Chapter Fifteen

As Gabriel carried her to the bedroom, Nan clung to his neck, determined to focus on the moment and not allow fear or worry to nip at the edges of her mind. Sadly, though, as much as she loved this man and hoped to please him, her thoughts drifted away from him. Oddly, she wasn’t terribly nervous about engaging in the act, although her inexperience with such things did pose slightly disturbing questions she couldn’t answer. What really terrified her was that she would soon lose him. As he gently deposited her on her feet beside the bed, left her momentarily to light the lantern, and then returned to catch her close again, all she could think was that he would leave her in only three days. It was such a short time. How could a woman let go and feel overcome with desire in her husband’s arms when death hovered over him like a black specter?

Gabriel must have felt her tension. Nuzzling her ear to send shivers coursing through her, he whispered, “What is it?”

Nan squeezed her eyes shut and pressed as close to him as she could get, hoping to absorb some of his courage, or, failing that, to melt into him and cease to exist as a separate person. Oh, how she’d come to love him—his unpredictable sense of humor, his caring heart, the way his dark eyes twinkled into hers and warmed her all the way through. She wished now that she’d spent every single night in the circle of his powerful arms, enveloped by his heat. Instead she’d wasted all those opportunities. And now, in too short a while, they would be lost to her forever.

“Nan?” He tugged lightly on her lobe with his teeth. “I’ve got this real bad feeling that you’re a hundred miles away. Are you afraid of what’s about to happen between us?”

“No.”

He sighed. “Well, hell. You aren’t still fretting about Geneva’s bright red sequins, are you?”

Nan laughed, dismayed when the sound came out as a wet choke. She tightened her arms around his neck, frustrated by her lack of height, wanting to experience the feel of him in places she couldn’t quite reach. “Oh, Gabriel, I’m sorry. Sequins are the last thing on my mind.”

“What, then?”

“I’m going to lose you,” she pushed out, feeling as if the words had to move through a blob of cold, congealed oatmeal caught in her throat. “I can’t bear it.”

He sighed, and in one fluid motion he sat on the bed and swept her onto his lap. Reaching up to pick the pins from her hair, he said, “Life is a great big poker game, Nan. None of us really thinks of it that way, but the truth is, we all stand to lose those we love with the turn of a card, a shift of the wind, or the flutter of a leaf. And from the moment we’re born, we all start to die. You’ll die one day. So will Laney. Geneva is no spring chicken and will soon be wearing an awful sequined gown in heaven. That misguided woman would probably put sequins on her angel wings if she was ever fortunate enough to earn a pair.”

Nan snorted, a sound that was half sob and half laugh. Gabriel tugged a white handkerchief from his hip pocket and reached to wipe her cheeks and then her nose. Until then, Nan hadn’t realized that tears were streaming in rivers down her cheeks.

“Hardly anyone knows when they’re going to go,” he whispered. “Imagine the chaos if they did. For instance, if I told you that tomorrow morning you were going to keel over dead, what would you do in the hours left to you?”

Nan gulped and held her breath for a moment to stop a sob that tried to escape. When she felt the pressure subside, she said in a rush, “I’d live every moment as if it were my last, I guess.”

“Exactly,” he said, grinning as he gave her nose another squeeze with the square of linen. “And that’s just what I want to do—live every moment as if it’s my last. I don’t want to think about what will happen on Christmas morning. I just want to live, really live during the time I’ve got left.” He tossed the handkerchief aside and lifted her chin slightly with his bent finger. “I know it’s a tall order, but can you let go and help me do that? No tears, no dread. Let’s just exist in each moment and make each one as wonderful as we can.”

Nan took a deep, cleansing breath. Life offered no guarantees to anyone, and she’d be a fool to miss out on the beauty of now. She also knew that Gabriel needed her help in order to make the most of what time he had left.

“That,” she said with a wobbly smile, “is an invitation I absolutely cannot refuse, Mr. Valance. Let’s live every second as if it’s our last.”

He set her off his lap, stood, and stretched out a palm to her. “Dance with me?”

Nan laughed, real laughter this time. “We have no music,” she said as she laid her fingers across his.

He grasped her hand, tugging her up and into his arms. Before she could even catch her balance, he swept her into a swirl. Against her hair, he whispered, “We do have music. Don’t you hear it?”

