A sharp, painful gasp leaves me as the thought slams into me harder than anything else. He was alone.
My stomach drops so violently that I feel sick.
I wasn't there.
I wasn't sitting beside him like I promised. I wasn't holding his hand or whispering to him that it was okay, that he could rest now.
I left him.
My lip wobbles as tears spill over, hot and relentless, blurring everything in front of me. It feels like something is ripping my insides apart.
“Dad,” I gasp, his name breaking out of me in a fractured cry.
But it falls useless in this empty room.
He doesn't answer me, and he never will again.
My legs give out before I even realise what's happening, and suddenly I’m climbing onto the bed, desperate and clumsy, collapsing beside him like the little girl who used to run to him when the world felt too big and scary.
I curl against him instinctively, my arms wrapping tightly around his frail body as if I can hold him here, as if I can stop this from being real.
“Daddy.” I sob more, pressing my face into his shoulder.
All I want is for him to wrap his arms around me, brush the hair out of my face, or say my name and that it's all going to be okay, but he doesn't.
The silence is unbearable.
“I’m sorry.” I wept through my tears. “I’m so sorry.”
The guilt overtakes every part of me. He fought so hard against something that was slowly stealing pieces of him away. And when his body finally gave up… I wasn't there.
Cancer has finally taken my dad.
And with him, it feels like it's taken a piece of me I didn't realise I could lose.
I can't bring myself to think about the years ahead. Every ordinary day with him won't be the same without his voice. I don't want to picture a world without him in it.
Life is cruel.
Crueller than I ever understood before this moment.
No one deserves to be taken by this horrible disease that strips a person away piece by piece until there's nothing left.
And yet, it still took him.
It took the man who raised me—the man who loved me enough for both of us, the man who fought harder than anyone I have ever known. Now he’s gone from this world, and I have to live without him.
Chapter 43
Elijah
I’m the luckiest man alive. No argument about it.
If someone had told me a year ago that I’d be falling—no, completely gone—for my son's sister, I would've laughed in their face and called them an idiot for even thinking it.
Yet here I am.
Standing on a quiet beach while snow drifts lazily from the sky, watching the girl who somehow turned my entire life upside down.
