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Chapter Twenty-Seven

Ronan

Two Weeks Later

The weight of the day pressed down on me, thick like the fog rolling over the small town roads as we drove to the cemetery. Elias hadn’t said much since we left the hospital, and I couldn’t bring myself to speak either.

What do you say when everything feels wrong?

When your entire world had been ripped apart, and you were left standing on the edge of it, looking down at the wreckage?

I stared out the window, my hand clenched on my lap, fingers digging into the denim of my jeans. The car’s interior was too quiet, too still, like we were both trying to pretend we weren’t heading toward the final goodbye.

The funeral was a formality. A ritual. It didn’t matter that my mother was gone because it felt like the world had stopped for me the second they told me she’d been hurt.

Elias shifted beside me, his hand moving slowly, almost tentatively, over to rest lightly on mine. I was still a broken piece of shit, even after weeks of healing in the hospital. I felt his presence, but he didn’t squeeze my hand, as if he knew how breakable I felt right now.

He didn’t try to pull me into him.

He knew better than that now.

I knew I needed space, even if I craved his touch. His palm was warm, a reminder that even in the middle of this disaster, I wasn’t alone. And for that, I was thankful.

I glanced at him, catching the way his jaw tightened and his eyes drifted to the road. The priest’s collar was gone, tucked under a dark suit jacket, and the look on his face…it wasn’t the look of a man who was attending a funeral.

It was the look of someone trying to hold their own pain together, trying to keep it inside because the weight of the world was already too fucking much.

I wanted to say something. I wanted to tell him that I was sorry—sorry for everything, for the things I said, for dragging him into all of this—but the words died on my tongue. Sorry that I flinched at every touch he tried to give me for comfort.

Those monsters took so much. The nightmares were constant, the restless sleep. I couldn’t make this right. I couldn’t fix myself, so how could I fix us? The hospital told me I was okay.

But I felt anything but okay.

I am filthy. I am not worthy. I am ruined.

His voice broke through the silence, low and soft. “Are you okay?”

I laughed, a dry, almost bitter sound. “Does it look like I’m fucking okay?”

He flinched, his hand tightening slightly on mine. “I’m here. For whatever you need. If that’s screaming at me, I’m ready.”

I swallowed hard, the lump in my throat growing. “Sorry. I don’t even know what I need right now.”

We drove for a while longer, the cemetery looming ahead like a place where nothing would ever be the same again. And when Elias parked the car, he didn’t ask if I was ready. He just got out, walked around the front of the car, and opened my door. He knew I couldn’t move my feet alone. He didn’t force anything. He just stood there, his eyes kind and patient, as if waiting for me to finally decide to accept this reality.

I stepped out, the cold air hitting me like a slap in the fucking face.

The cold weather usually had those sweet, forbidden memories filtering through the wind like sin on my skin…but now. I felt only the empty, bitter cold.

The world felt off-kilter, tilted like I wasn’t supposed to be here. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. My mother was always the one who was supposed to be the one taking care of me, making sure I was okay, not the other way around. Yet to the very fucking end, it was me who kept her stupid ass breathing. Until I couldn’t.

We walked together, side by side, but there was distance between us that we didn’t talk about. Not yet. Maybe not ever. The wind cut through my jacket, biting at my skin, but I didn’t feel it.

All I felt was the loss, the echo of her absence, The realization that I wouldn’t be sobering her up and helping her heal again, that she was truly gone. The gnawing ache in my chest grew to an all-consuming hole that I couldn’t shake.

When we reached the gravesite, everything blurred—the faces, the words, Father Franklin’s monotonous voice.

It was all just noise.

The casket, a dark wooden box that held my mother’s body, sat there like a finality, and I didn’t know what to do with it. I wanted to scream at her, rip her out of the damn ground and beg her to fight harder. This wasn’t supposed to be happening. But it was. She was gone.

Elias stepped closer to me, his shoulder brushing against mine, but still, he gave me space. He was whispering some prayer under his breath. The words flowed through me, and I felt his warmth and presence, like a tether that kept me grounded in a world that felt like it was spinning too fast. A fucking Tilt-A-Whirl I couldn’t get the fuck off of.

I couldn’t look at the coffin anymore.