Nan relaxed, allowing her body to float with his, and in her heart she did hear music—not the conventional kind to be heard with the ears, but a melody all the same, precious, sweet, and only theirs. They dipped, swayed, and turned, bodies moving as one in the amber glow cast by the lamp, their shadows shifting over the walls with them in perfect unity. Gabriel. For Nan, he was not only the music but also the dance, and as she drifted with him through shadow and light, she thanked God for this moment and any that followed, because each would shine in her memory like a polished gem for the remainder of her life.

She wasn’t sure what to expect when it came time to engage in the act, but then, as always with Gabriel, she would have been more successful at catching dust motes than trying to predict his next move. She anticipated an abrupt change in his mood and plenty of advance warning before he began to make love to her, but instead he only slowed their momentum to a mere rocking motion and kissed her, a soft, coaxing, whispery graze of his mouth over hers that delighted her senses and left her yearning for more. His mouth tasted of coffee and a masculine essence exclusively his own. Nan wished she could bottle the flavor of him and stash it in her bedside drawer, something of him that she could take out on lonely nights to savor once again. But that wasn’t possible; she could count on only this moment. So she concentrated fiercely on each fraction of a second, attempting to imprint upon her memory the sound of his breathing and the rustle of his shirt, the pulse beat that thrummed into her skin from his fingertips, the feel of his palms, as thick and satiny as well-buffed leather.

Still swaying to their secret melody, he inched her back toward the wall and then pressed her against it. Cupping her cheeks in his big hands, he tipped her head slightly back to trail his lips over each of her brows, kissed her eyelids closed, traced the angle of her cheekbones, and in the process made her feel cherished. Her senses spun. Her heart began to slog. Her bones felt as if they were made of butter and slowly melting in his radiant warmth.

Gabriel. He didn’t ask, and yet he didn’t take. Button by button, he unfastened her dress, distracting her with kisses after each one slipped free, and soon her gown and petticoats lay in a puddle at her feet. Before she could feel embarrassed, he caught her up in his arms and carried her to the bed, where he laid her full-length on her back and then stretched out beside her. Nan momentarily regretted the lantern light, but then she grew lost in the expressions on her husband’s dark face and was glad not to miss them. She saw love for her etched in every line of his chiseled features, reverence in his gaze, and adoration in the half smile that curved his firm mouth. He touched the hollow of her throat as if he were fascinated. Then he lightly traced the scallops of lace that edged the top of her chemise. He winked at her, reverting back momentarily to her mischievous, funny husband as he bent to touch his tongue to her mole.

Nan’s breath snagged at the base of her throat as his hot mouth closed over the imperfection, and she learned between one heartbeat and the next that she’d only just begun to melt. Then she ceased to think at all and surrendered to the sensations of being tasted by a man who seemed bent on savoring every bend, curve, and secret place of her body. He began with the mole, then moved to the ridges of her collarbone, the slope of her shoulders, the sensitive inner side at the bend of her arms, and then spent an interminable amount of time exploring her wrists and hands. Nan’s entire body tingled, and when he moved away from her to remove his gun belt and strip off his shirt, she was so limp and dazed that she felt as if she’d been sipping spirits.

She’d seen Gabriel without a shirt many times, but tonight the powerful planes of his chest, the rippling slope of his thick shoulders, and the well-muscled display of his arms seemed gilded by the lantern light. She recalled thinking once that he was beautiful, like a carving of polished teak, and how horrified she’d been to entertain such a notion. She was no longer horrified. Gabriel had a gorgeous upper body, every line of it sculpted as if by a master, and she had no doubt that he was just as impressive from the waist down. And he was hers, only hers.

When he sat to take off his boots and socks, Nan reached out to trail a fingertip down his spine, eager to feel his bare skin, a pleasure she had long denied herself. He grinned over his shoulder.

“No hurry,” he said. “I’ve prided myself on being fast at a lot of things, but making love to you isn’t going to be one of them.”

Heat surged from low in Nan’s belly to lick at her skin from head to toe. “You’re very well practiced at it.”

He turned so suddenly to brace his arms on either side of her and lean low that she blinked, the only gesture of surprise she could manage, because her body had gone heavy with languorous pleasure. “Well practiced?” His eyes twinkled with amusement. “I confess to having been with countless females, but everything I just did with you was a first for me.”

