.

For new releases, big
sales, and the latest news:

Sign up for Meg’s
newsletter

Enjoyed
Monster Mine
?

Please consider leaving a
review!

Other Books by Meg
Collett

The Fear University Series

Fear University

The Killing Season

Monster Mine

The End of Days Trilogy

The Hunted One

The Lost One

The Only One

End of Days Trilogy Box Set

The Days of New Serials

(an End of Days spin-off series)

Speaking of the Devil

Full of the Devil

Better the Devil You Know

Devil in the Details

Give the Devil His Due

Days of New Complete Box Set

Canaan Island Novels

Fakers

Novellas

Little Girls and Their Ponies