When Angels Cry (29 page)

“Right.  You’ve got your life mapped out, Kaylee.  Don’t tell me why you went looking for my gun
has just
slipped your mind
—and
don’t pretend you’re asleep.  I know better.  Answer me.
” 
Bastian folded his arms across his chest. 
He waited for her to answer, the silence goading him enough to force him to the bed, where he pulled the covers from atop Kaylee.  He sat on the edge of the bed next to her
,
 
star
ing
her expectantly, his dark eyes hard with anger.

“I was going to hide it.”  She closed her eyes, not wanting to see what her reflection might
look
like in Bastian’s eyes.

“Damn, I thought it was hidden.
  You never said it bothered you to have a gun in the house.
”  Clenching his jaw, Bastian saw the night air had frosted the window.   

“It’s not having a gun that bothers me
—and
it wasn’t hidden from you.  You kn
o
w where to find it and how to use it.”
  She took a deep breath.

“It’s my gun, Kaylee.
  Of course I kn
o
w where it
is
.  Why does that bother you?
”  The hard line of his shoulders gave as he slumped
and
lay on the bed next to her, their faces even on the pillows, but Kaylee’s eyes were closed
,
and she had lowered her chin. 

“I don’t understand.  Just look at me and talk.”

“I wanted to hide it so you wouldn’t use it.” 
Her eyelashes fluttered open
,
and her blue eyes glimmered with tears. 

He stroked her cheek.  “
W
hat is going on inside that pretty head of yours?”
he muttered, brushing his fingertip across her face.

“I
’m scared.”

“Come here.”  Without thinking, Bastian drew her into his arms and cradled her head against his chest.

“It’s not me I fear for, but you.  Do you love me?” she asked softly, wrapping her arms around him and closing her eyes.

“Of course, but what--”

“We both know how this is going to turn out,” she interrupted, clinging to him even
as
he tried to pull away.  “There’s no mystery about what is eventually going to happen, and I don’t believe in divine intervention, at least not that kind.” 

“Let’s not go there,” he said.

“We have to.  Bastian, my body is at war with life, and it’s not going to win.  You’ve been down a similar road before…with your mother.  I know what it did to you.”

“Kaylee,” Bastian tried to put his finger over her mouth, but she intercepted his hand.

“I want to believe that besides this pain that I’m going to leave you with, I’ve also given you something stronger, something that will make you keep going no matter what.  You’re the only person who has ever loved me, Bastian.  If you kill yourself, you don’t just destroy you, you erase what’s left of me.”

“
I don’t want to talk about this.  You’re alive, Kaylee.  Maybe someday you won’t be, but I’m not going to think about it.  I can’t.” 
Bastian walked to
a
window
too
frosted to see outside. 
Nonetheless
,
moonlight dappled his naked body. 
Leaning against the sill, cold air chilled his chest, but he kept thinking about the way winter felt, hoping like hell it would distract him
as it had always done
.

“When do you want to talk about it?  When I can’t speak anymore?
  You’re worried about all the things I might not tell my mother before it’s too late.  What about the things I need to tell you?  Don’t those count?
”  She stood up and grabbed her robe from the back of the chair beside the bed.  She stared at his back, waiting for him to turn, but he
didn’t.

“Don’t do this, Kaylee?”  He raked his fingers through his hair.

“I
love you, Bastian.  God, how I love you
—and
I wish I could live forever and love you just as long, but I can’t.  One of us has to die
soon
—me.  But that doesn’t mean you have to.”

“Shut up, Kaylee.
  Just shut up.
”  His fingers curled into fists and he pounded them on the sill.  He reached for his pants and tugged them to his waist
, then
he grabbed his shirt.

“Bastian?”

“I’m going to get some air.”  He shoved his arms into the sleeves and buttoned
his shirt
.

“You can run all you like, Bastian.”  Her voice was barely above a whisper
. 
“
But if you love me, you will choose to live because I never got that choice.  I don’t care if you do it for yourself or
if
you do it for me
, j
ust so long as you do it.  I don’t care what you have to do to make it
—even
if it means leaving now.”

Bastian didn’t answer as he strode out the door and slammed it behind him
, and
Kaylee surrendered to a silence deeper than the one filling her heart.  Even with her robe on, she couldn’t break the winter spell claiming her body and soul.  For a moment
,
she wondered if he would leave.  Maybe he would go first because, judging by the way the color had drained from his cheeks when he'd flown out like a demon had been chasing him, she wondered if he would be strong enough to watch her go when it came time.  God only knew how she would manage when the time came to go to where she knew he wouldn’t be.