Nan liked the thought that at least some of this would be something he’d done with nobody else. “No, sir.” Convince me, her tone pleaded. “How can you have made love with countless females and experience anything new with me tonight?”

He narrowed an eye at her. “I said I’d been with countless females, not that I ever made love with them. That particular kind of intimacy is more . . . I don’t know. . . . Quick and businesslike is probably a good way to describe it. I guess there are men who don’t care if they’re twentieth in line, but I wasn’t one of them. I never felt emotionally touched during those encounters.”

She really liked that he’d used the past tense, because she had no intention of sharing this man with anyone. From now on, whether their time together was brief or long, he would be exclusively hers.

He dipped his head to nibble on her ear, his husky voice vibrating through her as he said, “You are my one and only love, Nan. And most of this is as new to me as it is to you—sweet, beautiful, wondrous, and absolutely new.” He nipped playfully at her earlobe. “Stop thinking about other females, or I’ll have to start all over again.”

His words eased the brief sting of jealousy that she’d felt. She hesitantly rested her hands on his bare shoulders, glorying in the vibrant and silky warmth of his skin, which had a slightly coarser texture than hers. A breathless sensation came over her, and she could have sworn her heart stopped beating as she drew her palms downward to finally feel his chest and dip her fingertips into the curly black hair there.

“Oh, Gabriel.” Her voice sounded throaty and almost sultry, which was strange to her ears. But then, she’d never felt this way before: hot and tingly all over, with certain parts of her aching with needs she couldn’t define. “Make love to me.”

“Make love with you,” he corrected in a husky whisper. “But first we need to get rid of the rest of your clothes.”

Nan made fists over the coverlet beneath her as he lifted her right leg to roll her garter and black stocking slowly down to her knee, tasting every inch of skin as it was bared. When he finally divested her of her boot and got the stocking off, she moaned as he nibbled at each of her toes and tickled the arch of her foot with feathery kisses. Her other leg and foot received the same attention before he set himself to the task of slowly—ever so slowly—tugging loose her corset strings, dipping his head occasionally to suckle her nipples through her cotton chemise. Soon the cloth became wet and cool from the air, and the tips of her breasts went as pointy and hard as metal rivets.

Gabriel’s gaze went molten—and Nan felt the burn clear to her core. Oh, how she wanted. She wasn’t sure precisely what she yearned for. The images she’d held in her mind of what occurred in a marriage bed had always disgusted her. But somehow, with Gabriel, nothing seemed distasteful.

Making love with him became Nan’s wish when all her clothing had been discarded. She felt only a moment of shyness, but the touch of his warm hand on her bare waist blasted all such foolishness from her mind. When he lowered himself over her, she decided the tasting business could go both ways, and opened her mouth over his neck to tongue a faint bit of salt from his skin. Next she sampled his shoulder. Then she went for his chest, loving the feel of his furred flesh against her lips.

“Oh, sweet Lord,” he cried, the pace of his breathing suddenly shallow and fast. “Don’t. . . . I want to . . . Slow and easy, sweetheart. This is your first time, and I want to make it special for— Oh, God.”

Nan ignored his protests. It seemed entirely unfair that she was now as naked as a newborn babe while he still hid behind trousers. She fumbled inexpertly with his belt buckle, wondering why he kept jerking and snapping his body taut after she dived her fingers inside his waistband to get a better grip on the dratted metal.

He suddenly whooshed out air, caught her wrists, and pinned her hands above her head, his broad chest forming a canopy of bunched muscle over hers. “My britches stay put until the time is right.”

“The time is right,” she informed him breathlessly.

“No.” His voice was oddly thick and strained. “I’ve got a friend down there that loses control when I let him out of the barn.”

Nan thought that was the silliest thing she’d ever heard, until Gabriel began suckling her nipples, and every thought in her head leaked out through her ears. And then she felt his hand over her center. She jerked when he fingered the flange of flesh there that she always avoided during her ablutions because it was so sensitive. Flick, flick. She opened her mouth to protest and all that came out was a shrill bleat. As if with a will of their own, her hips started to undulate and then pushed up to press against his hand.

Not at all sure she liked these powerful surges of sensation, Nan grabbed his wrist. But then her body decided differently, and the next thing she knew, all of her muscles seemed to spasm at once.

