Page 174 of Beau and the Beast

Shaking their heads, the two of them dropped his jacket and stepped away.

Time didn’t make sense as Beau approached Wolfram’s figure on the floor. It was like having a dream where he needed to run but found himself slogging through quicksand.

Wolfram looked so oddly small there, crumpled on the floor. Just a few paces away, Song was huddled over Lincoln, pressing a jacket to his chest. Lincoln’s handgun sat alone in the middle of the floor. Beau wondered what had happened—if Lincoln had shot Wolfram on purpose, who had moved first, what the misunderstanding had been. Wolfram never would’ve hurt Lincoln unless he thought there was some danger to one of the staff.

And now he was…

It couldn’t be. His mind couldn’t take the enormity of it. Wolfram couldn’t be gone.

He’d prepared himself for the possibility that they would not break the curse. Beau had begun to steel himself for the idea that Wolfram may not be around for more than a few weeks. But how could life be so cruel as to take those final weeks away from the two of them?

They’d drifted in an inhospitable universe for so many years before finding each other. Their time together couldn’t possibly be over. Beau couldn’t bear the weight of it in his heart. He couldn’t lose someone that he loved—not again, not like this.

As Beau fell hard to his knees, he recognized that hedidlove Wolfram. More than he’d ever loved another person, more than he even loved himself. He’d held himself back from it, telling himself that it had been too quick to know someone, to love them completely. But as he felt hot blood seeping into his pants, as he surveyed the wrecked landscape of Wolfram’s chest, Beau knew in that moment that he had come to love Wolfram—unconditionally, utterly, exactly as he was.

He hadn’t needed Wolfram to change, hadn’t eagerly anticipated the transformation back to a person who looked like everyone else. Beau had fallen deeply in love with the person Wolfram was in the moment.

Beau had dared to dream of a world where they could be together for the rest of their lives. He’d done the unthinkable and opened his heart up to someone in a way that he’d never done before, all of the vulnerable pieces of himself on display. How could such cruelty exist in the world, in the randomness and chaos?

He wanted nothing more than to have one more moment with Wolfram. Beau had never told him. Wolfram had died alone not knowing that he was loved. Beau felt as if his world was ripping in two, as if his heart was being torn—the feeling acute and very real in his chest as he choked around tears.

He lay his body over the top of Wolfram’s chest knowing only that he needed to be closer. The man’s eyes were shut, his face calm as if he’d entered a peaceful sleep. Beau leaned up, tucking a piece of Wolfram’s dark mane behind his ear.

What did people do when the person they loved died? What did anyone do? Beau didn’t feel like he needed to scream and lash out. He didn’t feel like he wanted to sob until his body was out of energy. He simply felt tremendously empty and lost in that moment.

“I don’t want to live without you,” he said, silent tears streaming down his face as he embraced the big body that had once housed the soul that Beau had cared for above all others.

And for the last time, Beau squeezed his arms around Wolfram and pressed a kiss against his lips.

“I love you, Wolf.”

* * *

The transitionaway from the world of the living had been a smooth one, unexpectedly tranquil and lacking in fanfare. Wolfram had simply gone away from himself.

He’d been somewhere else.

It was quiet there and peaceful, like a deep and dreamless sleep. Separated from his body, his consciousness, Wolfram was no longer himself. He wasn’t a collection of hurts and mistakes, desires and passions. He was nothing and everything, returned to the same state of rest that he’d felt before he was born without ever knowing what he had been or would come to be.

The nothingness was vast but not empty. It was neither bliss nor despair.

There had been no time of regretting, no Hollywood moment of his life flashing before his eyes as he drifted away from the living world. One moment he had been alive and then several moments later, he hadn’t been.

He smelled, saw, heardnothingbecause nothing existed where he was.

So when something pulled him back—yanking him abruptly and painfully, like a shepherd’s hook through his heart—Wolfram was shocked.

Wolframwas.

He existed again. His mind scrambled to piece itself together.

Something existed. Words. He could hear them.

I love you, Wolf.

Love. He was loved. Wolfram was loved!

At first, Wolfram was only a thought, existing in a space, existing only to know that he was loved. And then, suddenly, he was physical pain without a body attached. He was a thought and the searing wounds the bullets had left in him.

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