Chapter 29 Lucian
LUCIAN
Maybe this wasn’t the best idea I’ve had this week.
I stand at the window outside the ER, where the fluorescent light bleeds through glass and makes everything inside look unreal.
Through the glass, I see her.
She’s leaning over a patient, gloved hands steady, eyes sharp, jaw tight with that kind of focus that used to make me forget the world. Even from here, I can read the exhaustion in her shoulders. I can almost hear the sigh she’ll let out when she’s finally alone.
Then her head lifts. Her gaze sweeps the corridor and lands right where I stand.
My breath stutters. For a fraction of a second, her eyes sharpen like she feels me there. Recognition ripples through the glass between us, cold and electric.
I step back into the shadow of the wall before logic catches up. The reflection swallows me. The air feels too small for the both of us.
When she moves toward the doors, I’m already gone.
Outside, the night stretches open, cool and slick with mist. I stand under the edge of the awning, hidden beneath the hum of the parking lot lights, waiting for her to exit. She lingers by the doors, rubs at her temple, then starts walking. I wait two beats, then follow.
I know her route by heart now. Down the main street, left at the corner where the lamppost flickers, past the old florist’s window she sometimes pauses at.
Tonight, she doesn’t just stop - she goes inside.
When she comes back out, there’s a small bunch of flowers in her hand, and she keeps walking, head bowed against the wind.
The cemetery gates groan when she pushes them open.
I stop outside and slip through the fence instead. Metal whispers against my sleeve. She doesn’t notice. She moves with purpose down the gravel path until she reaches Billie’s grave.
From the shadows, I watch her kneel, bouquet clutched in both hands. Her fingers tremble when she sets the flowers down. I can hear her breath, the soft break of it in the quiet.
She brushes her fingertips across the name carved into stone: BILLIE UNDERWOOD
Her hand lingers, then trails down, tracing the second word again - UNDERWOOD. Then she lifts a finger and traces against the stone, what can’t be mistaken for a cross.
My name.
The one she still whispers sometimes when she thinks no one hears.
She’s remembering me. I can feel it.
Mason told me once - how she fought the state for what was left of me. How she begged for my remains. How they told her there was nothing to recover, that serial killers didn’t get funerals or graves. That monsters got numbers. Files. Ash.
She didn’t believe them. She pushed. She demanded. When they finally told her no, she broke. Then she buried what was left of me anyway - right here, with Billie. She gave me a place in death when I never earned one in life.
I never asked for that kind of loyalty. I didn’t deserve it.
Now I watch her standing there in the cold, eyes closed, lips moving around words I can’t hear. Maybe she’s praying. Maybe she’s talking to us. Maybe she’s telling Billie she still dreams about me.
The moonlight catches her profile, all soft edges and heartbreak. She looks older, but not weaker. She’s built a life around the hole I left in her, and somehow she’s still standing. Still breathing. Still fighting ghosts she doesn’t know are real.
I want to step out. Tell her I’m here. Tell her they lied. That the fire didn’t take me, it just burned away what was left of the man she knew. But she looks so at peace, and peace is the one thing she’s entitled to that I can’t give her.
So I stay where the shadows keep me.
She rises slowly, dusts her knees, and touches the headstone one last time. Her fingers hover over the name like she’s afraid to let go. Then she turns and walks back the way she came.
Her footsteps fade down the path, and I move closer to the grave.
The flowers she brought are white lilies. Billie’s favorite.
Nadia never forgets details like that.
I crouch, trace the carved letters - BILLIE UNDERWOOD.
“She fought for me,” I whisper, though the only thing listening is the wind. “Even when I didn’t deserve it.”
The breeze lifts the lilies, makes them sway like they’re answering.
For a while, I just stand there. The air smells like wet grass and memory. I feel the weight of her grief pressing through the ground. I wonder if she’d still fight for me if she knew I never really left.
Probably not. Or maybe she would.
I step back into the dark before the dawn catches me, before the city remembers my name.
Behind me, the cemetery stays silent, guarding its secrets.
And for the first time in years, I almost wish I was still buried there - with her tears, her anger, her forgiveness.
At least then, I’d be close enough to be remembered.