Prologue

Nico was only sixteen, but he had already been imagining how he would meet the love of his life. The one he would marry one day. Every night, he went over a different scenario in his head. During the day, he drew different ways he expected his love to look like. Most were blonde, others were brunettes. All smiled.

People blamed this on his loneliness. They said he was spending too much time by himself, that he had too much time on his hands. If this was right, if he was so lonely he thought up different lovers, than who's fault was it besides their own? It wasn't his choice to stay home alone all day. It wasn't his choice to be different, to be odd. It wasn't his choice to stand out from a crowd with eyes constantly on him. It wasn't his choice to not be able to go to school.

It wasn't his choice to not be able to walk.

Some would blame his father. It had been Hades di Angelo─a young man at the time─that caused the car accident. And from that car accident, Nico lost his mother and older sister, and the feeling in his legs. He had only been two at the time, not in a car seat or seat belt. When those two cars hit...

No, it wasn't Nico's fault. Not in the least. He was only caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. And even then, he wasn't there voluntarily. He was put there by his father.

But he didn't hate his father; he never could after seeing him cry. He didn't hate his step mother or step sister. There was no "step" in how they acted. He called them "mom" and "Hazel". But his parents worked during the day, and Hazel has school. And on the weekends, she had dance. So he was alone most days, left to read or draw and fantasize.

Only when he met Will Solace, did he find happiness. But, as his father had said before:

Pain is there for a reason.