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“There when my Hanna drew her last breath?! The reason why she—”
“Careful, brother! You’re crossing a line!”
Ronan’s at his side now, Carter on the other. Veins bulge in Finnigan’s temples.
“What?! You know it, I know it, everyone motherfucking knows it! She fucking died because of you!” He throws his arm out, pointing at me with such anger and disgust, I actually take a step back.
Tears well behind my eyes, heat flashes through me, and it sears through numbness that has plagued me. It turns to fire, walls crumbling at my feet, and before I know it, I’ve stepped toward him, heaving as I watch Ronan put his hand up to keep me away. But I don’t give a shit.
“Fuck you, asshole!” He doesn’t have time to react before my hand slaps him across the cheek, snapping his head to the side, but the guys pull him back. “Fuck you! You think I don’t fucking blame myself every single goddamn day?! She died in my arms! She died in my fucking arms! I lost her! She was everything to me, the goddamn soul in my body! I am nothing, fucking nothing without that insane aura she projected!”
Carter and Ronan are holding him as he pulls to move closer to me, struggling in their grip.
“Let me go, asshole!” he spits, giving his brother a warning look. “Don’t think for a second that I will ever stop blaming you for holding us from going with them on that goddamn island.”
I can see Ronan wants to respond, but… he doesn’t seem to have a comeback for that.
“I lost her too!” Finn rasps. “She was mine. She was the present and the future and you fucking sent her way back to the past! Yet everyone is treating me like goddamn nothing!” He turns back to me and bellows, “You let her fucking die!”
“I did nothing! I couldn’t do anything! They made me fucking watch, Finnigan! I begged until I lost my voice! She bled on my flesh, she bled with your goddamn name on her lips, and there was nothing I could do to stop the hurt, to stop her from leaving me! Your blame on me pales in comparison! I don’t need you to tell me she’s fucking gone because of me!” I close the distance between us, my hand flexing, ready to hit him again. “Because I already know that!”
He holds still, defiantly, his eyes on mine. No, not defiantly… but painfully. Harrowing, devastating pain. He’s waiting for his punishment. So, I do the one thing I don’t want to do, but need to. Because he’s the only one who has lost her almost as much as I did.
I wrap my arms around his waist and bury my face in his chest, putting all my emotions in my grip, all the grief, the anger, the sadness. I don’t know when the tears started falling, but they’re soaking his t-shirt, and his hard body softens. As my grip loosens, and I’m about to pull away, his arms wrap around me, keeping me close, his hot breath hitting the top of my head.
“I should have never left that island,” he whispers to me alone.
This is not just about my guilt. I hold him tighter again as I feel his staggered breaths against me. I want to tell him to let go, but I have a feeling he’s closing off that part of himself that accepts these kinds of emotions. I know in my gut this will be the first and last moment Finnigan Hennessey opens himself to me.
Nobody speaks a word until we pull away. We both take a step back, looking at each other with different eyes, yet we both know that the blame and the guilt will be with us for a long time. If not forever.
CHAPTER 18
ANNIKA
I’m not sure there areaccurate words for my state of mind since Hanna’s death. I laid in bed, but my body was on the concrete floor… next to her. My mind was not here, not in Ronan’s bed, not in this penthouse, not in Queenscove. I wasn’t here. I was there with her… holding her hand as she shifted further and further into the darkness. Only, that darkness wasn’t the absence of light, it was my mind. It was a thick, unforgiving smoke that wouldn’t dissipate. It flooded my lungs, and took everything that didn’t seem to matter anymore, choking it until it almost died.
There was so much of it, and I didn’t want to break through. I deserved it. I needed it to make sure the pain of everything would always be fresh, burn my lungs, and rip me apart from the inside.
Until one day, broken blue eyes penetrated the smoke. I saw them before, a slightly brighter shadow in the smog, but that day they looked… defeated. The light was dim, so dim I wasn’t sure if they were simply moving further away. They weren’t. The light was dying. I couldn’t let something else die because of me… I deserved the agony, the punishment. I deserve it and more. But those blue eyes were paying for my sins, and I couldn’t allow it.
So, he became clearer as he knelt next to the bed that felt less like a concrete floor. And when I touched his hand and pulled him to me, such an odd thing happened… those eyes slowly filled with saturation. The more I touched him, the more vivid they became, breaking through the smog, making me crave more of their light.
That was the first day I saw, truly saw with a clearer mind, the weight of me. I wasn’t nothing… I was someone to this beautiful person who had scoured this continent to save me. Ronan saved me. I was worth something. In the midst of that smoke, it wasn’t what I wanted, because I knew I didn’t deserve even an ounce of what he was offering. I wanted to let him go. As horrifying as the impact of his absence would be on my heart, I wanted better for him. But when the color was coming back in his eyes, when I saw the brightness returning, I knew I could do no such thing. He was mine… and I couldn’t be the reason something else died. Even if this was a feeling, not a person.
It took little time for him to break further through the barrier of my mind and, slowly, I was seeing just how much everyone, not just him, was doing for me. Memories of the last few days flooded, snippets of conversations, of worry, sadness, and anger. All of them, even Vincent and Carter, were involved. These people, who I was a stranger to mere weeks ago, cared in their own way.
Now, as I watch Ekaterina summarize the decisions we just made during our discussion, I understand it even more. We came into the bedroom after what happened with Finnigan, and had an uncomfortable conversation that needed to happen. But now, Hanna’s simple, yet beautiful, ceremony is fully planned out, mainly because most of it was done before I even got involved. Ekaterina is so much different than I thought. Behind that stern, poised exterior, there’s a kindness she offers selflessly. She has her own, fairly internalized way of expressing it, and I’m grateful I got to feel it. She even helped me send the rest of Hanna’s things to storage, where we shipped everything when we emptied the house we rented here.
But it is done now… Hanna’s ceremony is all set. Small, intimate, since she didn’t have any close friends, and definitely no family. It’s been just us, like sisters, for the best part of six years. Making lasting connections through all the traveling and the shady deals was never an option for us. We had each other.
She adored the sea, which is why ourretirementhomes were on a quiet island, which held only a couple of towns and villages. The houses are close to the sea, with uninterrupted views, and a private beach. So, we’re going to hold the ceremony on the edge of a small cliff, above a private cove, then we can scatter her ashes over the rippling waves.
I take a deep breath, urging some composure. I can’t pretend this is easy, it’s nowhere near that… yet, strangely enough, the outburst Finnigan and I had helped somehow. He and I will never be close, I know that, but I think we helped let out some plaguing demons today. I know that the darkness that had me trapped is dissipating. I hope his will too someday.
“Ekaterina?” I stop before we leave the bedroom and turn to her.
“Please, just call me Katya. I like my full name, but it is a bit of a mouthful.”
