Page 57 of My Sweetest Agony

I just need to not be alone.

To be with someone who can understand how I feel right now.

And he’s the only person on the planet who does.

Cam follows me up to the house, and I dig the key from my pocket and unlock the door, pushing it open to the emptiness I knew I would find.

So different from how this space once felt.

It was our haven, where we planned our lives together, laughing and loving.

Tonight, it’s quiet.

That spark gone.

All that love and joy sucked away the moment his heart stopped beating.

I used to walk in and feel mine swell.

Now, it’s merely an empty void in my chest.

This is why I didn’t want to be alone.

I couldn’t be alone.

My eyes move to the now-empty mantle, and almost instantly, they burn with the threat of tears I thought I had completely cried out at the beach.

Cam closes the door behind him, shrugs off his jacket, and drapes it on the chair he sat in that first night he came. He runs his hands through his already disheveled hair, the thick locks falling over his forehead and curling at his temples as he slowly lowers himself onto the couch and spreads his arms across the back.

I peel off my jacket and lay it over his, trying to keep my gaze from drifting to the mantle. “You want something to drink?”

He shakes his head, his eyes going to exactly that spot. “I’m okay.”

I am definitely not.

My knees tremble, and I grasp the armrest of the couch, using it to help me sit beside him.

His eyes lock on me, taking in every movement, assessing me in that piercing way he always does. As if he’s trying to catalog each minute detail for later reference.

The scrutiny heats my skin, and I stare at the empty fireplace rather than at him. But it isn’t long before my eyes drift up to the mantle where the box sat—its presence massive even though it was small enough to rest there unobtrusively.

It only occupied that spot for a few weeks, but its absence has hit me almost as hard as the news of Drew’s death did that night I got the call from Nancy.

And the longer I look at it and see the empty spot, the harder the reality of what we just did hits me.

He’s really gone now.

All of him.

My chest tightens, squeezing relentlessly until I can barely breathe, and a sob I didn’t know I still had left in me falls from my lips, breaking the silence of the house I was so scared of.

“Shit, I’m sorry…” I bury my face in my hands, the tears flowing down my cheeks and dampening my palms. The hiccupped sobs rip from my chest, and I try to breathe through them. Try to rein it back in. “I-I thought it would be better.”

What we did tonight was the right thing to do.

What Drew would have wanted.

So why does it feel so wrong?