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The cab pulls up to my house, and I throw a wad of money at the driver before jumping out. It's probably way more than the fare costs, but I don't care. I run up the stairs and through the door.
I need to get to him.
I need to see him.
I need to say goodbye.
Rushing toward the stairs, I'm only two steps up when my mom comes out from the kitchen.
"Paige," she calls, but I don't stop.
There's no time to stop.
I race up the stairs and book it down the hall until I get to my parents’ bedroom. But as I get inside, my worst fears come to life. The bed where my dad has laid for the last six months is completely empty. The oxygen tanks still sit on the side of the bed, but other than that, there is no sign of him.
"Paige." My mom appears behind me.
As I turn around, I can see it on her face. She doesn't even need to say it for me to know. The pain that rips through me is incomparable to anything I've ever felt before.
"No," I plead.
My mom puts her arms out to hold me as she starts to cry. "Come here."
I shake my head. "No. He's not gone. He can't be."
My legs give out as I fall to the ground, and every emotion I've been feeling since I moved home intensifies tenfold. I curl up into a ball on the floor as the sobs shake my entire body. My mom sits next to me, holding me the way I need, but even that doesn't help.
"I shouldn't have gone!" I sob. "I should've been here! I could've been here!"
She shakes her head and sniffles. "You know he didn't want that. He wanted you to go be there for Jace. You know this."
"No! I should've been with him." If there was any part of me left whole, it snaps the second I realize he's really gone. "I didn't even get to say goodbye."
"I know, sweetie," she whispers. "I know."
"I needed to say goodbye."
IT'S A WEIRD FEELING, when you lose a parent. It's like there is this massive hole, the kind you can't close no matter how hard you try. It's just permanently there, and you're forced to live with it.
They say it gets easier in time, but I think that's just a line. I don't see how something like this could ever get easier. Not when there’s going to be a missing piece in everything I do.
He won't be there to walk me down the aisle.
He won't get to meet his grandkids.
He won't be there for me to call when there's something in the house I
don't know how to fix.
I stare at the still pool and wonder how I'm going to make it a single day without him, let alone a lifetime. It's been less than twenty-four hours, and already, I feel like I've been missing him for years.
The sound of footsteps behind me let me know someone's there, but I don't even need to turn around to know who it is. I can feel it—the connection that lingers in the air whenever he's near me. The gravitational pull that tells me I don't have a say in the matter. It's the same reason he knew it was me when I walked into his dorm room that day.
Becca texted me the second she found out that they were dropping all charges against him. She was there when I got the call, but I made her promise she would stay. Jace needed all the support he could get if things went wrong. She really didn't want to, but when she realized that's exactly what I needed, she agreed.
Jace sits down and wraps his arm around me, pulling me in. My head rests against his chest as he kisses the top of my head. He whispers little things about how it's going to be okay, and he's so sorry, but the only thing that really matters to me is that he's here.
After a few minutes of total silence, I glance up at him and my bottom lip quivers. "I just lost one of the most important men in my life. Please don't make it so I lose another."
