Page 115 of Beneath His Robes

“I don’t know how to do this without him,” I whispered, the weight of those words threatening to pull me under. “Elias is really gone, Travis. I can’t…I failed him. I couldn’t even say goodbye. I was begging him to stay with me even as he was struggling to breathe. The amount of pain he must’ve gone through in the end. I failed him. I failed us.”

Travis didn’t say anything for a moment. Instead, he stepped closer, wrapping his arms around me in a hug I wasn’t sure I was ready for but needed nonetheless. It wasn’t romantic. There was no underlying tone to the embrace, just a friend who knew I couldn’t hold myself up on my feet.

“You didn’t fail that boy,” he murmured, his voice thick with emotion. “You did your fucking best. And you’ll find a way to keep goin’, Ronan. One day at a time. But don’t do it alone. Let people in. You don’t have to carry all of this on your own.”

I closed my eyes, letting the tears finally come, my body trembling as the weight of everything hit me all at once. Elias was gone. I knew he wouldn’t want me to wallow like this, to give up. He would want me to figure out how to live without him, with the memory of his love still etched into my soul.

I didn’t know if I could.

Without Elias…there was no me.

For now, I was just trying to survive.

“I just wish I could’ve said goodbye to him,” I said, the tears falling off my nose when I leaned over the balcony. “I was stuck in the fucking hospital for his funeral. I was shown a video of the service on my phone, but out of all the people who loved him, I couldn’t be there. I couldn’t get my closure.”

Travis looked thoughtful for a moment and then lightly punched my arm.

“Then c’mon.”

I furrowed my brow, unsure what he could possibly mean.

“We’re goin’ to get your closure. Your ‘goodbye’. You and your prayer boy deserve that, man. Least I can do.”

The words were meant as comfort. His offer was kind and genuine, so why did the tears flow faster?

I realized as I hugged my friend and accepted the gesture that I didn’t want to go.

I didn’t want to say goodbye to the man I loved.

I didn’t want to accept that this was real.

That he was gone.

ChapterForty-One

Ronan

The car felt too quiet as we drove. The only sounds were the hum of the engine and the occasional rustle of the wind against the windows. I had barely spoken since Travis offered to drive me to Elias’s grave. I didn’t need to say much. My thoughts were too loud, too jagged, to let any real words escape. The overwhelming weight of what I was about to do pressed down on me like a boulder on my chest.

The night before, I had barely slept. The idea of seeing Elias’s grave—acknowledging that he was gone—had kept me up, my mind turning over memories of him, of us, things I could never undo. I couldn’t even remember the last time he smiled, and the thought of never having that chance again was like a wound that wouldn’t heal.

We passed the familiar lights of Las Vegas, the noise of the city growing distant as we left it behind. Travis’s soft hum of a tune on the radio couldn’t mask the heaviness in the air, and even though I knew he was just trying to fill the silence, it only reminded me of how much space there was between us.

I didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know what to feel. Nothing felt real anymore.

We turned off the main road and headed toward the cemetery—small, tucked away on the edge of town.

The gravel road crunched under the tires as we drove through the gates. I couldn’t bring myself to look out the window, afraid that as soon as I did, the reality of what I was facing would hit me harder than I was ready for.

When we parked, I could feel my heart racing, a knot in my stomach growing tighter with every second.

The graveyard was quiet. Too quiet.

The wind whispered through the trees as the late afternoon sun cast long shadows on the gravestones.

It was a peaceful place, but that only made the situation worse. Elias wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to be alive, somewhere, anywhere, where I could still reach him, touch him, feel him next to me.

But he wasn’t.

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