Page 81 of Beneath His Robes

Two Weeks Later

The weight of the day pressed down on me, thick like the fog rolling over the small town roads as we drove to the cemetery. Elias hadn’t said much since we left the hospital, and I couldn’t bring myself to speak either.

What do you say when everything feels wrong?

When your entire world had been ripped apart, and you were left standing on the edge of it, looking down at the wreckage?

I stared out the window, my hand clenched on my lap, fingers digging into the denim of my jeans. The car’s interior was too quiet, too still, like we were both trying to pretend we weren’t heading toward the final goodbye.

The funeral was a formality. A ritual. It didn’t matter that my mother was gone because it felt like the world had stopped for me the second they told me she’d been hurt.

Elias shifted beside me, his hand moving slowly, almost tentatively, over to rest lightly on mine. I was still a broken piece of shit, even after weeks of healing in the hospital. I felt his presence, but he didn’t squeeze my hand, as if he knew how breakable I felt right now.

He didn’t try to pull me into him.

He knew better than that now.

I knew I needed space, even if I craved his touch. His palm was warm, a reminder that even in the middle of this disaster, I wasn’t alone. And for that, I was thankful.

I glanced at him, catching the way his jaw tightened and his eyes drifted to the road. The priest’s collar was gone, tucked under a dark suit jacket, and the look on his face…it wasn’t the look of a man who was attending a funeral.

It was the look of someone trying to hold their own pain together, trying to keep it inside because the weight of the world was already too fucking much.

I wanted to say something. I wanted to tell him that I was sorry—sorry for everything, for the things I said, for dragging him into all of this—but the words died on my tongue. Sorry that I flinched at every touch he tried to give me for comfort.

Those monsters took so much. The nightmares were constant, the restless sleep. I couldn’t make this right. I couldn’t fix myself, so how could I fix us? The hospital told me I was okay.

But I felt anything but okay.

I am filthy. I am not worthy. I am ruined.

His voice broke through the silence, low and soft. “Are you okay?”

I laughed, a dry, almost bitter sound. “Does it look like I’m fucking okay?”

He flinched, his hand tightening slightly on mine. “I’m here. For whatever you need. If that’s screaming at me, I’m ready.”

I swallowed hard, the lump in my throat growing. “Sorry. I don’t even know what I need right now.”

We drove for a while longer, the cemetery looming ahead like a place where nothing would ever be the same again. And when Elias parked the car, he didn’t ask if I was ready. He just got out, walked around the front of the car, and opened my door. He knew I couldn’t move my feet alone. He didn’t force anything. He just stood there, his eyes kind and patient, as if waiting for me to finally decide to accept this reality.

I stepped out, the cold air hitting me like a slap in the fucking face.

The cold weather usually had those sweet, forbidden memories filtering through the wind like sin on my skin…but now. I felt only the empty, bitter cold.

The world felt off-kilter, tilted like I wasn’t supposed to be here. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. My mother was always the one who was supposed to be the one taking care of me, making sure I was okay, not the other way around. Yet to the very fucking end, it was me who kept her stupid ass breathing. Until I couldn’t.

We walked together, side by side, but there was distance between us that we didn’t talk about. Not yet. Maybe not ever. The wind cut through my jacket, biting at my skin, but I didn’t feel it.

All I felt was the loss, the echo of her absence, The realization that I wouldn’t be sobering her up and helping her heal again, that she was truly gone. The gnawing ache in my chest grew to an all-consuming hole that I couldn’t shake.

When we reached the gravesite, everything blurred—the faces, the words, Father Franklin’s monotonous voice.

It was all just noise.

The casket, a dark wooden box that held my mother’s body, sat there like a finality, and I didn’t know what to do with it. I wanted to scream at her, rip her out of the damn ground and beg her to fight harder. This wasn’t supposed to be happening. But it was. She was gone.

Elias stepped closer to me, his shoulder brushing against mine, but still, he gave me space. He was whispering some prayer under his breath. The words flowed through me, and I felt his warmth and presence, like a tether that kept me grounded in a world that felt like it was spinning too fast. A fucking Tilt-A-Whirl I couldn’t get the fuck off of.

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