“Easy, sweetheart,” he whispered. “Ride it out. Stop fighting it.”

Nan couldn’t fight it. Gabriel had taken control of her person. A tingling urgency mounted within her, and with a final push of her hips, she surrendered and felt as if she were shattering. Bright spots danced before her eyes. In the distance, she heard someone shrieking and panting, which she felt certain could not possibly be her. And then she felt as if she were spinning through star-studded blackness.

Gabriel held her when she returned to reality. Her body jerked and shuddered for nearly a full minute afterward. When she could finally speak, she could think of nothing to say but, “Oh, my.”

He turned his face against her hair, and she felt him smile. “So you liked that, did you?”

Nan felt boneless. “It was rather pleasant in an odd sort of way.”

He chuckled and blew softly in her ear, which Nan found irksome. This marriage-bed business was quite draining, and now her whole body felt limp. She felt certain nothing could revive her at this point. She just wanted to curl against him and sleep.

Just then she felt a throbbing push against her thigh from something long, thick, hard, and silken. She had no idea when he’d done it, but at some point, possibly while she had been in the throes of passion, he had doffed his pants.

He shifted and rose over her, and she felt another nudge, this time close to her most private place, which had barely recovered from the last round of unaccustomed attention. For just an instant, she felt frightened. But then she focused on the man poised over her. In the wash of amber light, even though he looked primal, his black hair falling forward, the muscles of his bronze face taut with urgent need, and his eyes glazed with passion, she knew this was Gabriel, the man she loved and trusted. He clearly needed more from her, and denying him was out of the question.

She opened her legs to welcome him, and he accepted the invitation without ado. Nan gasped as his thick, hard shaft nudged into her wet passage. “Wait!” She braced the heels of her hands against his shoulders. “We’ve a situation.”

He froze and held her gaze with feverish intensity. “A situation?”

“I fear that the fit is all wrong.”

He stared down at her, and then his white teeth flashed in what she believed he meant to be a grin, but was actually more a grimace. “Nan, just hug my neck and let me worry about the fit. Okay? Everything will be fine.”

Nan didn’t think so. She had a small passage, and he had a very big friend that she now wished had been kept in the barn. “Gabriel, I—”

“Just hug my neck,” he urged. “And trust me. Do you trust me?”

Nan trusted him completely, so she looped her arms around the sturdy column of his neck and clung to him for dear life as he pushed slowly inside her. She experienced an extremely unpleasant stab of pain, but it soon gave way to an odd feeling of fullness.

“Well,” she said shakily, “that was simple enough.” She realized that her enthusiasm for engaging in the act had swiftly waned. She’d loved all of what came before, but this part was rather uncomfortable. “Are we finished now?” she asked hopefully.

He grimaced again—another attempt at a smile, she hoped. Only he looked as if he were in severe pain. “Am I hurting you now?” he asked in a thick voice.

“It hurt badly for a bit, but now that has passed.”

He drew his hips back, giving Nan the impression that he meant to depart, but then he thrust forward, impaling her again. And deep within Nan, nerve endings thrilled. “Oh, my!”

“Are you okay?” he asked. “Does it hurt?”

“No, but—”

That was all Nan got a chance to say before he drove into her again, setting off spirals of delight that curled through her belly. Nan felt him grip her hips, and she was glad of the guidance, because her reflexive return thrusts went slightly off center. The sensations that shot through her stole the breath from her lungs. Her head went dizzy with delight. And before she realized quite how it occurred, she was seeing stars again. Gabriel. He drove her upward, and then even higher, until an explosive sensation inside her made her shriek and sent her over the edge.

Later, he held her close for a long while, tenderly stroking her hair. Nan felt as if she’d died, visited heaven, and fallen back to earth with a body as limp and insubstantial as eiderdown. She drifted between wakefulness and slumber, and at some point, between blinks of her lashes, he brought a moist cloth from the water closet to bathe her lower parts. Nan, replete and too exhausted to protest, could only allow him the liberty. She didn’t even care when he tossed the cloth and she heard it make a wet plop on her plank floor. Dimly, she thought that there would be time enough tomorrow to worry about the white splotch it would leave on the wax.

Gabriel rejoined her in bed, drew her snugly into his arms, and Nan fell asleep, feeling utterly content and safe.

