Forbidden Love(52)
“I love you, Dylan. I’ll always love you.” I leaned down and kissed his cool, soft lips, my salty tears mixing between us. I didn’t want this to be goodbye. I had no idea how to do it. Where to start. How to begin, or inevitably how to finish.
“Always,” he rasped, “sugar.” With his last word, his eyes closed, released a drawn-out breath, and stopped breathing. I stared intently at his chest, willing it to move, willing him to breathe. His chest remained unmoving and his hand became limp in mine.
It wasn't enough time.
We barely had the chance to laugh, to dance, to cry, to make love, yet he was leaving me. Left me. I wanted to reach down and shake him, force him to fight, force him to breathe, for me, for him, for us. A sob built deep in my stomach as my heart, once more, shattered. There would be no coming back from this. He was my everything, yet he was gone.
“No,” I wept, pressing my lips to his still ones. “No!” My voice grew louder and more broken.
“Dylan!” I wailed. “Dylan. No!” I put my forehead against his and cried. “Please.” My words echoed around the still room, filling the emptiness with my broken pleas. As my words faded away, my fragmented sobs shook me, pushing me into despair. No amount of time, discussion or planning helped. None of the sweet words we’d spoken just the previous night eased the ache in my splinted heart.
He was gone. My Dylan was gone.
Jude
Dylan passed away. I received the call from Teeny. The cancer took him from her in the early hours of the morning as she sat by his side holding onto him. There wasn’t anything anyone could do. She was destroyed. The only thing harder than knowing the woman you love was grieving for another man was being powerless to take that pain away.
I’d keep that promise I made and I’d be right by her side when she needed me.
I wanted to heal her heartache. I wanted her to know Dylan asked me to take care of her…but I had to wait. It was too soon. She wouldn’t listen anyway.
Haven
The tears threatened to spill over as I stood in the dim light of the overcast day, while looking down into the cold, wet earth. My limbs and heart felt hollow as I stared blankly at the dark mahogany wood of his coffin, his final resting place amongst the hundreds of graves that made up this cemetery.
I loved him. I loved him yet I lost him. My heart was breaking all over again. Physical pain ripped through my chest as I gazed at the starkness of the marble headstones of pain and loss against the lush, green landscape. I’d never see him again. Never watch him pace when he was nervous, or laugh at one of his silly jokes, never get to pick on him for eating his dinner in color codes, never hear his soft voice tell me he loved me, never feel his pinkie wrapped around mine. I’d never feel his kisses or his heartbeat as I lay tangled in his arms. Never again, any of it. All of it, him, all gone.
He had become a memory, a memory that would fade with time, like the scent of his skin and the color of his eyes, or the feel of his face when he leaned into my hands. The vision of him, still fresh in my mind, would soon fade away. The only thing left was the hole in my heart, the part of me that would be buried here forever.
I sank to my knees, the nylon of my stockings soaking up the mud that caked the ground, thanks to the rain that had been there since he left, since he was taken from me. My eyes slipped closed as my silent tears finally spilt over. Agonizingly, they tumbled down my frozen face and dropped onto my ruined stockings.
Jude came up behind me; the soft ground muffled his footsteps. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. I felt him.
He bent down and wrapped his arms around my shuddering frame. “Come on, Haven.” Such a simple request, yet the hardest one I’d ever had to comply to. The last thing I wanted to do was leave. This was my goodbye, but I still wasn’t ready.
Jude picked my exhausted, broken body from the soggy ground, his arms strong and sure around my middle. I laid my head on his chest, his heart thumping steadily, reminding me of both the man I lost and the one standing with me, holding me up.
Dylan. Jude.
Closing my eyes once again, tears continuously fell down my sodden cheeks, the rain washing away the traces of my sorrow. I wanted to sleep, to close my eyes and sleep for days, months maybe. I wanted to rouse thinking this was all a horrible nightmare and that the man I loved wasn’t being lowered six-feet underground, but instead, was waiting for me at home.
Our home. Our empty shell of a home.
I clutched Jude’s shirt and sobbed. “Oh, God, he’s gone.” My lungs fought for oxygen as I struggled to catch a breath. “I can’t—I can’t! This is too much. Make it go away! Please!” Desperate pleas through gasping intakes of air, rushed out. My eyes screwed shut while my mouth opened in a silent scream. He just held me. No noise, just Jude.