Late last night, I finished reading this romance that spans the expanse of years. A romance that bloomed between two people who met as children, who grew up very differently, each feeling a little broken as a result of their life circumstances. Rachel and Andy’s story is both a little sad and hopeful, heart breaking and happy. It’s a story about true love and second chances and I thought it was a wonderful book to read. I’m honored to have an exclusive excerpt for you today!
✦ Who Do You Love: Amazon | Amazon hardcover | iBooks | Barnes & Noble ✦
An unforgettable story about true love, real life, and second chances…
Rachel Blum and Andy Landis are just eight years old when they meet one night in an ER waiting room. Born with a congenital heart defect, Rachel is a veteran of hospitals, and she’s intrigued by the boy who shows up alone with a broken arm. He tells her his name. She tells him a story. After Andy’s taken back to a doctor and Rachel’s sent back to her bed, they think they’ll never see each other again.
Rachel grows up in an affluent Florida suburb, the popular and protected daughter of two doting parents. Andy grows up poor in Philadelphia with a single mom and a rare talent for running.
Yet, over the next three decades, Andy and Rachel will meet again and again—linked by chance, history, and the memory of the first time they met, a night that changed the course of both of their lives.
A sweeping, warmhearted, and intimate tale, Who Do You Love is an extraordinary novel about the passage of time, the way people change and change each other, and how the measure of a life is who you love.
There was only a hospital bed, and two white plastic chairs for visitors. “I’m ready to go,” Mr. Sills told him. “I lived a good long while.”
“You have so many friends,” Andy said. This was true. There’d been the boys whom Mr. Sills had met and befriended and helped over the years, many of whom had found their way into one of those white plastic chairs over the last weeks. They had left tokens, too: photographs of themselves with Mr. Sills, at basketball games and graduations, at weddings and christenings and First Communions and commencements. Pride of place had been saved for a framed photograph from Athens, of Mr. Sills, beaming, with his arm around Andy and the two of them wrapped in the American flag, with Andy in his laurel wreath and Mr. Sills wearing Andy’s gold medal.
“I’ve made my peace,” Mr. Sills wheezed. A tear slipped down his cheek. “I’m not afraid.” But his hand was trembling when Andy took it. “I will miss this world,” he said. His chest labored upward, paused, and sank down. “Andy,” he said, reaching
for Andy’s hand. Andy leaned close. Mr. Sills’s eyes were closed, and his voice was faint, but each word was clear and deliberate. “You can stop running now.” Andy sat with him, waiting for more, but his friend’s eyes stayed closed, and he didn’t wake up again for the rest of the afternoon.
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