I watched her swallow, her lips pinching together as she tried to find the words. “Because he’s gone. He’s gone, and everyone is sad. I’m sad too,” she explained, dropping her head. She pulled my hand off her thigh, turning it over and lacing her fingers with mine. I tried to ignore how perfectly we fit and my Nonna’s words from long ago. Now wasn’t the time.
“You have nothing to feel guilty for,” I whispered, my thumb stroking her hand.
Her honey golden eyes flicked over to me, her lips parting. “I feel guilty for being happy.”
My brows came together, and I leaned over, cupping her face. When she didn’t give me anything else, I said, “Baby, I can’t read your mind. You’re going to have to give me more than that.”
“I’m happy because of you.”
Christ.
She blew out an unsteady breath and wrapped her hand around my wrist, leaning into me. Her eyes closed as she murmured, “You make me happy, Ash. Your presence, yourwarmth, your patience…all of it. I feel like I’m living a double life. I’m supposed to be grieving my friend, but every morning, I wake up excited for you to knock on my door.”
My jaw tightened and I pushed my hand to the back of her head, my fingers weaving through her silky hair. “You’re allowed to feel different things at the same time. You can be sad. You can be happy. You can be both. Melancholy doesn’t replace anything, it just moves in and finds a spot on the shelf, Starlight. Trust me, I know.”
She bit the inside of her bottom lip. “So I’m not a horrible person?” she asked, touching my chest.
“No. Not in this life or any other.”
“Thanks to everyone who came out this afternoon to celebrate the life of Felix Kolby,” the preacher said from behind the podium. “They’re going to lower the casket into the ground. If you would like to pay your respects, now is the time.”
Angel shifted, turning to face the table piled with white roses. I brought my mouth to the shell of her ear. “Did you want to give him a rose?”
She wrapped her arms around herself, the breeze loosening her hair at the top of her clip, and shook her head. “He hated roses.”
“He did?”
The only answer I got was a single nod. We both fell into silence, her leaning against me, me supporting her like I’d been dreaming of for so long, and watching people drop flowers onto the empty casket one by one. It took a bit. Half the town had shown up, after all. My eyes lifted, meeting Hayes’ green ones. He gave me a small nod, and I returned it. Then his gaze landed on Angel. I tensed, remaining that way as he watched her for some time. When the roses were almost gone, he broke his stare and leaned down, whispering something to Margo. She twisted her neck to look up at him and brought her hand to the backof his head, her eyes gleaming as she smiled. He gave her a small kiss, straightened, and muttered something to Gray before heading to the table. He picked up the second to last rose and stood at the edge of the grave with a hand in his pocket.
Death was something we were all too familiar with. I couldn’t even begin to describe the horrors I’d seen when I was SEAL. My nightmares had mostly faded, thank fuck. However, Dominic thought that my memories from the war had been suppressed by the fear of never finding Angel. My nightmares about my time serving my country stopped, but after I got out of the hospital, I saw Angel’s eyes every night. Heard her screams and smelled her blood. I managed to deal with it, just like the guys dealt with their own shit. We kept going, kept doing jobs, doing what we could for the hellish world we lived in. Death was a part of the job, then and now, and always would be.
But funerals, they fucked with Dominic and Hayes in a way the rest of us couldn’t figure out.
He stared down into the grave, a muscle jumping in his cheek, the wind flipping his blond hair. After a minute or two, his mouth moved and he released the rose. When it hit the top of the casket, he dipped his head and moved back. He didn’t go to Margo. Instead, he came straight to Angel and me.
“Hello, Hayes,” she softly greeted.
He gave her a weak smile. “Hello, Angel.”
“Thank you for coming.”
“Of course,” he said, taking her hand and pressing a kiss to the top of it. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Her spine straightened against me. “Th-thank you.”
He released her hand and met my eyes. “Ash,” he greeted.
“Hayes.”
“Do you have some time later for a conversation?”
My chest felt tight. “Sure.”
He put his hands in his pockets, stepped back, and studied me and the woman in my arms. Something warm flashed in his eyes, and the tension between us snapped, shredding. The pieces of our pain floated down to the freshly mowed grass before sinking into the soil. As he walked away, Angel leaned her head back against my chest. “He’s forgiven you,” she breathed.
I stiffened. “How can you be sure?”
“Because I just watched him throw his anger into that grave.”
