Page 79 of Beneath His Robes

I finally managed to lift my hand, though it was weak and shaky. My fingers brushed against his cheek, feeling the fresh beard growth, just barely grazing the skin, and I felt the tremble in his breath as he leaned into it.

I wanted to say so many things to him. I wanted to apologize for everything. I wanted to tell him how much he meant to me, how he was the reason I’d held on so tightly in the darkest moments. But the words wouldn’t come. They were stuck behind the weight of everything that had happened.

Instead, I just squeezed his hand again, a silent plea for him to stay with me, not to leave me now.

“I’m here,” he whispered again, his forehead resting gently against mine. “I’m here, Ronan. I’m not going anywhere.”

His lips pressed into mine carefully, so carefully as if I was made of glass, and he was fearful I would shatter. He tasted like salty soup and coffee. I couldn’t help but smile, trying through my weakness to link my hands in his hair and pull him tighter to me. He laughed and lightly tapped my nose.

“Behave yourself, my Sinner. You need to heal right now. I am not going anymore. And neither are my lips.”

For the first time since everything had started to fall apart, I allowed myself to believe that maybe, just maybe, we could put the pieces back together.

Maybe we would be okay.

Maybe…he would choose me after all.

* * *

My head was still a mess. I went from periods of being awake and trying to eat mushy baby food to long bouts of restless sleep that made me sweat from nightmares of strangers and rough hands. I didn’t know where the fog came from, but every time I tried to focus, it was like a curtain of haze fell over my thoughts.

I could feel Elias’s hand in mine, warm and steady, but my fingers were weak, and I could barely hold on. There was too much…too much to process, and every time I tried, my body fought me, like it was too fragile to hold on to any of it.

I wanted to say something, anything, but all I could do was stare at him. Elias’s face was tight, his eyes darkened by exhaustion and something I couldn’t quite place. It was the way he looked at me like there was something he wanted to say but couldn’t. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it. I didn’t think I was ready.

But I couldn’t keep pretending I didn’t know something was wrong. Something was off.

I didn’t know how to ask. So instead, I squeezed his hand slightly, trying to say that I was here and listening, but I didn’t know how to listen to something this big.

“Ronan,” Elias’s voice broke through the quiet, soft, and jagged like he was struggling with the words. “There’s something…something you need to know. About your mother.”

The words made my chest tighten immediately, and I felt my heart drop and my stomach twist. Her face flashed in my mind, memories of her in better times—her smile, the way she’d always burn anything she tried to cook, how she had so many paper cuts from cutting coupons, even when she couldn’t drive to buy anything.

But then it all turned dark. My chest hurt, and the air around me felt heavy. It was like I knew what was coming, but I didn’t want to hear it.

I can’t hear it.

Elias looked at me, and there was pain in his eyes—his pain, raw and real. And maybe that was what made it worse. He didn’t want to say this, but he had to. And even though I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t look away.

“Your mother…Miranda,” he said, the words breaking like glass against the silence. “She’s gone, Ronan. She didn’t make it. It was too much on her body this time. I am so sorry.”

The blood in my body felt like it dropped, fell out all over the floor, and everything inside me went numb. I wanted to scream, to shout that it was not true, that it couldn’t be true. But no sound came out, just a low, aching thud in my chest.

My vision swayed, and the world felt like it was slipping away from me, like I was drowning in something too heavy to bear. Most days, I fucking hated her. She was a sleazy moron who made my life a living hell…but now with her gone…

I blinked, my head spun, and I didn’t know how to breathe.

“No,” I whispered. That was all I could say.

No. No, you’re lying. You have to be. That crazy bitch owes me more than this. She doesn’t get to leave me like this. No. Not now.

Elias didn’t look away, allowing me to rage and break down before him. His hand squeezed mine, and I could feel his fingers trembling slightly like he was trying to hold himself together, too. I didn’t know what I was expecting from him, but when he opened his mouth again, I wished I could block it out.

I wish I could turn back time, back to before all of this bullshit. Before I ever came back and broke every fucking thread of my life.

He didn’t give me that chance.

“Ronan, it wasn’t you,” Elias said, his voice low and strained. “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t…you didn’t do this.”

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