Page 149 of A Smile Full of Lies
She didn’t attendthe service. Not officially, anyway.
She stood at the edge of the cemetery, black dress clinging to her curves, arms wrapped tight around herself as if holding everything in by force. Her heels sank into the grass, and the wind toyed with the hem of her dress, lifting it against her thighs. She didn’t have an umbrella, though the sky looked as if it might rain. She didn’t stand with the others. She just… watched.
I stayed further back. Beyond the line of oaks, half-hidden behind the family mausoleums near my family’s headstones. Watching her. Always watching her.
Thayer’s family never looked her way. Not once. His mother sobbed against her husband’s chest like she was mourning a saint, not a fucking sociopath. A folded memorial program with his face on it trembled in her hands. I watched Rosalind flinch at the sight of it.
She didn’t cry. Not yet.
Her jaw clenched. Her grip on the little black clutch in her hand went white-knuckle tight. When the priest’s voice faded and the final prayer was said, the family carried the urn into the mausoleum, heads bowed. Rosalind lingered.
Only when the crowd began to drift toward their cars did she finally move. She didn’t go near the mausoleum. She came to me. To my family’s graves.
I watched from the other side of the magnolia tree behind the marble angel marking Ava’s plot as she sat down on the bench like her legs couldn’t hold her anymore. Her hand curled into a fist and pressed to her mouth as the tears came hard and fast, shaking her shoulders.
She looked so fucking small, curled in on herself like she could make the grief quieter that way. Like if she folded tight enough, maybe the guilt wouldn’t claw at her throat so viciously. I saw it in the way her shoulders shook, the way her chin tucked down, the way she tried to muffle the sound behind her fist.
But it was no use. The sob that broke from her chest tore something open in mine.
I should’ve gone to her. Should’ve wrapped my arms around her, kissed her temple, told her none of this was her fault.
But I couldn’t. Not yet.
She still didn’t know what I’d done. Who I was. What I’d become just to keep her tethered to me.
And if I touched her now, if I crossed that line too soon — I might not let her go.
So I stayed hidden, watching the love of my life unravel in front of the funeral plot that should’ve held my body right alongside those of my mother, my father, and my little sister.
Her lips moved. A whisper. Maybe a prayer. Maybe a curse. I didn’t know which.
I watched her reach out with trembling fingers and touch the edge of Ava’s headstone. Just barely. Like she was scared to ask forgiveness from a girl she never got to meet. From a sister who should’ve been her family, too.
My throat tightened. She shouldn’t have been here alone.
Thayer should’ve never touched her. Never gotten close. Never stolen those years from her, or from me.
She sniffled and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, breathing through the wreckage like she didn’t deserve to break. Like she didn’t just spend three weeks writing a book that was surely going to destroy the illusion Thayer’s family was clinging to.
My eyes burned.
Fuck. She was so brave it hurt.
And Thayer’s family had no idea what was coming. But I did because I was the one who had planned every second of it.
She stood slowly.
Wiped at her eyes again like it hadn’t broken her to cry in front of strangers’ names etched in stone. Like she hadn’t just torn herself open beside graves that never should’ve been dug.
She pressed a kiss to her fingertips and touched each name — Victoria, Henry, Ava — and my fucking knees nearly buckled.
You don’t get to do that, I thought savagely, fingers curling into fists at my sides.You don’t get to do that and not belong to me completely, irrevocably.And you do belong to me, sweetheart, even if you don’t know it yet.
She started walking toward where she’d parked the new SUV I bought her, her steps slow, like her body didn’t want to leave mine behind.
Good. She shouldn’t.
She got in the car slowly, pulled the door closed, and just… sat there. For a second, I thought she might scream.
