of those top this moment, this span of minutes I spend staring at a face so serene that it would calm a normal person, touch some frantic part inside them to smooth the wrinkles until they can believe it will all be okay.
Only, it has the opposite effect on me.
I’ll admit, she is beautiful. Hair in long waves down her back that flow like water, the ends curling where they fall over delicate shoulders.
The barely there dress she wears leaves little to the imagination, more akin to spider web than cloth where it drapes across her breasts and down her stomach.
Despite my presence, someone who will never be allowed past Heaven’s pearly gates, and in spite of the anger that shrouds me until even the birds and insects know to keep their distance, this woman won’t stop staring at me.
She’s mocking me with tranquil eyes and a full, pouty mouth, her fluffy wings rising up behind her as she mourns whoever lays dead beneath the ground.
This woman blames me.
Accuses me.
And she’s right to do so.
While I’m not responsible for the body buried beneath the ground she guards, I played a part in the burial of many others.
Still, I hate her.
This angel.
A cold, lifeless statue with no sentient thought.
I can barely restrain myself from marching over to take a sledgehammer to her placid face.
And that’s when you know you’ve lost it. When inanimate objects have the power to tip you over the edge while you wait for someone who clearly isn’t coming.
Here I stand, surrounded by nature that covers the dead, shadowed by tree branches that sway in a gentle breeze, staring at images of Heaven and the peace that would come with it.
I’m a stain on that serenity. A tumor. A smear of fury that taps its foot and disrupts the calm scenery.
My stare snapping to every tiny movement that occurs around me, I grow more impatient with every minute that passes.
Yet, rather than walking away, I check my phone, purse my lips, shift my posture, wonder how the hell I’ve ended up waiting for a woman who is a half hour late.
There has to be an explanation, and to find it, I tap the tracking app to scroll through the argument Adeline had with Grant the night before. I read through the messages I’d watched in real time as Grant leaned against the window in his high-rise office, tapping them out with furious thumbs.
There is nothing new to learn from that exchange.
What is new are the texts to Grant’s sister for a hair appointment. The text to a caterer for the next dinner party. The texts that show Adeline is slipping back into the proper shell. That she’d been handled. That maybe I’m wrong to think I can be some fucking hero swooping in to rescue her from herself.
I’m not a hero. Never claimed to be. But for one brief moment, I deluded myself into thinking...maybe.
Fuck...
My head falls back against the mausoleum, and I clench my eyes shut.
Perhaps a hero has never been what Adeline needed in the first place.
Thoughts drifting back to the photographs that gave a peek inside her fractured soul, I wonder if Adeline hasn’t been grasping at the villain the entire time.
I can be that to her.
I have been that.
It’s my fucking fault for pussing out and refusing to take what I wanted to begin with.
Word of advice: Never make decisions when angry.
They lead to mistakes.
To problems.
To actions and consequences that are impossible to escape.
Talking to statues apparently isn’t my moment of insanity, though. What I do next will be.
I push away from the wall intent on my new path. Giving the judgmental bitch for an angel the finger as I pass her, I’m halfway across the cemetery when my name is called.
Turning, I watch an obsession running toward me. Not a person. Not Adeline. Not a wife that should be at home with her husband rather than running to me.
An obsession.
A mental construct.
The actual proof that I’m losing my fucking mind.
Adeline’s black hair blows out behind her, blue eyes swollen and rimmed red, lips parted when she steps up to stand in front of me as if she has every right to be here.
“I’m sorry I’m late.”
You will be...
Adeline is wearing a white sundress, her pale skin like porcelain beneath the tiny straps on her shoulders.
I almost laugh at the choice.
White.
Of course.
Just like the night I first saw her. Just like the day I’d made the mistake of believing I could let her go.
A