Page 94 of Dominion

“Okay.” I nodded, tightening my fingers around his. “Okay, Ash.”

“Okay?” he asked, the watery smile appearing on his face. “We will try. And we will fail from time to time, Sky. But it’s okay to fail. It’s okay to fall apart sometimes. It’s okay to be sad and to grieve and to stay in bed the whole day because the real world feels like too much at times. But I want you to know that I’ll be here through it all. Through good and bad moments, happy and sad, I will be here. I want to be here for you. I want to hold your hand now, in a year, in five years and in fifty. I want to grow old with you. I want us to look back at this time not with sorrow, but with happiness because we were the lucky ones to find eachother. We were lucky enough to have Dylan, no matter how short his time was.”

I couldn’t stop the tears now even if I tried, but instead of trying to hide them from him, I let him see it all.

The anger that festered in my heart.

The sadness that wouldn’t go away even in the years that were about to come.

The fear that we wouldn’t be able to move on from this.

The love I felt for him and for Dylan. I didn’t know what to do with all these overwhelming feelings.

But I opened myself up. I let him see the darkest, deepest parts of my soul, and instead of running away, he stood up, scooping me up and placing me in his lap as both of us cried and grieved the man we loved. I had no idea if it was the shaking of my body or of his, but we held onto each other, overcome with grief and the unfairness of this all—but we had each other.

I had him, no matter what.

Instead of shrinking and bleeding out from all the wounds on it, my heart expanded in my chest, growing three sizes bigger, and slowly closing the scrapes and scratches that were there for far too long. My arms tightened around his neck, my tears slowing with each passing second, and a new hope blossomed in the center of my chest, telling me that things might be okay. They might not be the best, and we still had a long road to walk, but it would be okay.

“Are you feeling better now?” he asked, his lips pressed to my ear, while he rubbed my back in slow circles.

“Yeah,” I answered, moving my head to look up at him. “I think... I think I was terrified of losing you as well, and I didn’t want to face reality.”

“I know,” he mumbled. “I was scared that you would come out one day and tell me that you couldn’t do this with me,” he admitted, showing me the emotions he was hiding all these days,shining in his eyes. “I was scared out of my mind that you would try to do something to yourself, because I knew how much you loved him.”

“You loved him too.”

“I did.” He nodded, smiling shyly. “But I only had a couple of months to love him. You had him for a lifetime, Sky, and that kind of love is stronger than anything else. You knew Dylan since you were a child, and even though it wasn’t the same kind of love as back then, it was love, nonetheless. He exists in every single memory you have, in everything you ever did, and I can’t imagine how hard it must be to wake up every day and realize that he isn’t here anymore.”

“It is.” I sniffed. “He, you know... He wasn’t the easiest person to love.” I laughed, allowing myself to remember all the good moments with him. “He was stubborn and he wanted things to always go his way. But he was always there for me, no matter what. He held me when I had nobody else, and I have no idea what I would’ve done if he wasn’t there during the hardest periods of my life. Dylan didn’t know what was happening, but on some level, he always understood that I needed him. I also know that he wasn’t perfect,” I admitted. “He wasn’t a golden boy, and he definitely wasn’t the hero in other people’s stories, but he was my hero, you know? He was my angel. He never once complained about the things I wanted. He always made sure that I was safe, that I was happy, and I hated Judah so much more because I could never tell Dylan what was happening right in front of his face. I could never tell him that his own father was abusing me and that I thought it should be like that. But I loved him. I loved him even when he removed his mask during the ceremony and showed me that he was the killer. I loved him when he took me into that house where only horrors lived and where Judah raped me for the first time. I still loved him,because no matter what, he always put my needs above his. He just had a fucked-up way of showing it sometimes.”

“And he loved you, too.” Ash’s fingers dragged through my hair, untangling the bits and pieces that got tangled together. “He always will. We both love you in different ways, Sky, and I know you had different kinds of love for us.”

He was right, but I couldn’t put it into words. I couldn’t tell him that my love for him was different than my love for Dylan. Not because it was bad, but because I feared I would be betraying the memory of Dylan if I admitted that.

“And he would understand, Moonshine,” he murmured, pressing his lips to my cheek. “He would understand if we move on, if we continue living, because that’s what he would’ve wanted. He wouldn’t want us to wallow in sorrow and forget to live. He wanted us to continue pushing forward, to continue striving for better things.”

“I know.” And I did know. It was just hard admitting that out loud. It was hard because I didn’t feel it was fair that we would get to live while he would forever stay here, in Winworth.

“We need to let him rest, darling. We need to bury his body. It’s been a week since he died, and while I am not a religious man, his soul needs us to let him go. That doesn’t mean we don’t love him, and it doesn’t mean we won’t always remember him as someone who loved us with everything he had, but it means that we are ready to live on and cherish those memories of him without holding him back.”

God, I hated it when he was right. I hated it when he made sense, especially now. But I couldn’t keep Dylan with me forever. I couldn’t torture his soul just because I wasn’t ready to let go.

“Let’s do it,” I said, determined to get this day over with. I moved off his lap and stood in front of him in my socks and the black dress that hit my knees.

“Are you okay to go there and see his coffin?” Ash asked carefully, looking up at me with concern etched on his face. “I know it’s hard, but I don’t want you to go if this will be too much for you to bear.”

“He would want me to be there. If the roles were reversed, he would be there as well. I would never be able to forgive myself if I didn’t go to his funeral, Ash.”

“I know.” He nodded slowly. “I understand. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m not.” I smiled sadly. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be okay, and that’s alright.” I didn’t think that anyone was ever okay with losing someone they loved, especially not like this. I thought I was devastated after Kane’s brother died, but it had nothing on the pain I felt right now.

Maybe I would never be okay, but grieving the loss of someone you loved wasn’t a race you could win. It was an ongoing battle, and I knew this was just the start of my war against the need to succumb to the darkness. But with Ash by my side, I could do it.

“Come on,” I mumbled, kneeling down to put on the boots. “We don’t want to keep him waiting.”

Ash stood up seconds after, taking a hold of my waiting hand, and slowly, we went outside of the room, through the hallway and down the stairs, to see Casimir, Sebastian, Hunter, Kane, Rowan, Zoe, Indigo, Atlas, and Cillian waiting for us. Casimir’s eyes traced over my face, looking for signs of me breaking apart, but instead of crying as I wanted to, I smiled softly at him, and he smiled back, nodding slowly as if he too understood that things would be okay.

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