Page 97 of Say You're Mine

I'll be waiting for you. In this life or the next.

Forever yours,

June.

Chapter thirty

Cara

I'm a ghost.

Not the kind that haunts old houses or rattles chains in attics. No, I'm the kind that haunts her own life, drifting through the motions of existence like a wisp of smoke. The only thing anchoring me to this world is the tiny spark growing beneath my shattered heart.

June's gone.

The words echo in the hollow cavern of my chest, each repetition a fresh wound. He was ripped away from me by cruelty, hatred, and the machinations of a soulless monster. And I'm left behind, a husk of the woman I once was, struggling to find a reason to keep breathing in a world without my soulmate.

The doorbell chimes, a jarring sound in the tomb-like silence of our - my - house. I know who it is without looking. Another well-meaning friend, another casserole, another attempt to breach the fortress of my grief.

I don't answer.

They'll leave eventually. They always do. And I'll be left alone with the deafening silence, the emptiness that threatens to swallow me whole.

My phone buzzes on the nightstand. Dante's name flashes on the screen, his worry palpable even through the digital distance. I let it ring, unable to summon the energy to pick up, to form words around the black hole in my chest.

A text from Sarah follows. I read it through blurry eyes:

"Here if you need anything. Anytime."

My fingers hover over the keys, but what can I say? That I'm drowning? That every breath feels like swallowing broken glass? That I don't know how to exist in a world where June doesn't?

I let the phone fall from my numb fingers.

The darkness is my constant companion now. It seeps into my lungs with every ragged breath, coating my insides with tar-thick despair. June is gone. My sun, my stars, the gravity that kept me tethered to this world - snuffed out like a candle in a hurricane.

I float through the motions of life, a puppet with cut strings. Shower. The water runs cold before I realize I've been standing there, staring at nothing. Dress. I pull on whatever my hands touch first, barely registering the fabric against my skin. Eat. The food turns to ash on my tongue, tasteless and dry.

My reflection is a stranger - hollow-eyed and gaunt, a ghost haunting the edges of a life I no longer recognize. Dark circles like bruises under eyes that have forgotten how to shine. Skin pale as milk, stretched too tight over cheekbones that jut out sharply.

"Cara."

Judith's voice filters through the fog, muffled and distant. Her hand on my arm is warm, alive. I want to flinch away. How dare anything be warm when June is cold in the ground?

"You need to eat something," she says softly. "For the baby."

The baby.

Our baby.

The flutter of movement in my swollen belly is the only thing that feels real anymore. The last piece of June, growing stronger every day while he rots.

"I'm fine," I lie, the words scraping my throat raw.

Judith's eyes are dark with worry, but she doesn't push. Smart woman. I might shatter if she does.

Days bleed into nights, an endless parade of grey. I drift through a fog of condolences and casseroles, of well-meaning friends who don't understand that their presence is sandpaper on my raw nerves.

Only Dante seems to get it. He doesn't try to fill the silence with platitudes. Just sits, a solid presence, while I stare unseeing at the nursery June and I had started to paint.

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