8. Summer
Chapter Eight
Summer
T he anger is long gone. All that is left are frozen scorch marks that hurt more than when they were singed. I’ve barely settled back in bed, eagerly awaiting the numbness to claim me, when there is another knock at the door.
He’s gone.
Go away, Max. Leave me alone.
I don’t move, hoping he’ll get the message and just leave, but he knocks again, this time more insistently.
The fire flickers again inside me, the flames licking at the edges of the sadness.
Still I ignore it, pushing down the anger.
It’s so tempting to allow it to flare, but every time I sink back into the sadness, the pain worsens.
He knocks again, this time even louder, and before I know it, I’m out of bed and storming downstairs.
I yank the door open, ready to throw some more venom at him, but everything stops.
It’s not Max. I blink and nearly whimper as I stare up at the man who looks so much like Connor.
Every part of me aches, and my knees almost buckle from the initial sight of him, but I can’t look away.
The man in front of me is not Connor. I know that, but I still take comfort from the older, harder eyes of his father.
I stand uselessly in front of him, watching him, and he watches me, his eyes void of any Morningstar sparkle. There is only sadness. I recognize his grief as a reflection of my own, and I do not doubt that his pain goes to his soul.
“I thought I should knock,” he says. There is something so familiar about his voice, so comforting that my eyes sting with tears.
“Can I come in?” he asks, and I nod, not trusting my voice.
I move to the side on shaky legs. Has he come to scream at me, to hurl insults at me?
To blame me for his son’s death? He should. I wouldn’t blame him.
He calmly walks through the door, and I push it shut behind him. I wrap my arms around myself, needing comfort and protection from what is about to happen.
Uriel looks around the room, and then his blue eyes land on me. They are so similar to Connor’s, if a little lighter. Although he still appears young, thanks to his immortality, his eyes betray his actual age. They are etched with life experience.
“Connor came to me in a dream,” he says. His voice is soft, but I’m tense, waiting for it to rise, for him to yell and scream. But he doesn’t. His lips soften into a gentle smile. “He said you needed me.”
A whimper escapes, coming from the deepest part of my soul, where all light has long since been ousted.
Uriel moves closer, and I flinch. I’m not sure why I’m expecting him to be cruel.
He has never been cruel. He pulls me into his chest, his large arms wrapping around me.
A spike of agony rips through me, and I completely combust. He just holds me until my sobs soften, and then he pulls back to look at my face.
He cups my cheeks in his large hands, brushing my tears away with his thumbs, his own eyes red from emotion.
“You haven’t answered Farrah’s calls,” he says. Again, there is no air of admonishment, just a statement of fact. Farrah has called me a few times over the last few months, but I was never brave enough to answer, not brave enough to hear the hatred from her.
“I thought they were accidental,” I say finally, my voice raw. It’s not a lie. The first couple of times, I thought she’d selected my name by mistake, and then I was just too afraid to face her censure.
Uriel looks over my face, assessing me, and I don’t try to hide from him.
I want him to see how devastated I am, to know how sorry I am.
He pulls me to him again. “I’m so sorry, Summer,” he says, and the words shatter me, even though I’m not sure what he’s apologizing for.
“We should have pushed more,” he continues, and once again, I completely break down in his arms. Uriel kisses my head, holding me tighter.
I feel his body start to shake with sobs as he succumbs to his pain .
“You know, I always wanted a daughter,” he says, his voice clogged with emotion. “Connor granted me that wish too.”
Sobs rip out of me, feeling as if they are tearing me apart. I wrap my arms around him as tight as I can, holding him together just as he is holding me.
“It’s been impossible to?.?.?. breathe,” he says, clinging to me as my entire body shakes. After a long moment, he pulls back and wipes his tears and then mine. “Kiddo, we’ve got to go upstairs,” he says, and fear claws at me. “He said we have to.”
I shake my head. “I can’t.”
He releases me and slips his hand into mine. “We have to. Connor asked us to.”
