AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But cancer isn’t an enemy I can hunt down or bring to justice. No matter how much I want to.
“Do you have any idea how any of this feels?” She runs her fingers through her hair and lets out a low, wounded sound. “I dropped out of school to take care of him. He was my whole world, and without him, I… Now, he’s gone, and I wasn’t here. I should’ve been here.”
“Dove—”
“I should’ve been here,” Isabella repeats a little more forcefully. She runs a hand down her face, the top right corner of her eyes twitching. “I have no excuse for not being here, and his last memory of me is going to be me looking over my shoulder, waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
I step out from behind the bed and approach Isabella slowly and carefully as if she’s some kind of wounded animal. I have no idea how she will react to my proximity, or if she even wants it, but since I can’t give her what she really craves, I know this is the next best thing.
Abruptly, she reaches for the nearest item, an empty vase, and hurls it at the wall. Isabella winces when it shatters on impact, sending shards of glass everywhere. She doesn’t even seem to mind that some of it has nicked her, and now she’s bleeding in several areas. With a frown, I cover the rest of the distance between us and place my arms around her.
She struggles and beats against my chest. “Let me go! I don’t deserve to be comforted.”
“I don’t care if you think you don’t because the truth is you do. After everything you’ve been through and everything you did to take care of your father. Do you have any idea how fucking lucky he was?”
Isabella shudders and goes limp against me. “No, he wasn’t.Icould’ve done better. Instead, I put him in danger, and I couldn’t even be there to check on him.”
I grip her shoulders tighter and pull back to look at her. “Listen to me, Isabella.Noneof this is your fault. Lacey was a piece of shit, and he’s the one who used your father against you. Everyone else just took a page out of his book, and that’s shitty, but that’s hardly your fault. You were trying to make the best out of a bad situation.”
Isabella searches my face, and her lower lip trembles. “He died alone, Carter.”
“He wasn’t alone,” I maintain in a softer voice. “Heknewyou loved him. He felt itevery timeyou were here, and I’m sure that he never once thought that you were doing a bad job.”
Isabella sniffs, and hot tears slide down her cheeks, each one sending a twinge of pain straight through my core. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now, Carter. He was the onlyfamily I had left, and I… I don’t know what I’m meant to be doing.”
“You’re meant to grieve, dove,” I tell her as gently as possible. “You’re not supposed to have all the answers right now. You’ve barely even had a chance to process any of this.”
Isabella’s eyes widen. “I haven’t told the hospital what I want to do… and the funeral arrangements. Am I even allowed to have a funeral?”
“What do you mean are you allowed? Of course, you’re fucking allowed. We’re going to give a funeral fit for a fucking king, and anyone who doesn’t like that can go screw themselves.”
Isabella uses the back of her hand to brush the tears away. “You said we’re supposed to be hunkering down, not drawing attention to ourselves.”
I pull her into my arms and bury my face in her hair. “There’s certain protocol that needs to be followed, dove. When there’s a death in warring families, a temporary cease-fire is called. It doesn’t last long, but it’ll be enough for your father.”
She swallows. “But he… he wasn’t family—”
“He wasyourfamily,” I interrupt, with a little more force than necessary. “Which means he wasmyfamily, too. That’s all that matters.”
Isabella stirs and pulls back to look at me. “I’m sorry.”
I raise an eyebrow. “What for?”
“For yelling at you and shoving you away earlier. I didn’t mean to, I—”
I press a finger to her lips. “I’m not going to punish you for that, dove. You just lost your father. You’re allowed a little leeway.”
A flicker of surprise moves across Isabella’s face. “Really?”
“Don’t get too used to it. If the circumstances were different, I’d have you on my knee and that tight and sweet little ass of yours at my mercy.”
She hiccups and swallows. “Thank you.”
“Sit down. I’m going to go get us some food, and when I get back, you and I are going to have a serious talk about your habit of sneaking out.”
Without waiting for a response, I spin on my heels and leave the room. In the cafeteria, I run into a few of my cousins, and they all nod in my general direction. After grabbing two sandwiches, a plastic container of salad, and a couple of sodas, I stuff them into a plastic bag. On my way back upstairs, I pass a floral shop, the sickly sweet smell of flowers making my stomach churn.
Exhaling, I step into the shop and make a vague hand gesture. “My girlfriend’s father just died. I don’t know what’s appropriate for a case like this.”
