The world narrowed to this room… this bed… this moment.
As the first light of morning began to seep through the curtains, Cole looked at me.
Really looked at me.
His fingers tightened faintly around mine, and then he glanced around the room, taking in everyone who had come to be with him.
And then…
he took his last breath.
An unbearable pain tore through my chest as tears streamed down my face, unstoppable, relentless. I leaned forward, pressing a kiss to his forehead, my lips trembling against his cooling skin.
“I love you, Cole,” I whispered, my voice barely audible. “You’re not in pain anymore… go in peace. Eva and Chloe are waiting for you.”
The words broke me even as I said them.
Because loving him meant letting him go.
A part of me felt relief that he was no longer suffering, that the pain that had consumed him was finally gone. That he was with his wife and daughter again.
But the rest of me…
The rest of me was drowning.
Nothing—no amount of preparation, no prayers, no research—prepared me for this kind of grief.
I had lost my husband.
My best friend.
The man who had chosen me.
The man who had loved my children as his own… who had become the only father they had ever truly known.
And now he was gone.
I sat there, still holding his hand, even as the warmth slowly faded from it, unable to move, unable to process that he was gone.
My whole world had just ended.
And I didn’t know how to pick up the pieces and start again.
Because in that moment…
My soul was shattered, and I felt completely and utterly broken.
EPILOGUE - JIYA
Two weeks had passed, and I felt like I was moving through a world that no longer made sense.
Everything was blurred.
Muted.
Distant.
I remembered fragments?—
