“Why in the hell is she crying?” I asked.

“Spencer,” he spoke, readying me.

And my blood ran cold. “No, she’s fine. She has to be. She’s got to be,” I said, sitting up, ignoring the blinding pain.

I started pulling tubes out of every part of me and swung my legs over the side of my bed. They both stood and tried to restrain me, but I pushed them with the leftover strength I had. I stood up and nearly passed out. I started to walk out of the room when three nurses came in, shouting about my sensors.

When they saw me they pushed a button and a few seconds later, a male orderly came in. It took all six of them to put me back on the bed. A random guy in an overcoat came in and administered something in my arm, making me drowsy, and I fought them until the black consumed me.

It turns out they kept me sedated until I’d recovered fully.

And they woke me the day of the funeral.

Bridge walked in the room with a black suit. “I don’t believe you,” I told her.

She turned around, her baby belly looking pretty in her black dress.

“I know,” she said, her voice sounding like sand. Her face looked like she’d scrubbed it with the same.

“I’m not putting that on,” I explained.

“You don’t have to,” she said, cleaning off the material with a lint brush.

My chest suddenly weighed a million pounds. “How can you clean that when...when…”

She turned around. “I feel useless otherwise.” Her tears fell quietly. “I can’t do anything for you that would actually help you feel relief. I’m useless to you, my sweet Spence.”

I turned toward the window. The sky was gray and it looked like it would rain.

I dressed but had to use a cane to walk. I was a walking zombie, in complete disbelief. People cried around me, but I didn’t register it. I could only stand by her God-awful casket because I was still recovering and wasn’t allowed to carry a handle.

Emmett held Ellie as they followed behind us. They insisted I travel with them in the family car and I wasn’t in the mood to argue. I wanted to shout, “But I killed your granddaughter!” or “My kidney wasn’t good enough for her.”

And I should have known too. I should have kept my wretched life away from her beautiful one. I should have kept myself clear of her. I should have...but I didn’t. And now I was burying her. I was going to bury her and never see her lovely face or her clever smile again. I felt ill to my stomach, and I could tell it was going to be permanent. No amount of time was going to heal me. My wounds would close, but my scars would remain forever—they were deep and they were painful and they were endless.

The cemetery felt like such a ridiculous place to put someone so bright and lovely. Cricket was too astounding, too astonishing, too mine to be laid there.

They set the casket on the rollers above the grave and the priest performed the ceremony. He blessed the casket using holy water and incense.

Many drew roses from the arrangements setting by the gravesite and threw them on the casket. The entire family and friends stood in line to say goodbye, but I couldn’t go near her. I didn’t want to believe it. She couldn’t be in there.

The smell of the incense, the wind in the trees, the feel of the sun on the back of my neck, the low soothing words of the priest. They calmed me and I closed my eyes.

But when the priest stopped talking, the family stood, confusing me. Two men in gardener’s jumpsuits approached the casket and I froze. They began turning their levers and I felt horrified.

“Stop!” I shouted, my whole body rejecting the idea. “Just stop!” I insisted and the family stilled. “She’s not there. She can’t be,” I said, approaching the casket. I started panting. “Cricket,” I demanded, trying to open the casket. “Please, you can’t be there!” I shouted. The lid was nailed shut and I dug my nails so deep in the wood that they started bleeding. “She’s not there!” I swore. “She’s not here! She’s not here! She’s not here!” I said over and over.

“Spencer,” Jonah said, throwing an arm around my chest.

“No,” I sobbed. “She’s not there. She’s not there.”

A few more hands came forward and held me back as the cemetery workers lowered her to the concrete slab beneath her casket with a resounding thud, making me howl with grief.

I longed for her. Longed so deeply. She was my happiness and she was gone in the ground. I would never get her back.

I sank on my knees to the grass and sat back. I wept into my hands until every pair of hands that had held me was no longer present. I looked up and the gravesite was empty. I looked around me, their cars disappeared.

The empty grave beckoned to me.

It began to rain so densely I could barely see around me. I crawled on my hands and knees through the mud and sat at the precipice. My hands went to my hair and I pulled as hard as I could to distract me from the pain. I wanted to be in there with her.

“Take me with you,” I begged her, staring down into the abyss.

“Do you feel alive yet?” I heard a shrill voice ask me.

My heart pounded and I stood, my body covered in mud. She laughed, making my teeth grind at its deafening sound. She approached my back and my body tensed. She never touched me, but I could feel her breath on my neck and I shuddered. She circled around the grave and faced me from the other side.

“What-what are you doing here?” I gasped, fear crawling up my legs.