I squeeze his hand, the sobs still coming hard, but I nod. I know I have to do this for him. Connor came to Uriel in a dream for me. He gave his life for me. He loved me even when I didn’t deserve it. I owe him this. I owe him more than this at least, but this is all I have to give at the moment.
We climb the stairs, and both of us pause in front of his door. Uriel brushes his hand over his son’s name crudely etched into the wood before gripping the door handle and looking at me. “Together.”
He pushes the door open, and the pain splinters through me as Connor’s scent envelops me. I shake my head. “I can’t,” I whisper.
“Neither can I, but he said we have to.”
I exhale a sob and close my eyes, trying to center myself before we walk into the room, but it doesn’t help.
The room looks as if it’s been left in stasis, time and space frozen to preserve this memory.
His bed is still unmade from that morning.
The morning that I decided to go for a run.
The morning I left him in bed, sleeping so peacefully.
I inhale deeply, letting his scent fill my lungs, and it’s the most blissful agony.
“He’d hate us crying like this,” Uriel says, his voice cracking. He clears his throat as he looks around the room, and I follow him.
Connor’s jersey is draped over the back of his chair, and his desk is littered with textbooks, papers, and framed photographs of us, his brothers, and his friends. I pick up one of the photos. It’s so stupidly blurry, but we’re obviously kissing in it, and I’m smiling against his lips.
“He told me something else,” Uriel says, pulling me from my memory, and I turn to look at him. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a gold bangle, one that I would know anywhere. Connor’s halo. It’s in perfect condition, except for a small dent at the inner edge.
“This is yours,” he says. “For us, death is not the end. It is the start of something new. A new duty to the souls that enter Heaven and Hell.”
I shake my head, looking at the halo.
Uriel steps closer and lifts my left hand, sliding the halo onto my wrist. It glows faintly and then settles, almost as if accepting me as the new wearer. “You are the first non-angel ever to wear one.”
I shake my head again. “No, I don’t deserve this.”
“You don’t get to decide that, kiddo.”
Another soft sob comes from me as I stare at it and then around his room, and I swear the halo hums. The vibration is slight, but I am sure I feel it.
Uriel kisses my head again. “Azrael says he’s watching you all the time.”
It is not fair that he can see me. That he can watch me, yet I can’t see him. I want to rage and scream, but all I can do is sob.
“It’s time, Summer. Time to stop crying for him.”
“He’s gone.” I repeat Max’s monstrous words. “How can he be gone?” I ask. It’s not a question for Uriel but for the whole fucking universe, to the traitor gods who took him from me.
Uriel wraps an arm around my shoulder as he looks around the room. “I know.” He pauses for a moment, time enough for me to sob again. “But he would have it no other way.”
“It should’ve been me,” I say, speaking my truth finally, and it’s so freeing.
Uriel shakes his head. “No, that’s only exchanging one tragedy for -another.”
“A better tragedy.” Connor was good. He was kind and smart. The realms need him. Not me.
“No,” Uriel says immediately.
Uriel walks to the desk and picks up one of Connor’s baseball caps. “He was always trying to help and do right by others.”
I look down at the photo of the two of us again.
I feel Uriel’s kind gaze on me. “He loved you so much, Summer. He never regretted his choice.”
I brush my fingers over the blurry photo.
“Not once,” Uriel repeats, walking to me and looking at the photo .
“I thought you all hated me,” I say, speaking another of my ugly truths.
“Never.”
I glance at him, looking for any signs of deceit, but there are none. There is only gentleness and love in his eyes.
Uriel wipes my tears again. “He’d hate this. He’d say we are mourning something we’d all do for the people we love.”
I set the photo back down on his desk, exactly where I’d picked it up from, wanting to preserve the room for a little longer.
“Will you stay a while?” I ask Uriel. I know it’s selfish, but I don’t want him to leave yet.
“Of course, kiddo.”
I inhale Connor’s scent once more before we close the door and go back downstairs, leaving his room exactly as we found it.