As the sobs tore through her, she thought perhaps that might be the best thing—give him distance to heal himself of what loving her had done so that maybe he could go on.  Without her.  She sank to her knees and let the tears take her to the place she knew she was headed—heartbreak.
  She looked over at the vase that Bastian had fixed and grabbed it.  For a moment she held it in her hand and then she threw it as hard as she could at the mirror, shattering both.

* * *

For the last hour, Bastian had been sitting in his truck, trying to muster the strength to leave or go inside to face Kaylee.  He’d started and killed the engine more than once
,
but to this point had never switched out of park.  Kaylee had been right when she'd said he could run.  But she’d been wrong—dead wrong—about his options of leaving.  He couldn’t.  She would have to do it, and it would have to be a place he couldn’t follow.

He toyed with the keys in his hand and stared out at a cloudy sky sans starlight.  Perhaps it might snow again.  The air was more than cold enough for it to stick.  He felt the cold seeping into the truck's cab, chilling him despite the thick coat he wore.

“Hell,” he whispered, remembering Kaylee’s hand holding the gun.  He’d never forget that—it was like two incongruous things had bumped into each other—Kaylee and the .38.

He raked his fingers through his hair as tears stung his eyes, burn
ing in
his throat.  They both knew the future, but neither of them could change the fact that they’d fallen in love.  Maybe it had never been in the cards for him to live with her, but God, now that he had tasted her sweetness, how could he go on without her?  And that was what Kaylee wanted.

He savagely drew his hand across his face and tried to go numb inside, just as he’d done for so many years, but the tears came faster than ever, soaking his cheeks with emotions he couldn’t deny.  In frustrated pain, he leaned over and smacked his forehead against the  wheel repeatedly, waiting for the all-consuming ache carving out his insides to pass, but he knew, despite not wanting to, that not all pain could pass.

Dawn shimmered into the sky, bathing the clouds in serene shades of pink and blue promise, and as Bastian watched the world slip from
beneath
night’s spell, he knew he could never leave.  God, he loved her.  He wiped the rest of the moisture from his face with the back of his hand.  There was no point in running.  Wherever he went, she would be there.  It didn’t matter if her body stayed behind.  Her soul would follow, ever haunting him.

Opening the truck door, he stepped back out into the harsh winter wind and drew his coat tighter around him as he made his way back to the front door.  Stillness stood sentry as he stepped into the foyer.  Thinking she might've gone to fix breakfast, he strode through the living
room
into
the kitchen.

“Kaylee?”

Silence.

Bastian headed back to the landing and took the steps two at a time, disliking the silence more and more.  He reached Kaylee’s room and took a deep breath before slowly opening the door, unsure what he was going to say or how he would say it.  The soft glow of dawn’s arrival shimmered through the window, highlighting the spot where Kaylee still sat.  Rays of light sparkled through the long dark silk of her hair, burnishing the deep brown to a lighter auburn.  Although she must have heard the door open, she simply propped her chin upon
the
knees, drawn to her chest
, her
arms
wrapped around
her legs, her fingers laced together. 

“Kaylee, honey, I’m sorry.
  I didn’t mean to take things out on you.  It’s just that when you start talking
about…the future…
I go crazy.” 
He walked to where she sat and sank to the floor.  Once behind her, he molded his chest to her back so their bodies, separated only by clothes, joined seamlessly.  He waited for her to turn her head and try looking at him, but her gaze remained focused on the floor, far beyond Bastian’s reach.

“Kaylee, talk to me.  This silence isn’t doing either of us any good.  I
’ve
had about all I could stand of it
.
”  He squeezed her softly in his embrace.  “I know what you’re afraid of,
and it won’t happen.  No matter what, I won’t give up.”
  He turned her to face him.

She blinked two or three times, a wheezy sound that left him cold.  That’s when he saw her disorientation.

“Are you an angel?” she
mouthed
, touching his face, her fingertips seeking out his tears.

She doesn’t know me
, he thought. 
God, she doesn’t know me
.  He licked his lips and tried to keep his voice even.  “God would know better than to make an angel out of me.”

