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“Even if it breaks me, I will never let you go.”
The conviction in his voice leaves no room for doubt.
I light the match using an already lit candle and hold it to the wick of the one Leif carved with Dad’s name.
“Thank you,” I murmur over Leif’s lips with a chaste kiss before I turn back to watch the candle burn.
I can see why people find comfort in this small action. I can feel the warmth of my memories enveloping me with each flicker of the flame. My dad was the best man I knew, right up until I met Leif. He was always the life and soul of the party, and it didn’t matter what he was doing, he would drop everything to help whoever needed him. He was a treasure, and since the moment I was told he was gone, it felt like I had lost everything.
Until now. Until the man wrapped around me.
“My dad would’ve liked you.”
“What’s not to like, baby?” He chuckles, but the levity of his laugh is dampened with the weight of the moment.
“The same stupid humour the two of you share.”
“Your humour is as stupid as mine.”
“Because I’m my father’s daughter.”
“In that case, I would’ve liked your dad, too.”
“He used to say I was his sweetheart, because it wasn’t until I came along that he knew the sweetness of life.”
“Sounds like we have something in common.” Leif presses a gentle kiss behind my ear. “Do you like it when I call you sweetheart?”
“Yes. Very much.” More than he’ll ever really know. “Sometimes, I used to joke that Dad should’ve named me that, and he used to tell me that it wasn’t for just anyone to use. Only special people. The ones who really loved me and made me the sweetest part of their heart.”
“Good man.” He nuzzles the side of my face when I caress his stubbled jaw, stroking it up to his cheek.
“He was the best, and I believe that you are, too, Leif McAllister.” Focusing on the flicker of the candle we lit, I take a deep steadying breath. “It’s what terrifies me about you.”
“Why?”
“Because…” My throat tightens. “It’s what got him killed.”
I feel Leif tense around me. “But I thought… I assumed from what you said that he was sick.”
“He was. My dad had stage three cancer for most of my life, and somehow he survived it. His good heart, though…”
I shake my head down at the floor. If it wasn’t for the way Leif’s arms are squeezing me together, I’d be falling apart. Instead, it’s just my tears raining onto the stone beneath us.
“Don’t cry, my beautiful girl,” he tells me, peppering kisses to my nape. “Don’t cry.”
“He was just a good person doing a good thing, protecting a girl being harassed by a group of lads on his bus, and they knifed him to death.” A long sob rips through me. The same agonising pain that suffocated me when I got the call churns up my insides, sputtering my endless cries into Leif’s chest when he turns me into him. “He didn’t stand a chance.”
Most of his vital organs were damaged, and the tear to his bowel was irreparable, and by the time they got him into surgery, he was in septic shock. There was literally nothing anyone could do to save him.
“Almost seventeen years of surviving cancer, and in the end he died because he did something brave—something good.”
“I’m so sorry.” Leif kisses the words into my hair again and again and again. “So, so sorry, my baby.”
“So am I. All the time. Every second of every day when I have a reason to laugh or smile. When I’m not thinking about all the ways our lives could have been different if he wasn’t always so caught up in me and what I needed.”
The words bleed from the deepest part of my soul. With each syllable released, he simply holds me closer, burying my face into his chest as if somehow his heart can swallow me up and take away my pain.
“I’m sorry I didn’t answer his call that morning because I was too sad that my boyfriend had broken up with me, and that I didn’t listen when Dad told me he was a piece of shit. Most of all, I’m sorry he died surrounded by strangers who didn’t know how amazing he was, and that the last thing he saw on this earth was the worst of humanity.”
