Page 92 of As the World Falls

“Leave James.”

I stand up from the bed, facing her. “You’re taking this as a rejection, and that’s not what it is. I want you, just not right now. Not like this.”

“It doesn’t matter. It was a mistake anyway. I wasn’t thinking clearly, so you should go.”

“I’ll go, only because I don’t want to upset you anymore, but if you think this is over, Cecilia, you’re mistaken.”

She rolls her eyes. I swear nothing could keep her from doing that. “Whatever.”

“If you need me?—”

“I won’t.”

“If you need me,” I repeat assertively. “You know I’ll be here.” She looks down at the floor, keeping her arms crossed in front of her, not saying anything else, so I finally leave despite not wanting her to be alone.

I leave her apartment and head back to my car, but I don’t start it. I don’t have any plans to. I recline my seat so I can lay back but still have a direct line of sight to her building and the side where I can see her living room windows. I stay here all night, should she need me.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Cecilia

The sun rises, welcoming another day…but I don’t. My eyes slowly blink open, and it’s there again. A pain in my chest that won’t leave.

It was unbearable.

I missed my dad.

Everything was wrong. I did everything wrong, and now…I couldn’t take it back.

I slowly traipse out of bed, shut the curtains over my window, and darken the room before crawling back into bed.

I shut my eyes and succumb to sleep, the only place where the pain isn’t a physical ache in my chest but just a nightmare.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Cecilia

I always thought I’d handle death better in life after my mother's, but I never expected to lose someone, let alone my father, this way. The suddenness of it made it so much more painful. My mother's death was heart-wrenching, but it wasn’t sudden. It was expected, and we knew deep down it was going to happen when she was getting progressively worse every day. She had stage four breast cancer, and after only a year of not responding to any treatments until she was completely bedridden and a lifeless form of her usual self, it didn’t come as a shock when she passed away in her sleep one night.

None of us were ever the same again after that, and now…it had cost my dad his life, too.

I couldn’t wrap my brain around the part that I had just seen him. He was just here, alive and well for the most part, and next thing he’s gone. How? How does that happen?

I point my remote at my TV, rewinding the same part of the videotape I had been watching on repeat for the last two hours. It was an old family video, and this one, in particular, was a video of my dad carrying me on his shoulders and walking me toevery mirror possible in the house. At the same time, my mom recorded, giving me over-the-top compliments every time we reached a new mirror. I was dressed in a princess costume, but how my dad treated me like one made me feel it that day.

Another tear drips down my face, and I quickly wipe it away with my damp sleeve. I didn’t think it was possible to cry this much. I would have thought I’d been tapped out by now, but they keep coming.

A soft knock on my door sounds, and I don’t move to answer it. I already knew who it was and could tell by the jingle of keys turning the knob he was going just to let himself right in.

Lance walks into my apartment, shutting the door quietly behind him. I hear him walk into my living room just as I rewind. It is the same part where my dad walks into the bathroom, turns on the light, and faces the mirror so I can see myself, and he says, “There’s my sweet girl. Daddy’s princess.”

“You shouldn’t watch this stuff right now,” Lance says, slowly sitting beside me.

“It makes me feel better.”

He looks from me to the TV and then back to me. “How so?”

“Because when I watch this…it makes me feel like I’m there again, and when I feel like I’m there, hearing his voice…it doesn’t feel like he’s really gone.”

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