My eyes drifted to the ground, to the soft snow-covered dirt, and I couldn’t stop the tears from coming. I let them fall, silent and heavy, until Elias gently touched my arm. It wasn’t an offer of comfort—more like a plea for understanding.

He knew I wasn’t ready for comfort. Not yet. He just wanted me to know that he was here. That, just like the weeks in the damn hospital bed, he was at my side.

“We’ll get through this,” he said softly. “I’ll help you through this, Ronan.”

The words settled over me like a blanket, a promise, even though I didn’t know how the hell we’d get through it. But for now, I let myself believe him. Just for a moment, I let myself believe that maybe, somehow, we’d make it out of this together.

And when I looked at him, there was something in his eyes—a sadness, yes, but also something stronger. Something that made me feel, for the first time in a long time, like maybe I wasn’t as broken as I thought.

Maybe I’d never be whole again.

But maybe, just maybe, with Elias beside me, I wouldn’t have to be.

The ceremony felt like it lasted an eternity, though I couldn’t have told you a single word that was spoken. The priest’s voice blended into the rustling of the trees, the faint shuffle of feet on gravel, the whispers of people who had come to pay their respects but didn’t truly know my mother. All these people were part of the problem.

All the fake smiles that knew Miranda wasn’t okay—the same people who saw her scars but never spoke up. My throat burned, and every part of me wanted to scream, to lash out, to tear the world apart for what had happened.

Mostly, I wanted to tear Jack apart at the seams for what he had done.

But I stood there, frozen, my eyes never straying from the ground. I didn’t want to look at the casket again. I didn’t want to see the finality of it, the reality that my mother, Miranda, was really gone.

Elias didn’t speak, didn’t push me. He just stood at my side, a steady presence, the only constant in a world that felt like it was crumbling around me. His hand brushed against mine, a small touch, a simple gesture of connection. And it was enough.

I wasn’t ready for more, but his quiet support gave me something to cling to, something to anchor me in the sea of grief.

At some point, people started to leave—the mourners.

The faces blurred, all of them feeling like strangers to me, people who didn’t understand, who only whispered behind my back when they felt I wasn’t looking. They didn’t truly know the woman I had lost. It was just the society of our small town to congregate and pretend we gave a shit about who was in the ground. I heard Elias’s soft voice beside me again.

“It’s time, Ronan.”

I nodded, not trusting my voice. Not trusting that I wouldn’t break down in front of everyone, collapsing under the weight of everything.

I needed to leave.

I needed air.

I needed space.

With my last goodbye, I walked up to my mother’s casket, safe for the moment at least, while under the awning. But it only prevented snow from pelting down on my head, not the real dangers I faced.

I picked up a rose that was on her body. The petals felt soft in my grip, the only thing that seemed to hold my corporeal form in my broken, battered body. Her face looked so peaceful. Her eyes shut, and there was a gunk of makeup they smeared on dead people that she never actually wore herself.

I think she would have liked being presented like this. Displayed as a sleeping doll with no marks on the outside. Her bruises were all covered like they hadn’t existed in the first place. In the end, maybe she found true peace.

“Goodbye…Mom.”

Together, Elias and I walked away from the gravesite.

The others were still gathering around the casket, watching as Father Franklin finally closed the lid and began to lower her to the ground.

But I couldn’t stay any longer.

The weight of the loss was too much. I felt like I was the one trapped in the box, destined to suffocate underground. Every step away from the grave felt like it took me further from the small piece of my mother I still held onto for all these years.

The hope that she would someday be a better version of herself. That her smile would return, and her laughs wouldn’t be forced that she would be alive again. Truly living, not just surviving.

But now, it was all gone.

We reached the SUV, and I stopped, staring at my reflection in the dark matte material of the door. Elias opened the door for me, seeing that I couldn’t do it myself. His eyes were searching my face, looking for something—anything—to tell him how I was holding up.

I didn’t have an answer.

Truth was, I was so numb. I couldn’t process anything about the last month—the pain, the violations, the lies, the nightmares…the endings.

Once I was inside and the heater blasted stale air into my face, Elias got in beside me, and we drove away from the cemetery in silence.

The town we passed by was nothing more than a blur. The home I grew up in is a distant memory as foreign as the faces I saw today.

Everything was a blur.

I wasn’t sure where we were going, but it didn’t matter. The world felt too big, too empty now. And all I could do was breathe as I was barely holding myself together.

