Tears burned hotly in her throat as she stared at the coffin
covered with flowers.
Kye was gone, killed by some mother-fucking drunk driving
bastard as he walked to his car one night after work.He had held
on until she had gotten to his side, held on until he could
stare up into her face, and hear her tell him she loved him one
last time. He had mouthed the words back to her, the unbearable
pain from his battered body darkening his eyes to black. The
lids of his eyes had drifted closed, and in despair, she fell
against the bed.
“…don’t cry. Please, don’t,” he had whispered. “Love you, baby.
God, always loved you. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Love you.” The
words had fallen from his mouth in a hoarse plea while his face
spasmed in agony. And then, he was gone, the internal injuries
so severe death had been a blessing. His spine had been
shattered from the waist down by the impact, and the internal
bleeding had been massive.
Yeah, the death had been a blessing for him. The nurse inside of
her knew that. He had been in agony and none of the morphine and
Demerol and other various opiates they had pumped inside him had
touched it.
And for her, she supposed. She never could have watched him
suffer through it. Each spasm that had gripped him had ripped
through her as well. That was the logical part of her.
But the other part, the part that was only complete after she
had found Kye, that part despaired. The ever-present tears
burned her eyes, but she stubbornly refused to let them fall. If
she started to cry, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to stop.
He was gone.
“Ashlyn.”
She whirled at the familiar lyrical accent. God knows, she had
heard it often enough in the past three years. Just about every
other time she tumbled into dreams with Kye’s arms wrapped
around her.
That voice, the one she had heard only one night, was almost as
familiar to her as Kye’s had been.
He stood behind her, his handsome, almost angelic face ravaged
with grief. But he met her eyes squarely. “I came as soon as I
heard,” he said gruffly, moving up to touch his hand to the
smooth metal of the coffin. “But if you aren’t wanting me here,
I will go.”
“No. He was your friend, and you were his. I…I’m not ashamed of
what happened. I think maybe I expected to be. But that’s
neither here nor there,” she said, her voice hoarse and rough
from all the tears she had shed. Brokenly, she whispered, “He
killed him, Connor. He took my beautiful Kye from me, destroyed
his body, smashed him into a thousand different pieces. And he
sits in a jail, alive and well. And Kye is in…there.
“Oh, God, I can’t take it,” she moaned, starting to fall to her
knees, one hand pressed to her mouth.
