It was the softest whisper, vulnerable and unsure.
“Of course.”
He nodded and stood, silently pulling on clothes, like even that simple action was nearly enough to scare him out of what he wanted to do.
He didn’t speak again until we were heading out the door. I’d heard an ambulance in the distance sometime last night, but I wasn’t worried about Gethin or anyone else getting into trouble for the body they’d found. The man looked peaceful. They’d say he died by her grave in soft, hushed whispers, like it was sweet.
Cole led us in the opposite direction, down a pathway that twisted along the edge of the fence.
“Did I tell you I knew where we were going before we came here?” His voice was hushed as he spoke, like he might disturb the bodies beneath the ground if he was too loud. When I glanced at him, Cole had his face turned forward, his eyes full of soft determination.
“No.”
“There aren’t actually that many cemeteries in the city that are nice. Most of them just dump bodies on top of bodies and don’t give a shit about it. It didn’t really matter that much to me,because I never brought his ashes here… but I looked up where his plot was last night.” Cole’s eyes finally flicked forward. We’d followed the trail until the fence disappeared, and a few newer looking headstones lingered near a line of trees, like they’d expanded the graveyard to fit the never-ending stream of the dying.
Cole knew exactly where he was going, though, because his eyes were focused on the furthest headstone out.
The ground wasn’t soft.
It wasn’t new.
And it looked like no one had ever come here—the grass was covered in leaves, and there were no flowers on the gravesite.
Cole paused a few feet away, and I didn’t have to look at the headstone to know what name was on there.
“Your brother isn’t here, you know that, right?” I tried to keep my voice gentle when I spoke, because I didn’t know why he’d brought me here. There was every chance after the way he’d opened up to me last night that he’d try to retreat, to run away from the way the wordhatehad sounded like such a lie on his tongue.
“I didn’t for a long time. I didn’t know where he was. I scattered his ashes in the ocean and then felt like I’d lost all the pieces of him.” He stepped forward slowly, and the fine tremor of his shoulders echoed the pain I heard in his words, the tears that threatened each syllable. “And I think I was too afraid to come here because this seems so… final. Like a grave is where you really say goodbye.”
Cole finally took those few final steps, but his hand hesitated when he reached out, hovering just above the headstone. I followed him, lacing our fingers together and helping him the last few inches so his palm flattened right above his brother’s name.
“I promise, he’s not here. And he’s not angry with you, Cole. He loved you…” I’d tried to tell him this before, to let him know what his brother had felt, how much that love seemed to have stretched across space and time itself to make sure that he found me. “He loved you so much that he defied Fate and Death to make sure you weren’t alone when he left.”
Cole’s fingers spasmed beneath mine, but for the first time, he didn’t snap at me when I mentioned Caiden.
He didn’t look angry.
He just… started to shiver. To shake.
To silently cry until I felt the hot streak of his tears land on the back of my hand as he bowed his head over the gravestone.
“I thought if I could hate you enough, it would mean that I didn’t just let him go without being there. I thought if I blamed you, I wouldn’t have to wonder if he hated me for not being with him when he went. I… I thought maybe if I hated you enough, I wouldn’t have to admit the truth. He was so tired, Sephtis. He was so ready to go, and I hated you so much because you were there to help him when I was too selfish to say goodbye.”
Goodbye. It was such a strange concept to me, because I knew people never really left us. They were never really gone.
They were just waiting for the next time… for the next life.
“He loved you.” I said it again, softer this time, and I pressed my lips to Cole’s hair as I spoke. “So much that he dreamed of a field of red flowers and made sure that Death himself picked the perfect soul to find you once he left. If you dreamed of me before you ever knew me, your brother loved you enough to demand that your dream came true. He never wanted you to hate anything, Cole. He wanted you to be loved.”
Cole couldn’t hide the sound of the sob that tore from his chest this time, and he turned and wrapped his arms around me. He clung to me like he was falling apart for the very first time,and he cried like he was actually letting himself feel the pain along every part of himself he’d rubbed raw trying to avoid it.
Cole cried, and I wondered if this was the first time he’d mourned and let himself be held while he did it.
I was quiet, running my fingers up and down the length of his back in a soft, soothing gesture while we stood beside his brother’s empty grave.
I held him until the sound of his sobbing finally stopped, until the shivering that pulsed through him quieted to a gentle hitch of his breath coming in soft hiccups every now and then. When he finally looked up at me, he didn’t try to hide his tears, or his grief. Cole let me see him—all of him—and even broken, he was the most beautiful man I’d ever laid my eyes on.
“Thank you,” he murmured. “For being here.”
