Page 81 of Vows in Sin

Her voice drops to a whisper. “She drowned.” Her gaze travels to the stretch of beautiful blue water and the sparkly pool behind us. “Right there. In the deep end. She always wanted to take her water wings off. To play like the big kids. Like me. And I wasn’t there to stop her.”

“It’s not your fault.”

She breaks. The sob is ugly, sharp, a jagged wound splitting open. “I didn’t see it.”

“And somehow that’s worse,” I say. “The not being there. The not seeing it.”

“Right.” Her eyes squeeze shut as she nods several times, then sobs deeply, the sound tearing through her. Finally, she finishes with, “Every night, I imagine it. A hundred different ways.Her arms reaching. Her mouth opens underwater. Her eyes searching for me.”

My dream. Seraphina coming out of the water. The water wasn’t a lake.

It was a pool she was stepping out of.

I bury her in my arms.

“I should’ve been there,” she cries. “I was her big sister. I was supposed to protect her.”

My voice is hoarse. “You were a kid. You never should’ve carried that weight. It wasn’t your fault.”

“But if I’d been there…”

“You didn’t fail her, Seraphina. Your mom failed you both. And the alcohol failed her.”

She cries harder.

“You didn’t leave her. You didn’t do this.”

She shakes her head. “I imagine it every night. What it must’ve been like. How scared she was.”

“I know,” I say, throat thick.

She looks at me as if she wants to believe me, but doesn’t know how.

I reach for her hand. Place it over my heart. “But that pain? You don’t have to carry it alone anymore.”

She makes a broken sound and leans into me. I press my forehead to hers.

I don’t tell her it’s okay. It’s not. And it never will be.

I don’t shush away the grief. It can’t be fixed.

She’s the one person in this world I feel seen by and heard by. By some trick of fate, I instinctively know what she needs.

I only hold her. Fiercely.

She breaks in my arms. And something in me breaks too.

I’ve seen death. Held men as they bled out. Dragged mates from a warehouse full of gear burnt down by rivals in Northern England, the smoke billowing up over the council house estates. That may be why I didn’t hesitate to evacuate the Village on a hunch. I’d already buried too many bodies to count.

This feels more painful somehow.

Her sobs echo against my chest like gunfire, and I can’t do a damn thing to stop them.

Can’t rewind time. Can’t bring her sister back. Can’t go back and rip the gin from her mother’s hand or pull that little girl out of the pool before the world turned cruel.

All I can do is hold her tighter and be her anchor to this world.

We stay like that. No more words. Only the breeze, the scent of honeysuckle from the vines growing on the pool’s fence. My injuries throb. My aching arm. But I don’t care.