He chuckled. “I wouldn’t be here if I had. Actually, God had a different choice for me, holding me back from making a mistake I couldn’t come down from.”
“How so?”
He steepled his hands in front of his lips, that luscious brown hair falling around his shoulders. “I borrowed my father’s gun, I even had it in my hands, ready to stomp up those steps and shoot the man who dared to take my mother’s life, but when I was about to step out of my vehicle, I saw an old, frail woman walking along the sidewalk. She gave me the most beautiful smile, one that softened the frayed and hardened parts of me. We shared the pleasant exchange just as her cane hit a crack in the sidewalk, and she went teetering forward, her leg snapping in an ungodly angle. There wasn’t anybody else around, nobody saw her fall but me. I couldn’t just leave her there, so I put the gun back in my glove compartment, exited the car, and rushed over to help the old Lady. I remember our conversation so vividly. She thanked me for being such a blessed boy, then she put her hand on my cheek, smiled at me, and said it’s okay togrieve, let him hold you and comfort you. He sees you and wants you to forgive.”
It sounded like absolute hogwash to me, and I kinda despised the story, as endearing as it sounded. The man was cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs and needed a straitjacket fast. “Okay, sounds like you got this off a Hallmark movie. Don’t tell me you actually believe in this shit?”
“It’s amazing what lengths God will go through to make you believe in him, Ruby. He has a plan for us all, and sometimes he intervenes in the nick of time.”
“Or he takes your loved one away, leaving the rest of us broken and fucking bitterly cold. I’m sure you fucking felt that after that bastard shot your mother.”
Knight stoically nodded, his fingers still steepled like he was praying silently in his head. “I did. I felt the injustice you’re experiencing, my hate and disdain for him building more with each day she was gone. I didn’t believe in anything back then, how could I? He had taken away my mother, and the man who killed her was still alive and breathing. It was unjust and unfair. She didn’t deserve what happened to her. Just like I didn’t deserve to live in her absence. I had already accepted my fate that day, knowing I would go to jail and never see the light again once I pulled that trigger. It was a consequence I was willing to take. But I never made it past that sidewalk, because just as I bent down to help the lady to her feet, a semi came barreling down the street, smashing into the side of my car, and blowing it into pieces as it carried it down the road. I would’ve still been in that car if I hadn’t exited it to help her.”
“And you think God had a hand in it?”
“Yes. I know in my heart he did.”
“Why?”
“Because when I looked down to help the Old Lady, and see if she was okay, she was gone.”
“Gone? How the fuck could she be gone?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. But it felt like I had a guardian angel with me that day. After she disappeared, I was so busy trying to focus on my car that was totaled, that I missed the trial, the man getting forty to life for murdering my mother.”
“Seems like you got the shitty part of the deal.”
“The man was murdered the next day in his cell.”
That surprised me. I wasn’t sure what to say about that.
“God intervened that day, Ruby. You may not believe in him, and you have every right to feel that way, but even though you can’t feel or see him, he’s still here with you—loving you—pleading for you to go on.”
Frowning, I picked at the knot in the table. “Yeah, you’ve been talking to Cap, haven’t you?”
“He may have told me a few things, but not everything.”
My eyes dared him to say more. To shrink me. To try to change my mind. It wasn’t going to fucking happen. Not today. Not tomorrow. And certainly not in the future.
“Did he tell you I tried to kill myself?”
“He did.”
“And what’s God think of that, huh? God stole my husband away from me, and I was seconds away from joining him in the afterlife. He didn’t have some life-altering plan for me. He just let me do it.”
“Did he? Because from what I can see. You’re still here.”
Ugh, why did he have to have a point? “Oh no, there will be none of that. Just because Cap happened to show up when he did, purging me of the pills I took, does not mean that God played a part in that. That was just Cap being lucky.”
Knight’s mouth quirked ever so slightly.
“A lot of times we don’t see the hand that guides us. Yet we feel the push or the pull. Whether it was God, or fate, somethingbrought Kane to your doorstep that day… at that time… in that moment.”
Blowing out a frustrated breath, I leaned back, staring up at the sky again. The angel cloud was gone, but now there were a few fluffy little bunnies up there and one oddly shaped like a volcano.
“God has a bigger purpose for you, Ruby. It’s why you’re still here. If he didn’t, those pills would’ve worked.”
Rage bubbled inside of me. I knew he was trying to help, but all he was doing was making me angry.