•   •   •

Nan fully expected to sleep like the dead until well after dawn, but Gabriel awakened her sometime later, and when she lifted her lashes, she realized that her body was already thrumming with need of him. They began making love again, but this time Nan wished to be more of a participant. Gabriel had tasted nearly every inch of her body. Now it was her turn.

It was a heady feeling to hear the man she loved moan shakily when she trailed kisses over his belly. She felt empowered when he caught his breath and snapped his body taut at the touch of her hand on his shaft. For a brief instant, she believed that this time she was in control.

Gabriel disabused her of that notion by rolling her onto her back beneath him and proceeding to drive her to the brink of insanity, teasing her nipples and toying with that sensitive place between her legs.

“Gabriel, please!” she cried finally.

He entered her this time with one smooth and powerful thrust that set off explosions of delight. So overcome she couldn’t think, let alone worry about ladylike behavior, Nan locked her legs around his hips and gloried in the journey to the pinnacle.

When they crested and sank to the other side, they lay with their limbs intertwined and slept like two exhausted children who’d played too hard all day. When Nan occasionally stirred awake, she smiled, snuggled closer to his big, hard body, and drifted happily back into the nether realms of slumber again.

•   •   •

Gabe woke just as dawn streaked the sky with rosy pink. They’d left the lantern burning, and its soft, familiar hiss was the only ordinary thing in a morning that was, to him, extraordinary beyond measure. He kept his face buried in Nan’s golden hair, breathing deeply of its scent, which was flowery yet laced with a feminine smell exclusively her own. He’d smelled numerous heads of hair in his day, and there was something indescribably special and different about hers. Gabe figured he could be blindfolded, turned loose in a room filled with women, and find his wife without fail simply by following his nose. Oh, how he loved her. Recalling her attempt last night to halt their lovemaking, he grinned sleepily. Today he would be sure to remind her that, in the end, they’d proved to be a perfect fit.

As if she sensed that he was awake, Nan stirred and turned her head to peer at him over her shoulder. “Gabriel?”

“What other man do you lie naked with in bed?” he asked.

She ignored the question, rolling over to smile sleepily at him as she smoothed his hair back from his forehead. “Good morning,” she whispered. Her cheeks turned a comely pink. “Last night was lovely.”

Gabe yearned to repeat the experience, but Nan would want to freshen up before Laney came home from her overnight at Melody’s. There would also be breakfast to prepare and food deliveries to make. And, like it or not, Gabe had a vigil to keep today outside Doc Peterson’s office. He wasn’t sure what time Rose Wilson would take her daughter to see the physician, so Gabe had to be stationed outside the waiting room prior to business hours to be sure to catch Mrs. Wilson before she escorted her child into a death chamber.

“So,” Nan said, finishing with his hair and then pushing at her own, “what shall we do today? Something fun, for sure. Tonight we’ll be decorating the tree, and since—” She broke off, and he glimpsed a flicker of sadness in her eyes before her smile chased it away. “Since we’ve only three days left, I believe I’ll close the shop until after Christmas. I was thinking that we might make cookies and turn our tree trimming into a real party. What do you think?”

Gabe hated to refuse. He loved working with Nan in the kitchen, had a passion for cookies of any kind, and didn’t want to miss out on the fun of making some. Except for the afternoon of their rushed wedding, when Nan had served after-school treats, he’d only ever had restaurant offerings, never homemade cookies. He could almost smell the aromatic waves of heat that would roll from Nan’s oven.

“I’m sorry, honey, but I’ve got some business to take care of today. It may take only a couple of hours, but then again, it could take all day—until business hours are over.”

“Oh.” Her fair brow creased in a slight frown. “What do you have to do?”

Gabe considered keeping his own counsel about the little girl he meant to save, but when he looked deeply into Nan’s beautiful eyes, he decided that there had been enough secrets between them. From this moment forward, he wanted to keep nothing from her.

“No!” Nan cried when he’d told her about the child. “You can’t!” She shot to a sitting position, her expression filled with dismay. “You’re not to intervene, Gabriel. You said the angels were very explicit about that. If you disregard that rule, you’ll—” She gulped and pushed the hair from her face. “You’ll be damned. They made that very clear! I know how you must feel about the little girl. Truly, I do. The thought of her dying breaks my heart, too. But it isn’t your place to prevent it!”

