Page 93 of Dominion

I lost my compass, the way in life, and with Judah behind bars and Danny… I didn’t know what to do.

When you have spent your life in survival mode, it was hard getting rid of that feeling. It was weird knowing that we could all move on now and do something with our lives, when the most important person wasn’t here to share it with us. There was no celebration after Casimir and Hunter cleared out the room and brought us home. There was no celebration after the police took Judah away and Cas submitted all the papers Dylan had found.

There was no fucking celebration when we took Dylan’s body back to the manor, not knowing what to do.

There was no celebration when Kane and Rowan came in the next car, huddling with Ash and me while the two of us cried, grieving the loss of the person we both loved.

Where did we go from here?

There was a heaviness in my limbs that could only be connected with the sorrow I felt in my heart, but I didn’t know how to hide it or even if I should. I didn’t want to plaster a fake smile on my face, when there was nothing I could be happy about.

Yes, we finally won, but at what cost?

Ash barely talked, and I didn’t have words that could lessen this blow we were both experiencing. We were falling apart, and nothing and no one could fill he chasm that had opened in our chests.

Dylan wasn’t here with us. He would never get to see another sunset. We would never get to hear him laugh, kiss him, hold his hand, or tell him that everything would be okay. His body lay in the basement where Lazarus’s father used to have his office, waiting for us to come out and to bury him into the cold, unforgiving ground where he would forever stay.

He went where we couldn’t follow, and each and every day I fought against the urge to join him in the nothingness, reminding myself that life had to go on even if he wasn’t here anymore. But what my mind knew, my heart refused to hear, and this constant fight between what needed to be done and what my heart wanted was becoming exhausting.

It’d been a week since we lost him.

A week filled with tears, with numbness, with pain, and sorrow so great that I sometimes felt that this feeling would never go away. Judah was behind bars, but I couldn’t count it as a win when it cost us something much more important. The battle against him demanded a sacrifice, and Dylan was the one to pay the price.

Ash walked into the room we shared, both of us existing on autopilot. If it was some other occasion or some other day, I would’ve told him that the black suit he wore made my mouth water, but I couldn’t. I could barely breathe, knowing that the only reason Dylan wasn’t here was because I once again decided to do something idiotic. Something that cost him his life just because I didn’t think.

“Skylar,” Ash murmured, walking slowly toward where I sat. My hands were in my lap, the black dress Casimir brought me on my body, but I couldn’t bring myself to put on the black boots I had from before. The boots Dylan had bought me.

Ash kneeled in front of me, taking my hands in his and looking up at me with so much love in his eyes. The love I didn’t deserve.

“You need to finish getting dressed, darling.”

“I can’t,” I whispered. I couldn’t because that would mean I would have to accept reality. I would have to go down the stairs and into the backyard where we had decided to bury Dylan. Accepting it meant that I would have to see the coffin that held his body and I would need to say goodbye. “I’m not ready to say goodbye to him, Ash.” I sniffed, hating that even now I couldn’t stop myself from burdening him with my pain when he already had so much going on. “I don’t want to see it,” I cried out, keeping my voice low. “I don’t want to see them lowering that coffin into the cold ground, because then I need to accept it. I have to accept the reality that he will never grow old. He will never hold my hand again. I will never get to see the two of you in the kitchen, smiling, happy, waiting for me because I took forever to get dressed. I will need to accept that a week ago was the last time I would ever hear his voice and feel his touch.”

“Sky,” he murmured, his own voice breaking and eyes filling with the unshed tears. “He will always be here with us.”

“But not how I want him to be!” I bellowed, letting the pain tear another piece from my heart. “I wasn’t ready to exist in a life that he wasn’t a part of. I was ready to sacrifice myself for you guys, but?—”

“And he was ready to sacrifice himself for us,” Ash interrupted. “He was ready to sacrifice his life for you, for me, because he loved us, Moonshine.” Ash’s hands tightened around mine. “He did what you would’ve done if the roles were reversed, and I am sure that he would do it again and again and again if it meant that you would get to live.”

But his words did nothing to calm down the monster clawing at my insides.

“It should’ve been me.” I admitted for the first time out loud what I was thinking this whole time. “I should be the one in that coffin, not him.”

“No!” he yelled out. “It should’ve been none of us, but life had different plans. Dylan wouldn’t want you to sit here and blame yourself when he would’ve done the same thing over and over again. I need you here with me, Sky. I need us to get through this together.”

Some faraway part of my mind knew I was hurting him by creating distance between us, but I didn’t want to look at him and see how much he hated me for what I had done. I had avoided talking to him throughout the week, staying in this room every single day, feeling the chasm between us growing larger and larger with each passing day. But it wasn’t Ash who was putting that distance between us—it was me.

And now that I had a chance to look at him, to really, really look at him, I could see that he was afraid. Afraid he was going to lose me too. Afraid that we wouldn’t be able to come back from this, and that he would lose a lot more than he had gained.

“I want you to fight for us,” he whimpered. “Fight for me, Sky. Fight for the dreams we could still have. Fight for what Dylan wanted us to have.”

“But I don’t know how not to miss him,” I admitted. “I am terrified that you will wake up one day and realize that I was the real villain in this story and that it should’ve been me.”

“Moonshine,” he croaked. “You are the best damn thing that has happened to me. The. Fucking. Best,” he enunciated. “And even though our time with Dylan was short, it’s a connection that will always be here. That kind of love doesn’t die with time. We will carry it through our lives and cherish the memory of him, but we can’t do that if we don’t live. If we continue simply existing and fighting some invisible demons, we will never get to do what he wanted us to do.”

He was right.

The monsters were behind bars and yet I still waited for the next attack, for the next bad news... Maybe it would take me years to get rid of this feeling of impending doom, but I wanted to try. God, I wanted to live for him, for the years he wouldn’t get to have, for the love he would never get to experience.

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