Page 98 of Say You're Mine

"We'll finish it," he says quietly one day, his hand hovering near mine but not quite touching. "When you're ready."

I want to scream. To rage. To tell him I'll never be ready, that I'll tear this whole fucking house down before I let anyone else touch the mural June started. But I just nod, wooden and hollow.

The funeral looms, a black hole threatening to swallow me whole. I move through the preparations like an automaton, my mind a thousand miles away.

Pick out a casket: mahogany, June always liked dark wood.

Choose flowers: lilies, for a purity he never had, for the innocence Elaine stole.

Write a eulogy: how do you sum up a supernova in a few paltry words?

"You don't have to do this," Sarah murmurs, her eyes red-rimmed as she helps me into the black dress that stretches tight across my belly. "Someone else can speak-"

"No." My voice is a rusted hinge, cracking from disuse. "It has to be me. He'd want-"

I choke on the words, on the tidal wave of grief that threatens to drown me. Sarah's arms are around me in an instant, holding me together as I shake apart.

I'm drowning in a sea of black. Mourners press in around me, their sympathy a suffocating fog. The scent of lilies – June's favorite – mingles with the musty air of the church, threatening to choke me. I grip the podium, my knuckles white, struggling to keep my face composed.

"Cara?" Judith's whisper cuts through my spiraling thoughts. "It's time."

I nod, swallowing hard. Time to say goodbye to the love of my life. Time to face a future without him.

My hands shake as I smooth the paper in front of me. The words swim before my eyes, a jumble of memories and pain. I take a deep breath, willing my voice not to betray me.

"June Deveaux was..." I pause, the lump in my throat threatening to suffocate me. "June was a force of nature."

The truth of those words anchors me. June, my hurricane, my wildfire. Unpredictable, unstoppable, and now... gone.

"He swept into my life and turned everything upside down," I continue, my voice wavering. "And I was never the same again."

Faces blur before me, awash with tears and sympathy. I see Dante in the front row, his expression unreadable. He gives me an almost imperceptible nod. Keep going. You can do this.

"June fought demons every day of his life," I say, and my heart clenches with the memory of his struggles. "Demons that would have broken a lesser man. But June... June used that darkness to fuel his light."

My hand drifts to my swollen belly, cradling the life growing there. Our miracle, our last connection. "He'll never get to meet our child," I choke out, and the pain of those words is a physical ache. "But I promise you, June, our baby will know you. Will know how brave you were, how strong, how full of love."

The words catch in my throat, and for a moment, I'm afraid I'll break. That I'll collapse under the weight of this loss, this void where my heart used to be.

But then I feel it. A flutter of movement, our child stirring within me. A reminder that a piece of June lives on. That I have to be strong, for both of us.

I straighten my spine, steel entering my voice. "You may be gone, but you'll never be forgotten. Not as long as I'm breathing."

As I near the end of my speech, a flicker of movement catches my eye. A figure at the back of the church, half-hidden in shadow. My heart stutters, a painful lurch in my chest. It can't be. It's impossible.

But as the figure steps forward, as gasps ripple through the crowd like a stone dropped in still water, I know.

Those eyes. God, those eyes. Stormy grey, flecked with gold, holding galaxies of love and pain and fierce, unbreakable devotion.

June.

The world tilts, goes fuzzy at the edges. I'm falling, drowning, burning alive. Strong arms catch me – Dante, his face a mask of shock and something else. Something that looks almost like... guilt?

I can't focus on that now. Can't focus on anything but those eyes, that face I never thought I'd see again.

June is here. Alive. Standing in the back of the church at his own funeral.

As the crowd erupts in chaos, as questions fly and accusations are hurled, one thought cuts through the pandemonium in my mind:

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