There’s no fucking way I’ll stand back and let her lose her live.

“Goddamn it,” I exhale, my head all fucked up.

Life is so fucking unfair.

I keep my eyes trained on her as she grabs her phone and scrolls through it and I swear right here and now to make sure this woman—my woman gets to the finish line and she will even if I have to carry her there. She will. Even if it kills me too.

Because there is no life without her.

Not for me.

When I love, I love for life and I count on loving her for the rest of my days.

Neither Azariel nor I will lose the only light in our lives.

Fuck no.

Kadra

Looking up at the sky, I have to cover my eyes because the sun is shining extra hard today.

Before Vitali and Azariel, sunny days used to make me want to stay inside and pray for rain. Hell, even the happy chirping birds flying above me around the garden today would have made me want to take up archery. I’m not completely sold on sunny days but at least today it doesn’t make me want to gag like it would have a week ago.

Taking a deep breath, I lean back on the bench getting comfortable. The air feels different today.

A little bit sweet and a bit melancholic too.

I don’t know how to explain it but something has changed. Or maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’ve changed. I woke up today feeling a thousand times lighter as if the heavy weight I’ve been carrying on my shoulders for so long has finally been lifted.

I also feel much better than I did two days ago.

Looking around the garden, I see all the progress we’ve made in just a couple of days and I smile when I see the tulips are looking pretty and healthy. I think my sister would be proud of how the garden turned out.

I sure am.

I’m even more proud that my sweet Azariel and even my Russian come down here every day to water the plants and work on planting more seeds in the empty spaces. They’ve gotten closer and it’s something beautiful to witness.

I’ve contacted my lawyers and the papers are being drawn. As soon as they contact me informing me that Azariel has no living relatives then it’ll be all set for me to adopt him and give him my name.

That reminds me I need to sit down with him and explain everything so he understands better that this is a permanent arrangement. He’s mine, and I just need the legal papers.

He’ll have a family even as unconventional as we are. He’ll have people who will defend and look after him. He’ll have what we all didn’t growing up and that just fills me with joy.

I didn’t have someone to keep me from harm and neither did my sisters.

Feeling the familiar ache in my chest whenever I think of my sisters, I pick up my phone. I open the social media app Crow installed a few months ago when he told me most people my age are on it posting thirst traps and enjoying hook up culture. Whatever the hell that means.

I downloaded it and even let him create a profile for me. I didn’t do it for the useless things he mentioned but because I heard Mila once mentioned she stalked our oldest sister though the app.

Now I use it to do the same.

It’s the only way I get to know more about Arianna and her life in Washington. I’ve learned she’s very popular on it too with about three million followers. Of course, she is. I knew she would do great things; it was just a matter of time.

I go to my recent searches and tap on her username which leads me to her profile.

I look through it, catching up. There are a lot of photos of her at events with her husband, the president. There’s also a lot of posts of her traveling the world. Those make me smile every time I see them. My sister kept photos and magazine pages of beautiful places she would dream of visiting one day and she glued them to the bedroom ceiling hoping to one day visit them and look at her now. She’s traveling around the world with a man who loves her. She’s not only the First Lady of the United States of America but she’s also a business mogul. A very successful one. She even graced the cover of Time Magazines and was named this year’s list influential businesswomen and about a month ago she was announced woman of the year by another famous magazine.

“You did it…” I whisper while scrolling down and looking at all her recent posts. I stop only when I see one of her at the beach smiling at the camera with a small, chubby baby strapped to her chest.