Page 227 of Severed Heart

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

She’s fading and fighting her hardest. “I’m with you. Do you feel me? I’m already with you.”

“I feel you,” she murmurs.

“Are you scared?” I choke out.

“Non. Nothing to be afraid of,” she utters instantly.

“Because you’re a true soldier. Always have been. Fearless,” I murmur. “I’m sorry—” My voice cracks on every word, and I hate the fact that Russell can hear every one of them as I turn away from him. “I’m so sorry I’m not there. I shouldn’t have left.”

“Hang in,” Russell utters in assurance as he guns us down a straightaway before Delphine sounds over the line.

“I watched you leave, Soldier,” she relays, as if each word is hard-won, “the day you left for Paris Island.”

“What?” Shock filters in, and my heart stutters in response.

“I followed Dom that morning ... because I knew you were leaving. I watched you toss your pack over your shoulder. You paused, but you didn’t look back.” Her voice is barely audible now, and I can feel her fighting for every word. “I came to tell you ... I don’t know what I would have said. Maybe ‘I’m sorry,’ maybe that I would wait, but I was there.”

“You were,” I rasp out. “You were there?”

“Oui. Because I believed you. I saw you, too. As the man you are now. The man I love. Maybe that is what I would have told you ... I saw you too, Tyler, and always have.”

Implosion.

It’s the only way to describe it, and it happens so suddenly I can’t catch myself. I feel the weight of Russell’s stare as I grunt through the pain.

“Tyler?”

“I’m here, baby. Please try to hold on. I want to look into your eyes.”

“I will wait.”

Six of the most excruciating minutes of my life later, I fling myself out of Russell’s Mustang before it comes to a stop. Passing Tobias on the porch, I fly straight through the front door. A heartbeat later, I’m standing at the threshold of our bedroom, white-knuckling the phone still at my ear.

Terrified because she stopped speaking in the last few minutes, I take a step in as Sheila eyes me with trepidation. She’s seen this time and time again, the loss. Grieving families pouring out their goodbyes. To her, I’m just another widower. Probably no more memorable than the last.

Walking over to where Delphine lies, I lift her into my arms along with the patched quilt covering her and cradle her to me as Sheila hands me the IV bag attached to her arm. Too terrified to look down, Delphine remains utterly limp in my arms as I walk her out of the door, past Russell and Tobias who give me a wide berth, both their heads cast down. Stalking past a blur of approaching people—one I make out as Barrett—I head straight to the pasture filled with our wildflowers, which, to my surprise, have already bloomed. The colorful flowers vivid in contrast to the gray sky as snow begins to pour out of it.

Once on the ground, the flurries start to coat us both as I glimpse the surrounding hillsides. Oddly, the land has never been more beautiful to me. Surrounded by a strange sense of peace, I brave whatever fate awaits as I finally look down to gaze upon her face.

“You waited,” I gasp out in relief at seeing her silver eyes open. The look inside them taking my breath away.

Love, so much fucking love.

Knowing she no longer has the strength to speak, I lock our gazes, willing my own devotion through. Hoping she can see it even as my vision blurs, and I blink to clear it, not wanting to miss a second as I explain myself.

“It’s snowing, and I didn’t want you to miss it. I didn’t want you to miss it because I wanted the last thing you see to be the man who loves you more than any selfish need, more than himself, more than life, and take that with you as the absolute truth,” I say in hopes to finally mend the start of the slow break Matis started all those years ago. In hope of replacing all other visions she’s had of the pain-filled precipitation with one of the man who loves her with everything he has. Who never broke a single promise to her, abused her love, or took it for granted. To replace the images that have haunted her for so much of her life with the man who loved her as she hoped. To mend that hurt once and for all.

Despite my fear of not making it in time, she doesn’t fade away quickly or peacefully. She struggles for breath several times as I grip her tightly to me, talking her through it the best I can, doing my best to maintain and be the strength she needs during her very last fight. She keeps my eyes the whole time, every second, trusting me wholly to help her through it as I try to soothe any discomfort. Each unmerciful bout breaking me a little more until she stops struggling altogether.

Agonizing minutes later, as the snow-coated wildflowers whisper on the breeze around us, unexplainably, Ifeelher start to slip away. Grunting through the most painful moment of my life, I summon the last of my strength to say the words she deserves.

“I loved you through space and time before, and I’ll do it again. I’ll do it again. I’m with you, I’m with you, always,” I croak in promise. As her last breath leaves her, I bend to whisper in her ear. “Forever,” I murmur, her weight sinking further into me as she departs.

Agony rips through me when I pull back to see the telling, faraway look in her glazed eyes, my apology coming out in a rush for the one thing I couldn’t protect her from. “I’m sorry,” I cry as our war ends, and the illness that consumed her claims its victory. “I’m so sorry.”

Years of images start to cloud my vision as I clutch her to me. Images of her, of us, and of our short time in heaven. Reliving every blink as they come, I take precious inventory because I’ll never be granted another to add to them. It’s in living that knowledge that I break.