44. Bodhi
44
BODHI
4 MONTHS LATER
T he cemetery is quiet when I pull up, the trees swaying gently and my heart beating uncontrollably in my chest. Guilt floods my veins as I try to remember the last time I was here—the last time I’d come to see her.
“Do you want me to come with you?” Ella asks from the passenger seat, beautiful and sweet and somehow… mine.
“Please.”
“Always.”
Nodding once, I swallow down the lump of emotion in my throat and push out of the car, taking a minute to enjoy the sun on my face. I don’t jump when Ella places her hand over my heart, her energy something tangible, something that whispers to my soul.
It’s a peace I’ve never known.
Never allowed myself to feel.
“Let’s go see her.” Her words are a whisper, her hand slipping into mine as I open my eyelids and meet her gaze.
“Okay.”
She doesn’t push me as we take the path I know by heart, the one I’ve traveled both here and in my dreams. And I know the others too, the ones that line this walk, the gravestones I’d cleaned and loved when no one else had.
It feels like so long ago.
My steps slow as I near her plot, the one that had been a simple marker in the ground— the one I’d scraped and saved to replace so that there’d never be any doubt that she was loved.
Is loved.
And forever will be.
The flowers in my hand shake, the magnitude of this moment so much more than I ever could have prepared for.
We did it, Audrey. We finally did it and he’ll never hurt anyone ever again.
Ella squeezes my hand and smiles. “Hi, Audrey, it’s so nice to meet you.” I choke on the sob that tries to claw its way from my chest. “I just want you to know that I love him and I promise to protect him the way he tells me you did. I’ll protect him for both of us.”
Taking the flowers from my hands, she pulls the old ones from the vase and tenderly replaces them with the pink carnations.
Audrey’s favorite.
When she’s done, she stands with the dead flowers and presses a soft kiss to my lips. “I’m going to go take care of these; take your time.”
“I love you,” I murmur, the sentiment somehow not enough to encompass all I’m feeling in this moment.
“I love you always.”
I wait as she walks away, both needing the space and craving her closeness. It’s a dynamic I know I’ll never escape because she’s everything I’ve ever wanted and had been too scared to believe could be mine.
Clearing my throat, I look up at the sky again, the blue bright and cheerful.
Happy.
Like she’d been.
“You’ve met Ella,” I start, the words like gravel as I force them out. “She’s amazing and it’s crazy how much I love her.” How much I love all of them.
Gratitude.
The word knocks the air from my lungs, forcing me to my knees, my hands sinking into the soft grass as I bow my head. I don’t stop the tears from coming, years of hurt and fear and doubt dripping onto the grass.
And I let them, not just thankful for this moment to tell her that we’d done it—we put Daryl away for good. But gratitude for the space to be free to love and be loved, a dark angel trying to weather the storm when the people he’d sworn to protect had been offering him shelter.
Safety.
“I love them,” I manage. “They never gave up on me, Audrey. Through all the bullshit, when I fought to keep them away, to never let them get close. God, and you should see Mason. He’s got a great girl and two kids who adore him. I’m so fucking proud of him and I thought—” I swallow harder. “I thought he didn’t need me—that I could throw myself into your case and disappear but—” I laugh, the sound strangled and also free. “They fought for me. Fought to keep me.”
I’d lost so much in my life, begged the wrong people to love me—to stay—and ignored those I knew deep down had the ability to destroy the last piece of me . The version of me long since buried beneath the rubble.
The little boy who’d had the two most important people ripped from his grasp—a horror I hadn’t been able to put to rest.
Gratitude.
I found safety in Ella’s arms.
In her spirit.
And in her unwavering need to settle mine when I felt like I was drowning in an ocean of regret.
I deserve to be loved.
Mason loved me since the day we landed in the same house. The Thayers fought like hell to love me, to show me what I wasn’t ready to see. And then the guys in Blackstone Falls and Holland and Beck—all of them.
A family not built by blood but by something more— something bigger than myself and the demons I tried to outrun.
They’d healed me, healed pieces of me I didn’t know were broken, the ones I’d learned to live with. But they’d never given up.
And just like I hadn’t given up on ensuring justice for Audrey, they hadn’t given up on showing me just how fiercely I am loved.
And that I belong.
“I love you,” I whisper, pushing up onto one knee and laying my hand on her headstone. “Thank you for loving me because I never would have found all of this.” Squeezing my eyes shut for only a second, I force them open and read her name, her short life a reminder of what I’m doing here. “I promise to live for both of us. To love for both of us. We deserve it, Audrey, and I’m so grateful?—”
The words are cut off as an orange-and-black butterfly lands mere inches from my hand, its wings slowly rising and falling.
A hello.
“Wouldn’t it be fun to be a butterfly? To float on the wind, the breeze sending you soaring and diving. Wouldn’t that be fun, Bodhi?”
“It sounds scary.”
She laughs, the sound like bells, cheerful and happy as a smile pulls at my lips. “But what if you fly, Bodhi? Imagine all the things you’d see. The freedom.” She sighs wistfully. “Well, just know if you see one, that will be me.”
“But you’re right here,” I say, shaking my head as something sad passes over her face.
“I’ll always be with you, silly.” She shrugs. “I just might be a butterfly.”
“You’re beautiful,” I whisper to the butterfly, the wings flapping once more. “Thank you.” The delicate creature takes off, fluttering around me before doing all the things she dreamed of.
Soaring.
Diving.
She’s free.
It’s a harsh reminder that she’d known the end was coming for her—that she’d known and she’d told me where to look for her.
Where to find her.
Standing on shaking legs, I dry my face with the bottom of my shirt, every part of me wrung out from being here, from making peace with the ugliest parts of my life so I can make space for the beautiful ones.
Turning, I can’t help the way my heart damn near stops in my chest at the sight.
How had I not heard them?
How had I not heard all of them?
Because it is all of them.
Mason and Lana who’d been with me in the courtroom, their kids, Jensen, Montana, Archer and their girls, the Thayers, and the brood of kids they loved fiercely.
Unconditionally.
“They came for you,” Ella says softly as her hand slips into mine, “for her. Because they love you. They’ll understand if you’re not ready to see them, if this is too much. They just wanted you to know they’re here.”
Here.
Because Ella and I had flown to New Hampshire to watch Daryl Jeffers accept the plea deal that will keep him in jail the rest of his miserable life. Lauren’s statement about what she had endured during her short time in that home had been his undoing. It had made all the difference, and in the end he hadn’t wanted a trial.
The prosecutor had called us with the good news, but I needed to be here, to see for myself that it’s over.
And I did. The flash of recognition in his beady gaze as he looked from me to Mason and back was a victory in and of itself, because he never broke us. And neither did his family, all of whom were absent from the court room.
We made it.
We won.
“It’s because of them, because of you that I’m here—that I survived.”
I’d been so ready for the loneliness to take me, to be the shell of the person I could be— the one that I am today.
Gratitude.
“I love you,” she says, her other hand gripping my forearm, grounding me to this one singular moment, the one I decided to live.
To love.
And be happy.
Forever.