Rain?” I manage to ask, clinging to him, my nails digging against his hard muscles.
He laughs and despite my heart breaking, I can’t help but smile at that laugh. “Come on, sis. The Order goes where I go.”
I knew he would say something cocky like that.
He slides his hand from under my gown and he wraps his arms around me, scooting awkwardly onto the bed as he lifts me up, careful with the IV, and holds me in his arms.
I twist around and my own arms are around his neck. He’s cradling me like a child, and in this moment, I feel exactly like one, scared to death to leave the only family I’ve ever known.
“You don’t need me anymore, Sid, baby,” he says, as if he’s reading my mind. “You’re so strong. The strongest girl I’ve ever met.” He nuzzles his nose against mine and another strangled sob leaves my lips, but I try to keep it together, try not to lay my head against his chest and sink into a dark, dark grief I’m not sure I’ll ever recover from. “It’s time to fucking fly, Sid Rain.”
He wraps me up in his arms, my head against his shoulder as I cry, and I think he is, too, his shoulders shaking, warm wetness against my neck.
“It’s time to fly, baby, and you and Lucifer and this kid? You’re all gonna rule the fucking world.”
I can’t speak. How do you handle twenty years of loss? How do you move on from someone you spent your earliest moments with, someone that protected you with their own body, their own life, as much as they could?
How do you wrap up hate and love in a pretty little goodbye?
How do you let go?
I cling to him, gripping his shirt in my fists.
“Maybe me and you are it in another life, yeah, baby?”
Yeah. Maybe then. But I don’t say that. Instead, I just let the tears fall and hold him tighter.
We only have this life, J.
We only have this one.
He’s sleeping, just like he’s done the past two days. He has his wrist over his brows, the sheets pulled down to his hips, his bare chest rising and falling steadily, those beautiful scars over his torso making my chest tighten.
I’m awake, just as I’ve been for nearly two days now.
Two days since Jeremiah left me in that hospital bed. Since Maverick helped Lucifer hobble over to my room when it was all over, helped him get into my bed.
He’s still bruised, his face still swollen, but he looks better.
In fact, he looks perfect, because that’s how he always looks.
On our nightstand, there’s no coke. No fucking straws, either. Mayhem cleaned the house out while we stayed overnight in the hospital as a precaution. At least, that’s what the doctor said.
We were fine.
I think the precaution was a payoff from my brother so he could rid our house of drugs.
Save for the cigarettes, and the lighters downstairs on the kitchen island.
One thing at a time, I guess.
I sink down into the couch under the window in our bedroom, the curtains pulled closed, only a slice of light spearing the room.
I bring my knees to my chest, which is becoming increasingly harder to do, and wrap my arms around my shins.
If I close my eyes, I can still smell him.
Feel him.
Hear his beautiful laugh.
Lucifer promised me he didn’t know where he was. I called Nicolas. I called him. I just wanted…another goodbye.
But I think he knows what I’ve come to learn about goodbyes.
No matter how many times you say it, the end result is the same. Someone still leaves, and it still hurts like hell.
Another clumsy word on the tip of our tongues can’t save us from that kind of pain.
I glance down at the ring on my finger. A black diamond in the shape of a rose, a black band, too. Despite the hole in my heart that Jeremiah left behind, I smile at that ring.
At the one I see on Lucifer’s ring finger, too. A matte black band carved with a skull.
My husband.
The words feel good now when I think them. Think of how I’m here with him. He’s coming down from all the fucking coke, and I know it’s hard. It’s why he’s sleeping. Why I’ve tried—and failed—to cook so many meals and ended up throwing in the metaphorical fucking dishtowel and letting Ella handle it all.
I rest my chin on my knees, staring at Lucifer stirring in our bed of black satin