Page 106 of Cruel King
“Why not?”
“She’s a lot. Not like you, Ava. Every time I go somewhere with her, she wants to do too much. I just want to hang out, and she’s got a million things planned. I doubt I’ll even get to go on a single ride if I go.”
He’ll go. He always does. Then he finds me and tells me how much he wishes he didn’t go or how he should have just gone with me.
“I think you’re going to marry her, Theo. Marley King. It sounds right to me,” I tease him.
A look of utter disgust covers his face. “No way. You’re the future Mrs. Theo King. She’s just someone to hang with sometimes.”
In the distance, one of his brothers yells his name, and I know our time alone has ended. We’ll get together tomorrow, though. We always do.
I clutch the picture of Theo and me to my chest as my sobs become uncontrollable again. There’s no more tomorrow for us. He’s gone, and I don’t know what I’m going to do.
CHAPTERFORTY-ONE
Matthias
The sun shining feelswrong today. I stand with Marius, Kellen, and Ronan on my left as we watch the casket slowly descend into the hole in the earth. I made it through the wake and the funeral, but I don’t think I can do this.
Except I don’t have a choice. It fell to me to arrange everything since I’m the oldest, and I tried my best to make it all what Theo would want. For days, I’ve listened to men and women tell me how much they’re going to miss him or recount a good time they had with him, and all I could think about was our last conversation. The person I was closest to all my life talked to me like I was a stranger.
Or worse, like someone he hated.
I turn my head and look down the line of my brothers to see Ronan’s head hung. Barely in his twenties and he’s lost half his family already. Kellen fights back tears, while Marius is his usual somber self. Whatever he feels, he keeps inside like always.
And me? I can’t bear to look in that hole and know Theo is there in that casket soon to be buried.
Unlike Ava, I can accept he’s gone. What I can’t accept is I never found a way to make him see how sorry I was.
The graveside service ends, and I do my job as the oldest member of the family thanking people for attending and letting them know we’ll be having a get-together an hour from now. I can’t let on that’s the last fucking thing I want to do today. Never much for entertaining, I certainly don’t feel like being the host with the most today.
But I don’t have a choice.
When the crowd thins, I turn back to look at my brothers. They stand together silently staring off in the distance like they aren’t sure what to do now. I know exactly how they feel.
Lost. Like they don’t know how to keep living.
I tap Marius on the shoulder. “Time to go.”
He nods and nudges Kellen who then does the same to Ronan. Four grown men who have no idea how to do what’s expected of them.
When we lost our mother, our father was there. Even consumed with grief, he helped by at least being someone who could handle all the people who came to express their condolences. Then when we lost our father, we could take comfort in the fact that we each still had four brothers to rely on.
The loss of Theo has made us all realize how fragile that bond could be.
People minglethroughout the house at the get-together I know I must have after the funeral, even though the last thing I want to do is talk to anyone. Marius, Kellen, and Ronan chat with people, occasionally smiling as they thank them for coming to show their sympathy for our loss. A few people approach me, mainly my father’s friends and associates who were here at the house for his funeral not six months ago.
The grief at Theo’s death is so much more intense for me than it was for my father’s passing. He wasn’t old, but he’d lived a full life and accomplished what most people couldn’t even dream of in a lifetime.
Theo was young. He had his whole life ahead of him. He had plans he was looking forward to. The worst part of him being taken so soon was I never got the chance to tell him just one more time how sorry I was for what I did. After our last conversation, I meant to call him again. I wanted to make sure he knew how torn up I was that I had hurt him. But I never got around to it.
And now that chance is gone. He left this world thinking I was that heartless fuck I had been that last time I saw him.
For hours, I hold it together, pretending to be the somber oldest brother who has control of his emotions for our guests. I don’t. It’s just a good act I put on, like always. I’ve got three younger brothers who are struggling with the loss of their brother and Ava upstairs in Theo’s room every day, unable to do much of anything but lie in his bed and cry.
As people gather around telling stories about Theo, I see Ava’s father walking across the room toward me. He looks confused as he glances around, no doubt looking for his daughter.
“Matthias, where’s Ava? I didn’t see her at the funeral, and I can’t find her here.”