Page 1 of Oxygen Deprived

Prologue

Twenty years earlier

Beavers Bend. Broken Bow, Oklahoma

I watched him play football for nearly an hour with my brother, completely and totally enraptured by him.

“Mom!” I hissed at my mother. “Do you see that teenage boy over there?”

My mother turned from the magazine that was in her hands, to me.

“Yes, baby,” she said. “What about him?”

Everyone had seen him. I’m not sure why I was bothering pointing the man—teenager—out to her.

“I’m going to marry him,” I informed her.

She blinked.

“What?” She whispered in shock. “Why do you say that?”

I looked back over at the teenager, that wasn’t so much of a teenager but more of a young man on his way to adulthood, and back to her.

“We just are. I’ve decided.”

She laughed.

“You’ve decided, huh?” She teased.

I nodded.

“And how are you going to accomplish that?” She wondered.

“She’s going to demand it of him, Mother,” Downy, my brother who wasn’t very happy about being on vacation with us, drawled.

Downy and the teenager were probably similar in age, although that’s where the similarities ended.

Downy had red hair, where the teenager had blonde.

Downy’s ugly eyes had nothing on the teenager’s gray eyes that looked like they were ringed with green.

I couldn’t tell for certain, though, which was why I moved closer.

And found myself next to a couple that was excited about something.

“He’s getting married,” the woman was saying to the man. “To Constance. Isn’t that something?”

The man shrugged. “She’s not the best, but I guess she could be worse.”

The woman snorted. “Don’t let him hear you say that. They’ve been dating for four years now. And he knows everything, don’t you know?”

The man sighed.

“She’s cried every night this week because he’s been gone to the fire academy. How do you think she’s going to fare when he’s gone once every three days?” The man continued.

The woman had nothing to say to that, and I sat down in the chair right by them, hoping it wasn’t obvious what I was doing. I crossed my legs and started swinging my foot.

Then in a rush of moving limbs, the teenager took the seat, in between his parents and me.