Her eyelids fluttered
once.  Then he could no longer feel her breath; her whole body had gone
silent and still.  He tilted her chin and placed his lips to hers as he began CPR. 

Chapter Twenty-One

Blinding snow fell outside the tarp under which Bastian sat next to a hole in the earth.  He should have cared that the ground could stain the grey suit he wore, the same suit Kaylee had bought him and left in the closet with a note,
revealing
its purpose.  She
’d
thought of all
the details—all
except the coldness that even a winter spell like this couldn’t best.

Sensing he wasn’t alone any longer, Bastian turned to find Rosie beside him.  Dark sunglasses covered her eyes, and she laid her hand on his shoulder.

“How you holding up?”

“I’m here,” he said simply, trying not to look at the grave, knowing that if the tears started, he'd never get them to stop.

“She’d be glad of that.”
  She loved you.  From the moment she first saw you, she loved you.”
  Rosie’s fingers
s
queezed his shoulder
gently
.  Somewhere in the distance, Ba
stian heard cars driving past.
 

“Then I was the lucky one, wasn’t I?” 
A cold northern breeze ruffled his hair, and, chilled, Bastian leaned close
r to
the
grave
. 

“I kept expecting her to come
out
from
behind
the church, laughing at our
expense
.  I kept seeing the little girl who
’d
gr
own
into a woman, and it didn’t seem right to bury her.”
  Although Rosie tried to hide her pain, Bastian could feel the sobs she wanted to muffle and drew her close, clenching his eyes shut as he tried not to think.

Bastian could barely speak.  “I know.  I miss her.  God, I miss her.”

“We spent hours shopping for that suit you’re wearing.  She said it had to be perfect.”

“Why?  What difference
does
it make?  It couldn’t stop me from losing her, so why did it matter?”  His voice was raw
, and pulling away, he glanced down at the
grey
fabric draping his body. 

Rosie toyed with the keys in her hand and stared directly at Bastian.  “She said it had to be worthy of being worn by the best man she’d ever known, the man who was going to do all the things she never could and someday, after his 90
th
birthday, surrounded by a wife, five kids, and who knows how many grandkids, he would find her and tell her about all the things she’d missed.  Through his eyes, she would see each memory unfolding.  She’d know what it was like to love a child as her own.
  She wanted this suit to be as amazing as you
are
, Bastian.  But I don’t think that’s possible.
”

Tears streamed down Rosie’s face, but she didn’t wipe them away.   Bastian could feel the heat of grief building inside, and it exploded so quickly he didn’t realize he was falling to his knees, not until the ground met him and Rosie held onto him.  He couldn’t tell how long the grief
seized
him, so tightly breathing through his tears seemed impossible, but Rosie
somehow
anchored him to this world, waiting until he’d finally returned before she pecked him on the cheek. 
The
n
she stood and walked away, her shoulders bowed. 
  Bastian wiped his face
savagely and raked
his fingers through his hair.

“I guess this is where the promise comes in,
isn’t
it?”

He looked at the beautiful wooden casket Denna had selected
—the
best money could buy.  Bastian touched the dirt where he sat, wishing he could just crawl into the hole and lie atop that box.  But somehow Kaylee had thought of that, too.  There had been a time when he could’ve chosen to die for himself, but not when he needed to live for her.

“The doctor said it was supposed to be months.  I would have taken that in a heartbeat, but we both know it wouldn’t have been enough.
  Loving you for a lifetime wouldn’t be enough.  Where are  you now, Kaylee?  In the earth, the sky, the air?
”

He exhaled sharply
,
and his breath rose in bursts of steam. 
The muscles constricted in his throat
, and his
vision blurred.  He
blinked
at the white storm
, reaching
into his pocket and pull
ing
out a shard from the vase.  Although he tried to be careful, the glass gouged his skin, and a bubble of blood appeared.

“You said you’d rather have the pieces.  I would, too.  You just didn’t tell me they cut so deeply.”

He looked at the cut and tossed the fragment into the hole before standing and
stepping out into that
furious white.  Although he’d thought he was alone, he came face-to-face with Angie carrying
a
bouquet of
daisies
.
 

“
I came
because
I
thought you might need
me
.”
 
Angie handed Bastian
the
flowers
.  “
I
miss you.”  She stepped toward him, and they embraced.  As Bastian clutched the warmth of his sister, he
wept in her arms, both for Kaylee and his mother.