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I turn. It’s Miles’s mother, Debbie, approaching his grave with a fresh bouquet of flowers in her hands. “Sweetheart, look at you! Nero said you were traveling,” she adds, pulling me into a fierce hug. “How was your trip? I’m so happy you’re home.”
“It was… Fine,” I lie. I watch her change out the flowers, carefully tending to the grave. It’s clear, she visits often, and she settles on the bench beside me with a sigh.
“How have you been?” I ask, immediately feeling like it’s a stupid question to ask the woman while we’re at her son’s grave. I haven’t seen her since the funeral, that awful day I barely remember for the grief and guilt.
Debbie’s eyes go to the headstone for a moment before coming back to me and her smile is weary.
“I’m coping. Every day is a challenge, but I’m learning to deal with it.”
I nod. What else can I do?
Her son is gone, and nothing will bring him back again.
We sit there in silence for a moment, but there’s something itching at my conscience, and I can’t ignore it any longer.
I turn to her. “I’ve wanted to tell you, I’m so sorry. For not seeing the signs… I had no idea what was going on with Miles. That he was in debt and struggling. If I’d known, I could have done something. I would have helped—”
“Shh,” she cuts me off. “Avery, you can’t do that to yourself. Wondering ‘What if?’ You think I haven’t done the same thing, a thousand times?” Debbie shakes her head sadly. “I grieve my son, and I always will, but what happened was his doing. He was responsible, no one else. He could have reached out for help, talked to any one of us, but… It just didn’t turn out that way.”
“You don’t blame me?” I ask, part-relieved, part-pained.
“I don’t blame anyone,” Debbie says calmly. “Not even that Wolfe guy. Miles made his own choices, and he’ll be the one to answer for them.”
I swallow hard. “I wish he’d made a different choice.”
“Me too, sweetie. Me too.”
She reaches across, and squeezes my hand, gazing at the headstone. There’s something solitary in her expression that makes me feel like I’m intruding, so I politely get to my feet. “It was good seeing you,” I offer.
“You too, sweetheart. You take care.”
I walk slowly back through the graveyard, my thoughts spinning. It was so much easier when everything was black and white to me: Good versus evil. Miles was an angel who’d been tempted and wronged, and Sebastian was the devil who’d destroyed him.
Now, I know how wrong I was. The past months have proved to me, no one is completely good or evil. There are shades of gray. Darkness and light exist in everyone.
Even me.
And Sebastian. He’s not the monster he thinks he is—or that I assumed, back when all of this began. He might have been responsible for the crash that killed his father, but he’s suffered with the guilt and shame every day since. And I can’t blame him for what happened to Miles, not really. Debbie was right, Miles had a hundred choices, and he picked one I’ll never understand—but that was his doing, not Seb’s.
And nothing I do will ever bring him back again.
My eyes sting, and I’m shocked to find tears rolling down my cheeks as I walk. I pause, sobbing there under the shade of the trees, the emotion suddenly overwhelming me. I weep with the aching loss of it all, not just Miles, and all the innocent hopes I’d been carrying for a life we could spend together. I weep for the person I could have been with him, and the man he’ll never get to become. A husband, a father.
My friend.
I don’t know how long I cry for him, shaking with pain and regret, but when I finally surface from my breakdown, gasping for air, I find a strange stillness has settled in my chest where the grief used to be.
I feel lighter. Freer.
Something like peace.
I exhale. “Goodbye, Miles,” I whisper, feeling the last chains of my past leaving me. I know in my heart, it’s time to move on.
Now, if only I could feel that way about Sebastian…
I walk back to my car, wondering if he’s safe now, wherever he is. He left to protect me, I have to believe that, but we still have no idea who wanted him dead. Whoever it was, they clearly have resources and connections. Planting a bomb on that plane was no small measure, especially since they were willing to kill me too as collateral damage to get to him—
I stop suddenly, feeling a chill all the way to my bones.
