Page 118 of Lavender Lake
“Yeah. You do.”
He leaned down and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “I think a lot of people try to change each other instead of loving the person as they are.”
I buried my face against his chest again. “I wish you’d known her.”
“You’ll tell me about her. You’ll show me photos. You’ll tell me stories. And I’ll listen.”
“Death is so weird, Cas. It’s so very personal and yet universal. My world changed when she died. And I looked around at everyone else and I just wanted to scream because they were smiling and happy and they had no idea that someone so wonderful was gone. I was angry—on their behalf—because they’d never gotten to know what a wonderful, amazing woman she was.”
Tears I couldn’t contain finally spilled from my eyes. They blotted his shirt, but they wouldn’t stain. When his shirt dried, there would be no evidence that they’d ever been. Only a memory.
She was a memory.
And one day, I wouldn’t be here to remember her anymore either.
“Why do we do this?” I wailed. “Why do we live? What’s the point of it all if all we do is lose the ones we love?”
He cradled my cheeks and forced me to look at him. “We live to love, Salem. Thatisthe reason. It’s the only reason that makes it worth it.”
My heart fissured even more. It cracked all the way open, and pain and remorse and loss and love and everything that had to do with hope sprang forth like a geyser that spewed from the broken earth.
But I wasn’t broken.
I’d never been broken. I just hadn’t healed fully.
Not until now.
Cas held me long after the tears had run their course, long after the emotions had passed, long after the sun had finally set.
I pulled back and scrubbed my face. “Take me home, Cas.”
We walked down the hill, his arm wrapped around me, the dead tree that would one day be gone from this world behind us.
Cas took me back to the house. He undressed me, put me in his clothes, and then tucked me into my childhood bed, sliding in next to me. He left the bedside lamp on its lowest setting.
We didn’t speak for a long time.
I was exhausted. There was nothing like the storm of an emotional break that left you empty, but lighter in a way too.
“I’m jealous of Hadley and Declan,” he murmured. “They have the cabin—their own space.”
“Not much space. Not with a baby goat and four crazy working dogs.”
“Privacy, Salem. They have privacy.”
“Yeah, privacy would be nice,” I murmured against his chest. “I love that cabin. We used to have movie nights in there.”
“Yeah?”
I nodded. “It was our place to go and hang out with our friends.”
“What kind of movies did you guys watch?” he asked.
“When it was just Hadley and me, we watched old musicals. Mom’s favorites. When we had friends over, we usually let them decide. Never horror movies, though.”
“No?”
“Definitely not. We were in a cabin near the woods. I know how those movies end.”
