“I needed you to know something,” she tells me softly, and her voice is like a song, gentle and melodic. She looks down at Dominic, her gaze full of love. “I chose you for him,” she says quietly.

I stare at her in confusion. “What?”

“You don’t remember me? I met you. Years ago on Goose Beach. I was there with my mom, you were there with your grandma. You got my ice cream money back from a horrible little girl.”

The hazy memory comes back, but I struggle to put the pieces together. “Heather Edel. She was the meanest girl in the sixth grade. You were wearing a red swimsuit.”

Emma nods.

“She terrified me, but you stood up to her like it was nothing and got my money back.”

“You gave me a seashell,” I say slowly, remembering how the little girl had handed it to me and then ran off with her mom. “A white one.”

Emma smiles. “I used to collect them.”

A memory of the tiny shells in Dominic’s black velvet box comes to mind and the shell on her pendant… I stare at her soundlessly, my breath lingering on my lips.

“I was so in awe of you,” she continues. “Of how you were so brave and stood up for someone you didn’t even know. It seemed like you weren’t afraid of anything. You swam out to the buoy line a hundred times that day, while I was afraid to go past the sandbar. After I went home, I never saw you again. But when Dominic needed saving, I knew it had to be you. He needed someone brave and strong, so I brought you to him.”

I stare at her, transfixed. “This is a strange dream.”

Emma laughs, a tinkling sound in the night.

“It’s okay to think that,” she assures me. “There are some things that can’t be explained, so you probably shouldn’t try.”

“But how did you ‘bring me to Dominic’?” I ask doubtfully. “Surely that can be explained.”

She smiles patiently. “Wasn’t it strange how drugs ended up in Dominic’s car… when you both swore they weren’t yours? It’s almost as if they just appeared there.”

My eyes widen.

“You.” I breathe. “Why?” She smiles and the room seems to glow with it.

“Because love eclipses death, Jacey. It’s forever. And because I love him, I want him to be happy. I knew you could make him happy, so I brought you together the only way I knew how. I’m at peace now. Tell him that. Tell him I’m glad that he’s moving on, that he’s forgetting me. Tell him good-bye.”

“He’s not forgetting you,” I protest. “He’ll never forget you. You’re a healthy memory now, instead of a painful one. That’s all. And that’s good.”

She smiles and nods. “I know. That’s all I ever wanted. Thank you, Jacey. Thank you for saving him. I knew you would.”

She trails her fingers along his leg as she walks to the door. Once she gets there, she looks back, her face luminescent in the night.

“Oh, and Jacey? Take care of him.”

I nod, transfixed and in awe. “I will.”

She walks away, humming.

Do you remember when, we used to sing… sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-te-da… You’re my… brown eyed girl.

I try to wake up, but then realize that I’m not sleeping. I have no conscious recollection of waking up. Or if I was ever actually asleep. Everything’s a haze. A blur. Except for the memory of Emma’s striking blue eyes staring at me from two feet away.

I sit up in bed, trying to wrap my mind around it.

It couldn’t have… it didn’t… it didn’t happen.

I turn to Dominic to wake him up, to share the crazy dream with him, when something catches my eye on the bedside table. Something that glistens pearly white in the light of the moon.

A seashell.

While the curtains rustle with the breeze and the ocean crashes against the beach, my heart pounds. And as the soft wind blows my hair away from my face, I hear it.

Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-te-da…

The faint strain of “Brown Eyed Girl,” floating in from the water.

“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.”

That’s my favorite quote from Ernest Hemingway, and it perfectly sums up why I’m writing this series.

The older I get, the more it seems that everyone in the world is broken in some way, whether it is from divorce, death, drugs, etc. I wanted to write stories that people could relate to, stories where my characters were far from perfect, but had readers rooting for them to succeed, to overcome their personal demons.

While my characters’ problems are sometimes more exaggerated than real-life problems for the sake of fictional entertainment, the roots of their issues are firmly planted in real life.

The fact of the matter is, real life can be a bitch sometimes. It can slap you, shove you around, and then kick you while you’re down.

But the important thing to remember is always this:

Life is hard sometimes, but it can only break you if you let it.

No matter what, you have to always stick your chin out and keep going. You have to keep going through the motions even if you don’t feel like it. Flip your problems the bird and keep fighting to make your life how you want it.

Your life is your own. If you don’t like it, if it makes you sad, if it makes you discouraged on a daily basis, change it. Change everything about it until you’re in love with your life and it’s exactly how you want it.

If Dominic, Jacey, Madison, Gabriel, Pax, and Mila have shown you anything, I hope it is that. That you can be dealt a really crappy hand in life, but the power to change everything rests within you. You hold the key to your own happiness.

We’ve each got one life. Live the heck out of yours.

Courtney Cole is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author who lives near Lake Michigan with her family. She’s always working on her next project… or staring dreamily out her office window. To learn more about her, please visit courtneycolewrites.com.