Stolen Love (Beauty in the Stolen 3)

Cas.

I still find it hard to say her name, even silently in my head. Yet her name—she—is always there, omnisciently present, a living thing under my breastbone. For the most part, I manage by filling my days with activity. However, on days like today, the memories won’t let me find peace.

I fly in by helicopter. Since I had a lot of free time on my hands this year, I got my rotorcraft private pilot license and ordered a kit-built, four-seat, Hummingbird helicopter from Florida, USA that I assembled myself. It helped to keep me busy.

The staff isn’t there to greet me when I land in the clearing next to the main entrance. They’re off for the holiday, spending Christmas with their families. Fine. I’ll be honest. I didn’t inform them of my intended visit. After Cas’s death, our relationship has never been the same. Every aspect of my life has fallen apart.

The main building is dark and unwelcoming. The ambience is quietly depressing. Where there has once been a feeling of homecoming, there are only guilt and blame now. Those sentiments are part and parcel of what the lodge represents. They’re ingrained in my being.

I don’t go to the bungalow where her presence lingers. I collapse on the sofa in the office. I’ve been going for twenty-four hours with no shuteye, but despite my fatigue, sleep doesn’t come. Not that I’m here to sleep. I’m here for a different reason.

Giving up, I gather the wreath I fetched from the guy in Rustenburg. I pay him a fortune to cultivate hothouse orange blossoms throughout the year. I grab a rifle and put the box of flowers in the Jeep. When I’ve secured the box so the delicate petals won’t bruise from being tossed around, I make my way to the outlook point next to the river.

The cross stands lonely on the hill, but it has the advantage of the view. The wooden structure is a dark outline of grief in the orange ambers of dusk, a stark reminder of my faults and sins. Carefully removing the flowers from the box, I punish myself by inhaling the sweet scent of the blossoms. Fuck. I’m hurled into the past to an abandoned farmhouse in the middle of a field and an angel on a kitchen table pinned underneath me. The words I whispered, the verdict I put on her life, come back to haunt me.

You’re mine.

The minute the tight seal I keep on that memory breaks, other recollections come flooding in. An image of her face as she smiles up at me from a bed of cabbages flashes through my mind. I see the flare of her blue eyes as I grab the waistband of her jeans and tug her to me. I hear her gasp on the gust of wind that carries over the valley, but it’s only a phantom whisper that teases the hair in my nape.

I swallow at the ache that builds in my chest. The hurt fills the hollowness inside until it’s all I breathe and taste. I drag it into my lungs and feel its bitterness on my tongue. Dragging my fingers over the flowers, I let the thorns on their woven twigs bite into my skin. A drop of blood pools on my thumb. If physical pain could lessen the agony I’m suffering inside, I’d be a masochist by now. Taking the utmost care, I hang the wreath over the top of the cross and shove my hands into my pockets as I step back to take in the sight.

The noise of a bike pulls me from the moment. Survival is the value that makes me vigilant. It’s a promise to myself etched on my skin, otherwise I may have thrown in the towel a long time ago. I stay watchful, ready to grab the rifle, but it’s the old Harley I keep on the premises that becomes visible in a cloud of dust on the dirt road.

I recognize the rider long before he’s reached me. There’s only one man who wears a leather jacket like a second skin.

My younger brother parks in the road. He takes off the helmet and shakes out his hair. It’s grown longer. He’s gotten bigger. He must be pumping iron. He leaves the helmet on the backseat and makes his way over.

For a while we stand in silence, facing the cross. He plucks one of the tall blades from a poll of grass and pops it into his mouth. Chewing on it, he stares at the fresh flowers. His face doesn’t give away anything, but regret is etched in the deep lines of his mouth.

It’s Leon who finally breaks the silence. “It’s been a year.”

And a month. She died in November.

He spits the chewed grass on the ground. “You’ve got to let it go, or it’ll eat you alive.”