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“She was so fucking wise beyond her years.” He pushed some hair out of his face. “I don’t really know where I’m going with all of this, but I guess what I’m trying to say is, we were lucky to know her. She was as good as you can find. I’ve spent all these years missing her, and I know it’s never going to stop. I’m always going to feel like part of me’s gone.” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “Thank you,” he murmured, before striding back into the crowd.
I should probably go next, right? Even though no one in this crowd knew who I was, what with the new face and all. I went back and forth as a few more people went. And every time I tried to move and stand up, it was like my legs had turned into lead. When there was only a few minutes left, I finally forced myself to my feet and walked through the crowd. I grabbed the mic and walked out in front.
And then I just stood there. People eyed me expectantly, trying to place who I was.
And I still just stood there.
I tried to speak, and it was like my voice had disappeared. Gone was the badass Demon’s daughter, and in its place was a broken child of a girl.
I stood there, sweat beginning to form on my brow, my head beginning to go fuzzy.
Paxton was all of a sudden there, taking the mic from my hand and leading me away from the questioning crowd. He pulled me through the gym double doors, out into the chill night air.
“Breathe, Aurora,” he commanded as I fell forward, sinking to the cold concrete as I gasped for breath.
“I—I don’t know what’s happening to me,” I said through chattering teeth.
He crouched down in front of me and grabbed onto my hands. “It’s called grief, princess. You spent all this time not really grieving. And now you are.”
I picked up my head and looked at him with watery eyes. “Tell me it’s going to get better. Tell me it’s not going to hurt like this forever. I knew she was gone. I knew it. It shouldn’t feel like this after years of knowing it.”
“It’s going to hurt for a long time. And then one day, you’ll wake up, and it will hurt a little less. And then a little less the next day. Until eventually, you can feel where there’s a part of you that’s missing, but you realize that you can finally breathe without the ache.”
Paxton was speaking from experience, I knew that. But the part that he wasn’t saying was that the missing part of you, it warped you. Like when he’d pushed me against that wall after his fight and told me I could never hurt him. I was already so warped, I couldn’t picture what the “after” me was going to look like.
“Breathe with me, princess,” he murmured, taking my hand and putting it against his chest so I could feel it rise and fall. His heart battered against my hand, but his breath was steady…unhurried. I began to inhale and exhale when he did until I didn’t feel like I was about to pass out anymore.
“Thank you,” I whispered, as I stared into his gorgeous amber eyes, wondering when he’d turned into someone my heart couldn’t afford to lose.
He opened his mouth like he was going to say something, and then he closed it and smiled instead. We both rose to our feet, and he put an arm around my waist as we headed towards the car.
And I still had the funeral tomorrow…
* * *
It was done.
The funeral was over, the crowd had left, and now it was just the five of us standing watch as the cemetery worker began to lower her coffin into the ground.
It was amazing, but Stellan’s mother looked a little better today. She’d cried the whole time obviously, but there had been more color to her cheeks, more steel in her gaze. Like she’d perhaps decided she’d rather live than fade away. Stellan’s dad had left the second the funeral was over, never saying a word, just staring at her coffin, pale-faced and sick-looking.
“Goodbye, Sophia,” I whispered. “Someday I hope you can forgive me, because I’m never going to be able to forgive myself.”
My hair fluttered in the breeze at my words, and I closed my eyes, trying to picture her in my head. How long would it take until I couldn’t remember the sound of her voice? Or how her hug had felt?
What would I do then?
“She would want us to live, you know. For her. As best we could,” Stellan murmured as he came up next to me.
I hummed non-committedly.
“She’d want me to stop wasting time and get my head out of my ass.”
I smiled at that, throwing one last white rose onto the coffin as it lowered all the way to the bottom of the grave.
“She would have said it just like that, too.”
He chuckled at that, and then reached over to grab my hand.
