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A smile forms on her lips. "So you're going to race Pyralis?"
She walks up to me, her smile getting wider, her face lighting up, and now that she is closer, I wonder what I ever saw in her. A shiver crosses over my skin. The kind when you find someone unattractive, and you have been intimate with.
"I said I'll be there."
Her gaze drops to the floor and then drifts up to land on my mask, and I see the desire in her eyes. "I miss you, Kill."
She's not giving up.
"I don't miss you." A hush tone wedges between my words. "I only missher."
Her eyes lower, and her lips turn into a deep frown after hearing my rejection loud and clear. She mumbles, "I know."
I would have thought since I married Lillith, she would take the hint. Then my words play in my mind. The things I said to Lillith in front of them and in private, making me retreat inside myself. The guilt clawing to the surface for the way I treated her.
I grip the edge of the table and stand, walking out of the dining room without a backward glance. "See yourself out."
* * *
I heara knock on the door, and I smile because this is the only room in the house that has a vintage wood door with a lock. They don't make them anymore. Only the kind that slides from within the wall with a press of a button.
"Come in."
"Mr. Cross. You wanted to see me," Agnes says, closing the door behind her.
I sit up from the bed, placing the book on the nightstand. "I wanted to ask if Lillith had any other favorites."
Agnes gives me a warm smile and tilts her head. "She did tell me once that she loved a book calledShanna."
"Did she have that one?"
"Here."
I nod, looking at the little shelf I had made for her books. I noticed when she died that she never opened the boxes of books I bought for her, but of course she wouldn't. Not after what I said to her that day. I left the boxes in her room out of respect, but I was hoping I could read another one of her favorites. I’ve read the Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux five times. I remember when she told me it was her favorite.
Agnes moves toward the shelf and selects the one she mentioned. She hands it to me, and I smile, looking at the cover of a man and a woman in love like it's a prized jewel.
"I never took you for a reader of romance, Killian."
I snort. "You know why I want to read them, Agnes."
She sits on the bed and pats my arm gently. "Tell me."
I swallow thickly, touching the book like she would have. "If I read what she loved, maybe it would bring me closer to her even if she's gone. I want to read what she felt in those pages through her eyes."
"Is that why you won't stop using this room like it's your own?"
I nod. "Crazy, huh? My mother loved this room. Lillith loved this room, and now I love this room."
"It still smells like her."
"Like whom?"
"Lillith."
I place the pillow under my mask and smell it, hoping I could find the smell that belongs to her. I know that’s impossible, but maybe it's in my mind.
She pats my hand and moves to leave but stops and says, "The greatest love never dies, Killian. It survives even when those we love pass on. It survives in the person who loved them the most. It's a gift. Like that book that belonged to her."
