Page 81 of Vengeful King

Now that she doesn’t have to deal with the practicalities, I can see the grief eating away at her heart. I can see her holding the threads of her tattered life, not breaking yet but so close to just giving in to the grief.

We get home, and the second I step through the door, I guide her to the living room. I can barely recall what it was like when we were here before, full of passion and impatience. Those feelings are far out of mind now.

I don’t know what she needs, but I know what I needed when this happened to me. So I talk.

“My mother’s death was slow, until it wasn’t,” I say. “She was in a coma. It was bad and worse, depending on the day.”

Katrina doesn’t answer; I don’t expect her to. I don’t expect anything from her; I just want to do what I can, reach out the only way I know how.

She stares at her hands, and I keep talking, hoping something will connect.

“I’m the eldest. I had to make the decisions. We kept the machines on so long—too long. In the end, I wasn’t sure I did the right thing fighting so hard when she kept trying to go.”

Katrina looks at me, and I finally see that she’s crying. It’s silent and painful, sad in a way that tells me she’s cried hard over her mother before. She’s had the kind of grief that wracks your gut, and she can’t spare anything more than numbness and pain over this.

All she has left are these silent tears.

I know what it feels like, so I tell her that.

“With my mother, I didn’t break down. Finn did—he had a hard time. But I just couldn’t. It felt like she was dead the whole time, and I only realized it when I finally made the decision to let her go.”

Katrina shakes her head. “I knew it was coming,” she whispers. “But I wanted to go through the pain, even for one more year, just to have those moments where it was like she was there.”

“I know.”

I’ve never told anyone as much as I’ve already told her about my mother. For so long, I kept silent. I didn’t even tell my brothers what I thought, what I felt. I kept my mouth shut even when we all drank together, when Aiden admitted he felt bad that he’d never considered my mother should go in peace.

Through all of it, I could only keep quiet and act like the head of the family. I didn’t show weakness, didn’t show regret. That wasn’t an option.

I’ve lived so long trying hard to be unbreakable. Watching Katrina suffer the death of her mother only reminds me that I never had the chance to truly mourn my own mother or remember her with anyone else. And suddenly, I want to.

“Before my mother passed, I visited her late one night. I took one of her books,” I explain, and I can almost feel the pages beneath my fingers. “I wanted to give her something good, if she could even hear me.”

I shake my head. I don’t remember what happened that night—it was almost two in the morning. Maybe I was tired from work. I just remember leaving wherever I was, making the trip to the hospital. There was almost no one there in the evening, just the sound of machines.

I sat alone with her for so long that I lost track of time. But it didn’t really matter.

“I think even then, I was letting her go,” I say quietly. “Even if I didn’t acknowledge it, I was starting to realize that it couldn’t last. And then in the end, I was right. We had to let her go.”

Katrina looks at me, still crying, but there’s no fear in her eyes. There’s no hurt. She just leans into me, holding me, pressing against my chest for support.

She seems comforted, even if she’s still crying. Like she knows what I mean.

We can’t choose when death happens or even how, sometimes. But we can get through it. The regret I felt over my mother’s death has faded some with time, softened by the realization that I didn’t have any better options at the time.

I pull Katrina into my lap and stroke her hair, waiting for the tears to slow. I know it will take time for her to ever feel okay about this, if she ever does—but I hope I can give her some measure of peace.

I realize suddenly as I hold her that I don’t want anyone else to do this. I don’t want anyone else to touch her, don’t want anyone else to comfort her like this.

I want to be the person she comes to when she is in pain, when she’s brokenhearted. I can’t describe it, can’t control the emotion—I only know that I don’t want anything else. I want to keep her in my arms like this forever.

I’m in too deep now. I know that with absolute clarity, more than I let myself believe before.

There’s no lying about what’s happening. I can’t pretend that I’m doing this only for a few weeks, only until I have something else to preoccupy me. I can’t lie to anyone that Katrina is only staying until Yuri is dead.

I don’t want to put her in danger, and I don’t want her to leave my side. As much of a risk as I know it is, I can’t push her aside. Not after all that’s happened.

It was never my responsibility to look after her mother or help her in any way. But holding her now, I know that I would do anything to keep her safe.

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