Atone (Recovered Innocence #2)(35)
“Awkward.”
“Very awkward.”
“It’ll get better. People will move on to the next Internet sensation and forget all about you.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“Will you do me a favor?”
He glances unexpectedly at me. “Sure?”
“I need you to go somewhere with me and I want you to promise you won’t reject it without giving it a try.”
“Sounds dirty.”
“It’s not. The dirty part can come later…pun intended.”
He barks out a laugh. “Well, when you put it like that…”
Almost three hours later the shops are closing up without a Marie sighting. I knew this was a lost cause, but I keep my thoughts to myself. It takes Beau another fifteen minutes to call it a night. I remind him of the favor he promised me and give him directions on how to get there. I’m not sure what his reaction is going to be. If he’s going to think this is stupid and try to blow it off or give it a try. I’m not even sure it will do him any good, but I feel like he needs this.
We pull into the parking lot of a cemetery. I can feel it in Beau the moment he realizes what this is all about. The air around him vibrates with anger and the weightier emotion of grief. He turns the car off and sits back in his seat. I bet he’s regretting that promise he made me.
I get out of the car and walk through the gate. Behind me a car door slams and reluctant footsteps approach. I use the light of my phone to check the info I jotted down. Three more rows up, on the left. I turn off the road and onto the thick grass. It’s so quiet here at night. In the distance, a dog barks. A balloon bats against a tombstone pushed by the breeze that makes the trees whoosh above us. There’s no other sound except the soft crunch of our footfalls. I stop at a grave with a simple mixed bouquet stuck into a buried vase.
Cassandra’s grave.
Beau stops a few markers away. When I turn to him, he’s looking off into the distance, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, his shoulders hunched and hard. His jaw works with all of the things he’s trying not to say. He won’t look at the grave or at me. I walk forward past the headstone to a little bench under a tree some ways away. Beau doesn’t follow. I sit so I’m looking away from him over the graveyard. Moonlight and silence make the scene eerily serene. I close my eyes and hope Beau accepts my gift. It might be the only thing I can give him—peace.
Chapter 17
Beau
I know why Vera brought me here, what she’s hoping to accomplish. I’m supposed to find closure. My eyes won’t focus through the anger and I can barely breathe for the fisting in my chest. Cassandra lays buried feet from me. This is the closest I’ve been to her since that night I kissed her goodbye. I can’t reconcile these two things. This finality doesn’t exist in my mind. Logically I know she’s dead, but until now the reality of it never really hit.
I make myself walk closer until I’m standing at her feet. Her headstone pronounces her a cherished daughter, sister, friend. She was more than that, and, at times, less. I’m not supposed to be pissed at her, but I am. She wasn’t perfect. I wasn’t perfect, but what we shared was, in its way. Until she ruined it. I hadn’t forgiven her when she died. We were trying to work things out. The sex was easy and a way we could try to reconnect. But even as I kissed her goodbye I doubted I could get over what she’d done.
I didn’t tell her that. I was going to the next time I saw her. I couldn’t get the thought of her and my best friend, Dylan, out of my head. There are some things you just can’t work past, I guess.
Dylan had a thing for her the whole time Cassandra and I went out. He didn’t think I knew about it, but I did. What was I supposed to do? Give her up to him? I shouldn’t have been surprised he’d make a move the minute we broke up, but I was. Cassandra and I had a terrible fight over it. I said some things I can’t ever take back. I regret that.
Dylan sat in the courtroom during my trial periodically. I knew he was there, but I never acknowledged him. He even tried to visit me in prison a few times. I left his name on the visitor’s list just to f*ck with him. As soon as I saw him I turned around and walked right back out. I let him believe there was a chance I’d forgive him one of those times. There wasn’t. It was stupid and childish, but it was the only payback I could accomplish from prison besides tossing his letters in the trash unopened. He finally got the message and stopped the letters and visits.
I hope the guilt ate up his gut every single day.
That’s an ugly thought to have while standing over the grave of the woman who put herself between us. Whether it was intentional or not, the result was the same. I lost my best friend and then I lost the only woman I ever loved within months of each other.
And then I lost my freedom.
I kneel in the damp grass. The knees of my jeans are soaked in a matter of minutes, but I don’t care. I want to touch her one more time. I want to tell her I’m sorry. There is only the hard, cold granite of her headstone to talk to and six feet of earth between us to touch. The grass is unexpectedly cold against my cheek and the wetness seeps into the front of my clothes all the way to my skin. The blades of the grass poke between my fingers as her hair might if I could touch her. I close my eyes and breathe in the scent of the earth. It’s nothing like how she used to smell. I can’t seem to recall her scent exactly, but I know if I were to smell it again I’d recognize it.