“What are you going to do now?” she asked, walking to and leaning against a tall tree at the corner of the grave.

“I-I don’t know.”

She sighed and shook her head. “Spencer, you have nothing left now.”

“I don’t care,” I said, staring into the black hole.

“Didn’t I warn you that she’d take all your money?”

My head whipped her direction and my teeth gritted. “She didn’t take it! I gave it to her!”

“And look what it got you in return,” she said with a severely frightening smile, gesturing toward Cricket’s grave. “You’re alone. No money. No prospects.”

I shook my head.

“What do you have to live for now?” she asked.

“I-I don’t know.”

“You have nothing to live for now, Spencer! Nothing. You shame me.” She stood from her position and slinked over to my side of the grave. “And after I tried to help you,” she whispered in my ear. “That’s the only future worth having,” she said, kneeling down and peering into the grave. “What a sweet release that would be from your pain,” she thought out loud. She looked up at me. “Don’t you think?”

I didn’t answer, could only contemplate jumping in with Cricket.

“It’d be the best thing for you,” she explained and stood. She turned her head to look at me. “Stop your misery,” she breathed over me.

I nodded and made a move to step in, my foot hung over the edge.

But suddenly something tangible fit inside my hand and I couldn’t quite make out what it was but it prickled warm. I studied my palm but it appeared empty. A fierce wind blew through the tree and the most intoxicating scent swarmed my senses.

Vanilla. Grapefruit.

“Cricket.” I smiled and set my foot back down on solid ground.

“Huh?” Piper asked, her eyes narrowed. She looked down at my feet. “Cricket’s gone,” she desperately plied. “She’s there, remember?”

“No,” I told Piper.

“Go to her,” she coaxed.

“No!” I yelled more emphatically.

“Spencer,” she frantically bid, taking my hand.

“No,” I said, shrinking out of her grasp.

I stepped back from the grave.

“Spencer,” she panicked, “what are you doing?”

“I choose life,” I told her, suddenly seeing her for who she really was.

The side of the grave began to crumble and she slipped, falling to the ground.

“Spencer!” she demanded, as the ground washed away further. “Come with me. This is the way to happiness, to relief.”

Her red nails dug into the mud, grasping for purchase, but they kept slipping.

“No, it’s not,” I looked down on her. “All that awaits me there is death and not a happy one. No. No, Piper. I choose life.”

“Spencer!” she begged feebly, her arms flailing about her, but there was nothing to hold her there.

“Goodbye, demons. I will carry you no further. You will never plague me again,” I told her as she slipped into the black chasm, screaming her shrill cry for the very last time.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

I gasped awake, my chest felt sorer than I could imagine, but I was alive.

“Oh thank God,” I heard Bridge say through tears.

“Mr. Blackwell,” I heard to my left.

I turned my head their direction and heard gasps of their own.

“He’s awake! He’s awake!” Jonah said, but his voice grew distant as if he left the room.

A man peeled back my lids and shined a light in them. I cringed from the light. He started examining me and asking me questions.

“Mr. Blackwell, can you open your eyes?”

I tried to peel them open but the overhead light was too much. “The light,” I tried to say but felt something down my throat. My hands went to my mouth and I tried to pull them out. I was starting to gag.

“No, Mr. Blackwell, don’t pull that. We had to intubate you.”

This confused me.

“Don’t worry. We’ll get the doctor to examine you quickly to take it out.”

My head lolled back and forth, too heavy to pick it up.

Bridge approached my side. I could tell it was her because I recognized her perfume. “Spencer,” she told me, holding my hand, “you’ve been out for a week now. You were in a coma.” She sucked in a breath, trying to compose herself. A week? How’s Cricket! I wanted to shout. “You didn’t react well to the removal.”

I tried to nod or open my eyes but I wasn’t able to, so I squeezed her hand as best I could.

She wept into my shoulder. “Spencer, this has been the hardest week of my life.”

I squeezed slightly once more.

“Spencer,” I heard a new voice ask. It was Dr. Caldwell.

He examined me and confirmed it was okay to remove my tubes. On the count of three, he pulled them out and I fought for air, finding relief about ten seconds later. My eyes opened slowly and I took in my surroundings. Though it was too bright, I could see all the people who cared about me.

Most of Cricket’s family and my sister were there, as well as my mom.

My eyes watered at the sight of her. “Mama?”

“Yes, baby,” she said, kissing my face. “You really had us worried.”

I smiled at her.

“Where’s Cricket?” I asked the room.

“She’s in physical therapy,” Jonah said. I tried to get her out, but the lady at the desk wouldn’t let me past the doors. “She is doing so well, Spencer. She’s like a brand-new person.”