“I’m already damned.” Gabe rolled away from her to sit up in bed. Grabbing his drawers from off the floor, he quickly pulled them on. Then he stood to dress. “I wasn’t supposed to breathe a word of this to you,” he informed her. “When I left here yesterday, refusing to make love to you with a lie between us, I sank my boat. Then I capped it all off last night by telling you everything. It’s over, Nan. At least, that part is. From here on out, how I spend the days left to me is my choice, and I choose to do some good while I’m still here.”

“No!” She sprang from bed, glorious in her nakedness during her brief flight to the armoire to get her wrapper. As she drew the garment on and tied the sash, she spoke in a rush. “You’ve done everything they asked of you. You’ve saved me, Gabriel. You made me fall wildly in love with you. You taught me how to trust again. Now we’ve been intimate. Your presence in my life has wrought every change the angels requested you to make!” She shook a finger at him. “You can still attain salvation, I’m telling you! It’s insane to throw that chance away.”

“Nan,” he tried.

She shook her head and held up her hands to silence him. “I’ve stated my feelings. Nothing you say shall change my mind. You cannot put your own fate at risk to save a little girl who may die later anyway. Her heart is weak. You said so. There’ll be other contagions, Gabriel. Saving her now will mostly likely be only temporary.”

“Will you give me a chance to talk?” Gabe regretted his harsh tone the moment he spoke. Sighing, he finger-combed his hair, trying to gather his thoughts. “I’ve broken the rules, Nan. I was told in no uncertain terms that I couldn’t help the boy or anyone else outside my immediate circle. I tried to pull a fast one, using you and Laney to feed the boy and dog, but the bottom line is, I connived to make it happen. The angels see and hear everything.” Tapping his temple, he continued. “They even know what we think and believe. I knew when I told you and Laney about the dog and kid that it wouldn’t get past them. We’re all supposed to learn lessons while we’re here on earth, valuable ones that make us better people. The first time around, I didn’t learn, Nan. It was always about me. I guarded my own back. If someone tried to kill me, I killed him first, and I felt justified. Sad afterward, yes, but justified in my actions because it was either him or me. I saw bad things, sad things, but I never veered off-track to make any attempt to change them. It wasn’t my problem, or it wasn’t my place to interfere. That’s how I lived my whole life!

“And now the angels have given me a second chance. It sounded to me like a really great chance at first, but after a month, I’m seeing that the rules the angels gave me have put me right back in the same spot. I’m supposed to ignore cold, hungry, homeless boys. I’m supposed to walk past a starving dog and do nothing. It’s still me first. I’m still watching out for Gabe and nobody else.”

“You shouldn’t feel bad about that,” Nan cried. “You are abiding by a heavenly edict!”

Gabe wished he could make her understand, but he knew he probably couldn’t. “Do you believe that life is a journey, and that everybody’s goal should be to learn from experience, correct their mistakes, and try to become better people along the way?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I’m not becoming a better person, honey. I’ve tried to reach the angels, but they aren’t answering. I’m on my own. And none of this seems right to me. Making love to you with a lie between us didn’t seem right to me. Letting that dog starve to death didn’t seem right to me. Ignoring that poor boy didn’t seem right to me. And letting that little girl die when I have the power to stop it sure as hell doesn’t seem right to me.”

“Perhaps it isn’t for you to second-guess,” she said softly. “We truly shouldn’t question heavenly messengers.”

“Yeah?” Gabe stepped around the bed to get his guns. He bent his head and avoided his wife’s gaze as he strapped them around his hips and anchored the holsters to his thighs. When he finally looked up, she stood with her arms clutched at her waist and tears swimming in her eyes. “She’s such a pretty little girl, Nan, with brown hair, blue eyes, and a cute little button nose. I can’t stay home to bake cookies and let her die before she’s had a chance to experience life. I’ll burn in hell first.”

Nan stood frozen as Gabe circled around her to leave the room. At the door, he stopped with his hand on the knob. “I hate making you cry. For whatever it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

She whirled on him, her pale cheeks suddenly slashed with vibrant red, her eyes flashing with anger. “Is it so much for me to ask that my husband do everything within his power during this life to be waiting for me in heaven when my time comes to pass over?”

Standing sideways to the door, Gabe gave her a long look. “That’s just it, Nan. If I let that child die, I won’t be in heaven. I’ll be in a hell of my own making.”