That was it, wasn’t it? I cut my father out of my life in a sort of preemptive strike, out of fear of him abandoning me again somewhere down the line. The human mind worked in complex, mysterious ways, and so often we didn’t realize the why behind what we did until much, much later.
When it was too late.
“All these years,” I said, my voice hoarse, “I held on to the memory of my hurt and anger—and fear—as if they were still the reason I kept him out of my life. I never really questioned if I still felt that way. But over time, I think, some of that pain and resentment...lost its edge. And it became more of a habit than real intention. As if…” I struggled for the right words. “Continuing to keep him cut off was easier, I guess, than facing the possibility of rebuilding something with him. The real possibility, that is.” I trembled as I took a deep breath. “Because somewhere, in the back of my mind, I just sort of counted on the vague, far-away, hypothetical possibility of reconciling with him. As in, I could, if I wanted to. Because he was still there.”
Azazel’s fingers glided through my hair, petting me, soothing me. “But now he’s not.”
“Now he’s not,” I repeated in a voice as broken as the naive, shattered hope inside me. I closed my eyes, shook my head a little. “Even with me down here and the uncertainty about how I’d be able to visit, I held on to that possibility. And now he’s gone, truly gone, and any chance for reconciliation or just closure is gone too.” My breath hitched, my chest aching. “I’ll never see him again. I can never say—” I clenched my hand to a fist and rubbed it over my breastbone. “I have so many words in here. So much to say. But now I’ll never get to tell him...any of it.”
A sob worked its way up my throat. “And it hurts—so much. I could have—” Another sob. “I could have had years—with him—” Every breath I took burned going in, burned going out. “All this time, lost between us—how much of that was on me?” I sniffed. “He tried. He really tried, you know? He wrote to me, for every birthday, every holiday. He called. He wanted to meet with me, talk to me. But I never gave him the chance. I threw his letters away without reading them. I refused to even hear him out.” Tears blurred the flames of the candles. “I’ll never know what he would have told me. What he wanted to say.”
More sobs wracked me, rising up from that shredded place in my chest, and I was beyond words. The chaos inside me had spilled out, leaving behind a hollow, damning ache.
Azazel’s arms wrapped around me, pulled me tight against his chest, where the steady beat of his heart was a beacon at my back, anchoring me. He held me while I cried, his cheek pressed against mine.
I couldn’t seem to stop. The tears just kept coming. I don’t know how much time went by, but by rights the water should have long cooled around us, yet it held the same temperature, likely Azazel’s doing.
Even with the heat of the bath, with his arms locked around me, I felt chilled to the bone, and so, so brittle. Scraped raw and cut open. Small and crushable. I shivered, my shoulders hunching forward.
Azazel’s voice at my ear, quiet yet hypnotic. “You asked me about my mother once.”
My breath caught. I stopped trembling, my awareness turning to him.
“She was Lucifer’s favorite daughter,” he went on, his lips on my neck. “Few things make him truly happy. She was one of them. She could do no wrong in his eyes. Even when she fell in love with an angel and began an illicit affair.”
I had grown very still, all my focus on the soft words spoken against my skin.
“Neither Heaven nor Hell like to see their people fraternize, but my parents managed to keep it secret for a while. When Lucifer eventually found out, he turned a blind eye at first, so deep was his love for Naamah.”
“Naamah?”
“My mother.” Old pain echoed in his voice. “When she fell pregnant and bore two children, Lucifer could no longer ignore the relationship. He pressured Naamah to cut ties to Azrael, but she refused.”