Yours: A Standalone Contemporary Romance Read Online Free PDF

alive . Today is my thirtieth birthday, and I’m alive. I’m not just alive, but I’m literally on top of the world.
    I could die; my heart is pounding so hard. I’m dizzy.
    Lightheaded.
    My heart is failing.
    I lay back and rest my head on the knife-sharp shale and rock. I stare up at the stars in the indigo sky.  
    It’s a good time to die.  
    I feel a tap on my shoulder. “Climb down now.” The same dude, gesturing at the descent.
    I shake my head. “I’ll—I’ll catch…catch up.”  
    A weathered South American—Ecuadorean? Chilean? Brazilian? I don’t know. He peers down at me, eyes hidden behind mirrored UV goggles, his neck gaiter pulled down. “You sick.” It’s not a question.
    I blink. Try to breathe. Chest fucking aches like an elephant is sitting on me. I feel each heartbeat, focus on each one, and count each one. When your heart could give out without warning at any moment, you sort of become attuned to each flutter, each irregularity, and each thumping beat, attuned to the rhythm.  
    No shit I shouldn’t be climbing mountains. It’s the very last thing, literally, the actual last thing I should ever do. But statistically, it’s virtually impossible that I’ll ever find a match for my heart, and I’m a terrible candidate for a transplant, so I gave up on that idea a long time ago. My only goal in life is to see thirty-one, and to do and see everything I can imagine in the meantime.  
    Dad died at thirty-eight.  
    Grandpa died at forty-five.
    Great-Grandpa at sixty.  
    Me?
    Thirty-one is a pipe dream. Always has been.
    Fuck.
    And now I’m goddamned dying. Here on a mountain. In the middle of nowhere. With a bunch of strangers.  
    My meds are all back in Valparaiso, on the boat. There was no fucking way I was hauling around a backpack full of my meds on this trip. Because fuck it. Because I’m an idiot with a death wish.
    I’m basically already dead, living on borrowed time and have been doing so for some time. I don’t really have a death wish, not really. I love life. I love each moment my heart continues to beat, but I know that each beat is one less I’ll ever have. Each thump of my heart is one less in the countdown to the day I die. To the day my heart ceases to beat. The sky is narrowing above me—tunnel vision. The stars wheel above me, like those time-lapse montages in movies where the mountain is the static image and the sky is pinking and blueing and going black and then gray and pink and bright and the stars spin and stir and wheel and fade and prick and poke and brighten.  
    I don’t see my life flash before my eyes, which is weird, and unfortunate, because there have been a lot of really fine sets of tits I’d like to see again.  
    God, I’m such an asshole. Thinking about tits while dying.  
    What? I’m supposed to be all sappy and philosophical about this shit? Fine.  
    Women are the greatest part of life. They make it worth living. More than the adrenaline rush, more than the thrill, women are what I live for. And unlike most one-and-done playboys, I fully appreciate every single moment I get with each one. I remember them all.
    Liv. Lisa. Ali. Astrid. Toni. Michaela. Vivian. Mimi. Tanya. Mel. Leanne. Jesus, Leanne; I regret having to send her on. Anya. Heidi. Heidi again, a different one. Another Lisa. Michelle. Jen, four different ones.  
    Yeah, there have been a lot of women. But I know all their names. I remember each face vividly.
    I remember where I spent the night—or morning, or afternoon, or weekend, or entire week, or month—with each one.  
    Rome. Constantinople. Moscow. Various points and ports by the dozen in the Caribbean and Mediterranean. A hundred places in Indonesia. Hong Kong. Prague. Paris. London.  
    God, what a life.
    I’ve been everywhere. I’ve seen both the Aurora Borealis and the Aurora Polaris. I’ve walked in the footsteps of Jesus himself, in Israel and Palestine.  
    And you know what marks each place I’ve been? Not