Elias’s voice broke the quiet again, his words soft but firm, letting me know he wanted me to hear him. “You don’t have to go through this alone, Ronan. Any of it. I am here for you. I haven’t left you, and I won’t.”

The sincerity in his voice made something inside me crack, and the lump in my throat grew bigger. I knew he meant it. He always did.

“I don’t know how to do this,” I said, my voice hoarse. “I don’t know how to keep going. She’s gone, Elias. And I’m still fucking here, and I don’t know what to do with myself. At the prison. They fucking took my body over and over again. I can’t accept this. I can’t accept being so damn weak! Too weak to protect my own mother from Jack and too weak to protect my fucking self from…”

Elias’s grip on the wheel tightened for a second, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t try to fix it or tell me everything would be okay because he knew it wasn’t. He just let the silence hang between us for a few moments, allowing me to feel its depth and rawness.

Finally, he spoke again, quieter this time. “You don’t have to figure it all out today, Ronan. Or tomorrow. We’ll take it one step at a time. We will get them for what they did. The detective will find Jack, and then he will get the bastards who…”

He couldn’t even say it.

“Raped me,” I said, my breath heavy and catching in my throat. Tears streamed down my cheeks, blurring his beautiful image in front of me. I needed to say it—to accept it. “Those men raped me.”

I looked at him then, really looked at him through my tear-drenched face. His eyes were tired, but there was a steadiness to them that grounded me, something in the way he carried himself that told me he wasn’t going anywhere. The pain he was holding onto spilled free at that moment.

He wasn’t going to leave me to face this on my own, no matter how much I tried to push him away. He felt my pain as if it was his own. We always held empathy for one another—the inability to separate what was truly our own feelings.

“I don’t know what to say right now. I don’t know how to make this better. I don’t know if I even can, but the one thing I know as sure as my own soul, Ronan, is that I love you. And you are not fucking weak. I will never let you say that about yourself.”

“Thanks,” I murmured, my voice barely above a whisper. “I don’t know what I’d do without you…I would be lost.”

He smiled softly, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. The sadness was still there, a reflection of my own pain, but there was something else in him, too, a promise. A quiet strength that made me believe, even if just for a moment, that I could survive this. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday.

And for the first time in what felt like forever, I allowed myself to hope.

The car veered off to a shoulder, and he put the vehicle in park. I studied his face, not understanding what was happening, but then he reached his hands forward and grabbed my face in his hands, forcing me to look at him.

“You are the strongest person I have ever known. If anyone can overcome what was done to them, it’s you. You can. I have admired your strength for so long. As a kid, I was envious, but now I am proud. You are so beautiful in everything you fight for, so breathtaking in your resilience.”

The tears fell harder, and my chest tightened into a sob. His thumb swiped over my cheek, washing away the tears that fell. So much longing and love in his bright blue jean eyes. So much faith. I started to pull away, and he pulled me closer, his lips tracing the marks left by the tear droplets. His tongue darted out to lightly taste the salt.

I sighed in peace for the first time in so long. His kisses on my face grew in number, the distance increasing to every inch of my jaw, chin, nose, and forehead. He left no place untouched by his warmth and his acceptance.

When the tears stopped, and I couldn’t help but smile, he brought those lips to my own. A passionate kiss that took my soul with it. He left me breathless. The knowledge that he had held back so many other times was confounding. I’d never felt this before. The need, the want. The lust…the love.

Elias was breathing as roughly as I was when he finally pulled away to catch his breath. His eyes held a question that he wouldn’t speak, and I kissed him softly, giving him the permission he couldn’t ask.

“Ronan…I have many sins,” he said, and my stomach sank, fearing he would reject me at that moment. “But my greatest sin is denying myself what God implores we all seek. Love. I have denied your love for too long. Denied my feelings for longer. I love you, and there is no one on this earth that will ever truly own my heart as you have. I am yours. If you aren’t ready, I understand, but I am offering. Please…”

I couldn’t speak. His omission made me feel weak—dizzy with the haze of my mind and his words.

Is he asking me to…

“I need you, Ronan Saint Clare. I need you to claim my body. I have chosen your darkness over the light of God because the answer was there all along. You are my heaven. The only salvation I seek—my greatest sin. I would rather burn in a pit of hell than deny you any longer. I need you. I want you. Please. Take me.”