Page 69 of After Our Kiss

In my hand his grip collapsed. All of his body's tension had centered in his face and his neck. I stared as he lived through the nightmarish memories that this poor girl's bones brought forth. She'd been dug free, and so had his heavy shame.

“Hey,” I said, tugging at him. He resisted me—I curled myself around his body, my arm around his shoulders, the other across his collarbones. “Hey, look at me.”

He did; his pupils were as empty as the newly dug grave. That rich pain wrapped around my lungs, my heart, until I felt dried out inside. “I know what you're going to say,” he whispered.

“It's not your fault. You have to know that.”

“You said it before, and even if you're right, this isn't fair.” He shut his eyes then he looked back at the men loading the bones onto a stretcher. Cameras flashed, and people with badges sipped their cups of coffee—for them, this was a job well done. “Anna deserved a better fate than this.”

Dagger after dagger cut off chunks of my spirit. It was incredibly hard to watch the man I loved suffer. But he was right—Anna deserved more. Over his shoulder, I saw movement. There was two people coming our way - a woman and a man.

I didn't recognize them, but for some reason, Conway squinted at her like he was seeing a ghost. “Hello,” she said, her hands wringing together. The man next to her was grabbing her elbow; they leaned together, two people who couldn't stay on their feet without each other. “Are you Conway? The one who helped find Anna?”

I stepped back, both of us facing the strangers. “Yes,” Conway said, his skin white as ivory.

The man's smile looked out of place. He hadn't worn it in a long time. “I'm Nolan. This is Sherry. We're Anna's parents.”

Amazed, I looked at them both closer. Was that why Conway seemed so unsettled? Could he recognize parts of the girl who'd died in her mother?

Sherry held out her hand; it was shaking. “We just wanted—” she couldn't finish, covering her mouth, tears finally breaking free. Her sadness caught me in a choke hold.

Nolan patted his wife's shoulder, looking seriously at Conway. “Thank you. You can't imagine how much it destroyed us wondering all these years what happened to our little girl. But you brought her back to us. We can find peace, now. That's... that's a gift we'll forever be grateful for.”

Conway's expression melted. Then it bunched together again, and I knew he was holding back his own tears. This was a man laid so low by his guilt, that seeing the parents of the girl who haunted him should have broken what was left of him.

Reaching out, he hugged them both. They fell into Conway, all of them mumbling, speaking softly of regrets and insisting things would be all right. I watched it with amazement—somehow not feeling out of place.

I was seeing the man I love grow full again, shedding his self-loathing for the first time in years. There was no better feeling. And maybe it would take time for him to truly heal... but I believed it would happen.

We'd found each other. We'd broken each other. We could be fixed.

We could live again.

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