“You’re Jaxon King,” I whisper. “And I’m Athena Saint. And we’re going to make every motherfucker in this town who ever hurt us pay for it in blood.”
He’s quiet for a long moment, his shoulders still trembling. And then he swallows hard, nodding. “You’re right,” he says quietly. “We’re not going to let them get away with any of this. And you’re right about Natalie too. I think—” he takes a deep breath, looking away, out over the cemetery, and I know she’s out there somewhere. Somewhere in the direction he’s staring, there’s a grave with her name on it, and he’s thinking of her. It doesn’t hurt, though. She deserves that much—to be on his mind. To not be forgotten.
But he needs to live for himself, too. Just like I do.
“I think she wouldn’t mind, that it’s you,” he says finally. “I think she might even find it funny, in a way. She had that kind of—irreverent humor, sometimes. And if she’d had the chance to meet you, I think she’d have liked you. She’d have been glad that you’re the one I found, after it all.”
“I’m glad too,” I say softly. “I really am. Even if the road to get here was fucked. We’ll do our best to unfuck it, from here on out.”
Jaxon pushes himself up then, taking my hands and pulling me up to my feet with him. “Let’s do this,” he says firmly.
I frown, looking at the patch of dirt. “I didn’t think far enough ahead to how we’d dig it up—”
“There’s a toolshed for keeping the grounds clean,” Jaxon says. “I know where it is. I’ll find something and come back. You stay here. You could probably—” he clears his throat, looking over at my mother’s grave. “You could probably use a moment alone here, anyway.”
I nod, sniffing back the last of the tears. As I watch him walk away, I wipe away what’s left of them, and I turn towards my mother’s grave, sinking back down onto my knees in the grass in front of it.
“I hope this is what you’d want,” I whisper softly, the air around me suddenly feeling very silent and still, without Jaxon there. “I hope that I’m right, and that I’m not just reading too much into a dream. But Ifeellike this is right, and you always said I should listen to my feelings better. That I shouldn’t be so angry and closed off. So this is me doing exactly that.” I sigh, rubbing my palms over my jeans. “I don’t know what you’d think of the decisions I’m making these days, or who I’ve chosen to love, or what I’ve chosen to forgive and who I’ve chosen to hate and focus that anger on. Maybe you wouldn’t understand how I can still want Cayde and Dean and Jaxon, after everything. Maybe you’d tell me to do what you didn’t, run away and leave this all behind and let them come after me if they want to. But I just—”
I let out a long breath, and I reach out, pressing my hands against the cool damp earth. “I can’t leave now. I can’t leavethem. We’re all in this together and they—they’ve all suffered too. I know they have. We’re going to come out of this different on the other side. And I hope—I hope that you’d be proud of me, when it’s all over. I hope that you’d see that I made the choices that I thought were best, even if they might seem strange to anyone else. That I did what I thought I needed for myself, for the first time in my life.”
“You asked me to be careful,” I continue, clearing my throat, wanting to say all of the things that I want to get out before Jaxon comes back. “I don’t think a lot of this will fall under beingcareful. But you also taught me to be brave, and strong, just like dad did. I’ve done my best, but I know it’s time now for me to do better. And I’m starting with this. I’m choosing how this plays out, from now on. And I’m going to believe that at the end of it, I’ll come out on top, and that if you can see me, you’ll be proud of me. Both of you.”
I pick up a fistful of dirt, letting it trickle out through my fingers, just like it did when we stood around the open grave. I don’t know anymore if it was the hardest day of my life. There’s been too many of them lately. But I’m determined to keep going.
And now I have help. Someone at my back.
Three someones.
I never would have thought that when it came down to this, it would be the Blackmoor heirs who had my back.It’s almost fucking poetic.
I stand up stiffly when I hear Jaxon’s footsteps. He’s found a shovel, and together in silence we go about the task of unearthing my mother’s urn as quickly as possible, cognizant of the fact that someone else could come along at any time. We’ve already wasted too much time, but things needed to be said.
They needed to be out in the open, so we could move forward.
Jaxon gives me his jacket to wrap the urn in, as we walk back towards the bike. “Won’t you be cold?” I ask, looking up at him concernedly, but he shrugs.
“More important to keep that safe,” Jaxon says gruffly. “Come on. It’ll take us a bit to get to the coast, not going as fast as I usually do.”
I clutch the urn, wrapped in the jacket, to my chest with one arm as Jaxon starts the bike, the other wrapped around his waist. As we speed down the highway I press my cheek to his back, wanting to remember tonight. It’s the mostrightI’ve felt in a long time, as if everything is finally coming together. As if the world isn’t as horrible as it’s seemed sometimes, in the past months.
I know grief comes in waves, and that it won’t always be this way. I know I’ll feel drowned by it again, and I’ll surface again too. But for tonight, I feel like I can breathe. I feel like I can think again, make my own choices again, and choose correctly.
And that makes everything else seem so much more possible.
14
ATHENA
Jaxon slows as we drive past the ruins of the country club, cordoned off with yellow tape now. He glances at it, and I know he’s wondering about what happened there, just like I’m sure everyone else is. I wonder if he’ll say something about it when we stop, but by the time we park the bike near the entrance to the beach closest to where I want to go, all of his focus is on us getting there.
It’s colder here, out by the water, the wind whipping my hair around my face as we walk down the beach. I hold on tightly to the urn as we walk, Jaxon’s big body buffeting some of the wind, and we navigate our way around the rocks, all the way until we reach the small patch of beach that meant so much to me and my mother.
It looks exactly the way I remember it from the last time we were here, exactly the way I saw it in my dream. Jaxon stops next to me, looking at the rippling black water, and then down at me.
“This is it?” he asks, his voice deep and quiet, and I nod, my throat suddenly too tight to speak. I wish I’d come back here with her sooner—it’s been since before my dad died that we were last here together. I wish we’d come back the last time I visited, but the time for wishing is over. I can’t change any of it now.
“This is it.” I unwrap the jacket from around the urn, my hand over the lid. The wind is kicking up, and I know once I start, the ashes will be gone in an instant. I want to do this right, to remember it, and I hold out the urn, looking at Jaxon. “Take this for me for a minute?”