“How can I?” She raised her head, tears running like cold fingers down her face. “Nothing will be the same without you. My world is nothing without you in it.”
He raised his hand as if he wanted to touch her face, but wasn’t able to complete the movement without Mary’s help. As she gently guided it to her cheek, he explained, “It’s you who have made our life. The one who makes this world what it is…not me.”
She shook her head, her vision blurred from her t
ears. “That’s not true.”
His fingers twined with hers and a once-strong hold now barely held hers. “I want you to promise you won’t always mourn me, but that you’ll cherish what we had and never stop living.”
An impossible promise.
She couldn’t imagine what her life would be without Charles. Her two sons and her daughter would not have their father. She would not have her husband. How to take a step forward and continue with a life that worked only with him in it? “I promise that I’ll never forget you.”
Twice now she’d heard the same thing—that she needed to continue to live. Once from Charles and now from Helen, but the advice finally sank in past her pain. She’d been so consumed that Charles had left her, she never saw that they both had made promises they could not keep. That her promise to Charles when he collared her, and even when they were married: That only he owned her soul was a promise she couldn’t keep. And she knew, deep down, she deserved all the things she once dreamed of having—with or without Charles.
She remembered his words as if he was saying them now. Remembered all the pain she had experienced in his final hours during those last conversations they had had. Her tears kept flowing, as for the first time since he passed she heard what he had told her that night.
Tears filled Charles’s eyes and then one escaped down his face so slowly, as if even the tear didn’t have the strength to fall. “I’m sorry I’ve disappointed you. I’m sorry I broke my promise to always be there for you.”
“You haven’t disappointed me, don’t think that way.” She caressed his cheeks, feeling bones beneath her fingers and cold skin. “You could never disappoint me.”
He sighed, and the light brown depth of his eyes filled with regret. “I wish I had more time…”
She could’ve said the same, screamed to the heavens demanding more time to love Charles, but what would it do? It’d only give Charles a world of guilt that she didn’t want him to hold in his heart. She didn’t want him to take negative feelings with him when he passed.
“I wanted forever,” she said on a sob. “I wanted to grow old with you and sit on the porch watching the sunset as our grandchildren ran around the yard.”
“You can still have those dreams,” he whispered.
She shook her head, the sight of him blurring with her tears. “Not with you.”
“No, not with me, but with someone.” His voice was so soft, so weak. “You’re young, my love. Another man will take you into his arms and give you the life I couldn’t.”
Her voice cracked. “How can you say that?”
He grunted as he forced his hand up and brushed the trailing tears of her cheek with the lightest of touches. “Because I know you would be saying the same thing to me and wanting me to be happy. I want those same dreams for you, even if it’s not with me. I want you to find love again; don’t deny yourself that.”
Her breath strained through her tight throat. “There will only be you. Always you.”
Sadness darkened his eyes. “You feel that way now, but you won’t always—”
“Never,” she interrupted him. “I’ll never feel what we’ve shared again.”
He chuckled, a whisper of his adoration she’d never forget. His features warmed beneath the coldness of death taking him. “And that’s why I love you. You’re loyal and hold the sweetest heart.”
“My heart belongs to you,” she replied in an instant.
He drew in a long, shaky breath and his expression pinched in pain. “I know it does, but there is room for someone else in there, too.”
“No. Never.” She didn’t understand why he said these things. She didn’t want him pushing her away. No, she wanted him to say that somehow this could all be fixed. She depended on him. She needed him here. No one could ever replace her Dom. “There will never be anyone else, only you.”
His gaze, though pained, shone with agony that was soul deep. “Nothing would break my heart more.”
Mary wiped the tears off her cheeks, knowing she cried because Charles’s heart would be broken now. To see her there, in this place and still mourning him more than four years later, and also wishing for things she couldn’t change, he would be devastated for her.
She examined the women around her, as Helen continued to give advice to the group, all of whom had tears in their eyes. She wondered if she’d touched their hearts when she spoke, quite possibly gotten to the root of their pain. As she continued to scan the faces around her, a sudden clarity filled her mind.
I don’t belong here.