Check out this exclusive excerpt from The Darkest Sunrise by Aly Martinez, which is being released July 13!

About ‘The Darkest Sunrise’ by Aly Martinez:

Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never harm me.

Whoever coined that phrase is a bald-faced liar. Words are often the sharpest weapon of all, triggering some of the most powerful emotions a human can experience.

“You’re pregnant.”

“It’s a boy.”

“Your son needs a heart transplant.”

Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never harm me.

Lies.

Syllables and letters may not be tangible, but they can still destroy your entire life faster than a bullet from a gun.

Two words—that was all it took to extinguish the sun from my sky.

“He’s gone.”

For ten years, the darkness consumed me.

In the end, it was four deep, gravelly words that gave me hope of another sunrise.

“Hi. I’m Porter Reese.”

‘The Darkest Sunrise’ by Aly Martinez exclusive excerpt:

Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never harm me.

Whoever coined that phrase is a bald-faced liar. Words are often the sharpest weapons of all, triggering some of the most powerful emotions a human can experience.

“You’re pregnant,” were not the words I wanted to hear when I was starting my first year of medical school.

Yes, I was well acquainted with how the whole reproductive system worked, but a drunken one-night stand with a man I’d met exactly one hour earlier wasn’t supposed to end with a broken condom and me carrying his baby.

“It’s a boy,” the doctor said as she placed that bloody, beautiful mess on my chest nine months later.

I wasn’t positive his gargled wail could be considered a word at all, but that sound changed my entire life. One glance in those gray, unfocused eyes and I wasn’t just a reluctant woman who’d had a baby. I was a mother on a primal level.

Heart. Soul. Eternally.

“Lucas,” I whispered as I held all seven pounds and two ounces of the little boy who was forever mine to protect. I knew down to the marrow of my bones that there was nothing I wouldn’t do for him. But, as I would learn so many times over the years that followed, not everything was in my control.

“Your son will eventually need a heart transplant,” the doctor said as we anxiously sat in a cardiologist’s office after a long night in the emergency room. In that moment, I could have given Lucas mine, because with those words, it felt as though my heart had been ripped straight from my chest. I was well aware that not every child was the picture of perfect health. But he was mine. I’d grown him inside my body from nothing more than a cluster of dividing cells and into an incredible, tiny human who would one day blaze his own path through this crazy world.

Ten fingers. Ten toes. My raven hair. His father’s dimpled chin. That baby had gone from something I never wanted to the only thing I needed. I refused to accept that he could be sick.

After the doctor walked away, Brady stared at me from across the room, our son tucked against his chest, and assaulted me with more words.

“They can fix him, right?”

But it was my reply that cut the deepest.

“No.”

I knew too much about Lucas’s diagnosis to believe that anyone could fix him. One day, likely before his eighteenth birthday, his frail heart would give out and I’d be forced to helplessly watch the sole reason for my existence struggle to survive. He’d be added to a mile-long donor registry and we’d start the agonizing—and morally exhausting—task of waiting for someone to die so our child could live.

Knowledge was not power in that situation. I’d have given anything to be ignorant to what the doctor’s words meant for us.

Hundreds of people on that donor registry would die before they were ever matched. And that’s not to mention the ones who’d die on the table or those who’d reject the organ and pass away within hours of receiving it. In medical school, we prided ourselves in the statistics of people we saved. But this was my son. He had only one life. I couldn’t risk that he’d lose it.

That I’d lose him.

Through my devastation, I attempted to remain positive. I faked smiles, pretending to accept words of encouragement from our friends and family, and I even managed to offer Brady a few inspirational words of my own. He didn’t bother offering any in return. We didn’t have that kind of relationship. Turned out, fully clothed, we had little in common. However, after Lucas was born, we’d become something that resembled friends. And, with the prospect of a future spent in and out of hospitals on our hands, that bond strengthened.

That is, until six months later, when one innocent word ruined us all.

Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never harm me.

Lies.

Syllables and letters may not be tangible, but they can still destroy your entire life faster than a bullet from a gun.

One word.

That was all it took to extinguish the sun from my sky.

The Darkest Sunrise by Aly Martinez will be released on July 13! Pre-order it now from Amazon for only 99 cents! And don’t forget to add it to your Goodreads!