Page 112 of Beneath His Robes

His hand fell down my chest, and he took a deep breath before his head slowly fell into my arms.

“No,” I screamed, rubbing his face, begging him to speak again, to fight. “I choose you, too. I love you. Elias Cross, I fucking love you.”

I could feel the moment his soul left this world. The way I could always feel his light. It slowly flickered, a soft blinking that grew darker and darker…until it was completely gone, leaving only my broken soul in its wake.

Alone.

Alone in my own darkness.

Alone to suffocate without his light.

ChapterForty

Ronan

A few months later…

The sterile smell of the hospital room had become a permanent fixture in my senses. I’d grown used to the faint hum of machines, the swish of nurses’ shoes, and the incessant beeping that never stopped. But today, the sounds felt different. Less suffocating. Less all-consuming. Today, I was walking out of here. But I was walking out of here alone.

I sat up slowly, the weight of the burns on my body still a constant reminder of the battle I’d fought—of the fire, of the pain, of losing him. My skin was tender, stretched tight over the damaged flesh, but it had begun to heal.

It had taken months. Long months spent in bed, drifting in and out of feverish dreams, haunted by visions of that night. Of what I’d tried to do and failed to stop. Of Jack.

But there was one image that always came back clearer than the rest. Elias’s face. His voice. His touch. The moment I’d let him slip away. I thought it would break me in ways I couldn’t survive, and in some ways, it had.

But I was still here.

I was still breathing.

If only in corporeal form.

The nurse came in to check on me, her smile warm but weary as she helped me gather my things.

“You’re free to go, Ronan,” she said softly, her voice carrying a sense of finality. “Your wounds are healing well. We’ll continue monitoring your progress for a while, but you’re strong. I can tell.”

I nodded absently, my hands shaking slightly as I grabbed my bag. But the numbness I’d been carrying for months felt like it was shifting, and the weight of what I was walking back to hit me all at once.

I wasn’t going home to the same life. I wasn’t going home to Elias.

I hadn’t been able to face it until now. The thought of never hearing his voice again, of never feeling his hands on me or his lips against mine, was torture.

The weight of that finality had been too much for me to carry, but now that I was walking out of this hospital, it hit me like a wave. It was real. He was gone.

I had no more chances to say goodbye.

I couldn’t save him.

My chest tightened as I stood, taking a shaky step toward the door and leaning against the wall for support. The freedom of finally leaving the hospital was like a strange, cruel joke. What was freedom if it meant walking back into a world where Elias was no longer there?

I’d spent so much time thinking about the pain—the pain of what I’d survived, the scars, the ache in my body. But the deeper wound, the one I hadn’t been able to fix, was the hole in my heart where Elias used to be.

My soul was untethered. Just a weightless ghost unable to find the anchor that was no longer here.

The nurse helped me to the exit, and I barely registered the door closing behind me, the crisp air hitting my skin, or the sound of the car engine as I was driven away. I felt as if I was floating, detached from the world around me.

I kept thinking back to those days in the hospital when I would wake up confused and disoriented, and the first thing I’d ask was Where is Elias?

But I knew now like I knew then. He wasn’t coming back.

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