Clue bit her lip. “Don’t judge until you know the full story, Zelly. He might have a good reason.”

Zel laughed coldly. “Of course he has a good reason. He can’t touch. And I can’t blame him. But it doesn’t mean I can forgive him. I’m done with it all. I need to say goodbye to Clara, then find a fresh start.”

I couldn’t listen anymore. I backed away feeling as if my veins were open and spewing blood. She’d flayed me open, leaving my beating heart unprotected.

She would never be able to forgive me.

“You’re not a bad man. I love you, so you can’t be a bad man.”

I earned the love of an eight-year-old, yet I couldn’t earn the love of a woman I would f**king die for.

No matter what I did, it would never be enough to repair the past and give her what she ultimately needed: a man who could hold her and fight battles on her behalf. I was a fighter. An assassin and mercenary. I could be so many things for her. I just had to figure out how to be the rest.

“Stop fighting with my mummy. I don’t want you to.”

I swore on Clara’s life I would find a way to be everything Zel needed. Every touch would still be torturous. Embraces almost a mythical dream. But it was possible, because I wouldn’t stop until I made her mine forever.

I’d done everything I could to ‘fix’ myself, but I refused to face reality. The brainwashing was too deep inside me. Too imbedded in my psyche to ever let me go. However, the intensity had faded just enough. I had more power. Power over myself. Power over my thoughts. It was a beginning.

I will find a way.

I would f**king love Hazel and share her future and be there for her always.

Fox died the night of the Russian massacre.

Roan had been reborn.

Zel wanted a fresh start.

And I knew exactly what to do to make her wish come true.

Chapter 19

I thought I had space in my heart to love two people. To share my life with another. I thought I could love another child to ultimately replace the one I lost.

I thought Roan would change—that Clara would show him a way to be human. I thought even though a tragedy had happened, I would be able to cope.

I thought so many, many things, and they all turned out to be bullshit.

Turned out my heart wasn’t a living, beating thing. It was made of concrete and lead and rock, destined to never love another or ever beat fully again.

Part of me died that day.

I wished I had died that day.

But I couldn’t.

So I kept going.

Alone.

The funeral was held on a large piece of land just outside of Sydney. I didn’t know whose property it was. All I knew was horses existed everywhere. Paints, palominos, thoroughbreds, and Arabians. Their long noses and velvet soft ears squeezed my heart until I couldn’t breathe. Clara would’ve loved it here. She would’ve hugged every horse, slept in the open fields, and begged never to leave.

It was the perfect place.

God, I miss you. The burn of tears that were never far away stabbed my eyes.

The rain that’d been a constant companion for a week stopped the moment we arrived. It was as if the mourning period had been put on hold to celebrate the life of one taken so young.

I’d existed in a fog all week. I didn’t like to dredge up excruciating memories of Oscar finding me still holding Clara, or the hearse that came to take her away. I didn’t like to recall the agony and tears of telling Clue that our little trio had been broken. I’d been terrified Clue would resort to self-harming again—to find a release—but I hadn’t factored in the comforting presence of Ben.

Clue had been so amazingly strong. She’d held me while I broke. She’d cried with me and laughed with me. She kept me sane. And it was all because Ben was her pillar, feeding her strength, giving her the safe haven she needed.

Ben did for Clue what Fox should’ve done for me. I had no one to bury myself in or cry myself to sleep in their arms. I would always love Clue like a sister and could never have existed without her, but I needed…him. I needed his strength, his fight. I needed his anger and even his f**kedupness. Instead, he left me to fumble all alone and proved just what an ass**le he was.

Ben kept me alive the past week. He held us until we almost passed out from tears. He gathered us close and gave us a rock to cling to while grief threatened to wash us away from this world.

He fed us when we forgot to eat, and he began our therapy early. Instead of letting us wallow in sorrow, he found every painting Clara had ever created, every picture of her, every macaroni glued statue she’d done at school and made Clue and me tell him stories of my daughter.

He reminded us she would never be gone as long as we kept her alive in our thoughts, and we had to remember the good not the bad. We had to keep living for her.

A few days after Clara’s death, Clue received a phone call that shot life back into her. She went from couch potato to a whirlwind of efficiency and threw herself into arranging the most perfect funeral any little girl could want.

I looked over at my non-blood sister. The breeze ruffled her straight black hair and tears glistened in her eyes. She nodded, feeling the same bond, the same need to remind ourselves we were there for each other.

“Thank you,” I whispered. “For this. For everything.”

“Don’t thank me. There’s someone else you should thank, too.”

I looked over my shoulder at Ben. He looked regal and dapper in a black suit, black shirt, and the requisite My Little Pony badge over his heart. The funeral was in Clara’s honour—and My Little Pony had been her favourite.

My heart squeezed hard, threatening to send me keeling over.

I can’t do this.

I wrapped my arms tighter around myself, gathering the black mournful dress I wore and holding the shattered pieces of my heart.

Don’t cry.

I’d shed more tears the past week than I ever thought possible. I should’ve shrivelled into a husk with the amount of water I expelled. But no matter how much I wailed and cursed, I didn’t feel better. The tears escaped, but my sorrow didn’t. It sat festering in my soul, mixing with loneliness and slow building hatred for the man who’d left me when I needed him the most.

After everything I’d sacrificed for him. After everything I’d given him, he couldn’t bring himself to even attend Clara’s funeral. I’d not only lost my daughter forever, but him, too. I would never forgive him for leaving me to face this without him.