Chapter 526 Why does it hurt so much?

“Everyone dies,” he said. “That’s just life. It’s a son of a bitch, but that’s what it is, and we have to learn to live with it and not hold on to sadness that will never leave. You lose people. You feel bad and then you move on. What else is there to do?”

“You could admit that you’re hurting,” she said, wrapping her hand around the arm he had curled across her upper body. He might be able to deceive the world into believing he had grown numb and couldn’t feel, but Viola knew her man so well that he couldn’t make her believe it wasn’t hurting him.

A bitter smile touched his lips. “Hurting and feeling sad doesn’t bring her back,” he said, then paused, as though searching for the words to finally give shape to everything he’d been carrying inside since her death.

“We aren’t human. We’re werewolves. We live longer, heal faster, survive things that would kill anyone else.” His fingers tightened around her, and he found himself, strangely, taking real comfort in her closeness, a comfort he hadn’t let himself feel in the two months that had kept him buried alive inside his own head. “But we’re not immortal, mi amor. I lost Mom and Dad, and somehow, I should have known that wouldn’t be the end of it. And now my little sister…”

Viola turned in his arms, wrapping hers around his narrow waist as best she could, the hug a little awkward now with her belly between them, but she let him hold her anyway, his nose pressing into her hair.

“None of it was your fault. Just like I told Matt and Gilbert, none of you are to blame for what happened to her, Seb. You shouldn’t keep punishing yourself for it. Her death happened unexpectedly, and because none of us could stop it, we began to take the blame, but when you really look at it, you’ll see that none of us are to blame.”

“How do you do it?” Sebastian whispered, and something in him felt the wall around his heart begin to crumble all at once, as though she’d taken a wrecking ball straight through every brick he’d stacked up, breaking it down and leaving him open and unprotected by the wall. She was making him vulnerable, something he had been avoiding this whole time.

“Do what?” Viola asked against his chest.

“How do you handle everything so well, keep moving forward with life, when I feel completely stuck inside myself?” he asked, and Viola turned her ear against him, listening to his heartbeat throbbing against her ear.

“There’s nothing special in the way I do it. I let myself grieve, accept it, welcome the memories, and keep them,” she said. “But then, when I look at it from another angle… you raised her. It’s going to hit you harder than it hits anyone else, and I’m not saying I don’t feel her absence too. I feel it every single day. But you know what helps me?” She smiled, watching the snowflakes drift past them.

“No…” he mused, cupping the back of her head and drawing her closer, everything he’d locked away for months suddenly rushing back in tenfold, and he didn’t know what to do with these emotions, for Sebastian Kade had never grieved death the way everyone else did. His throat felt achy and itchy, and he swallowed hard to clear it.

“Because part of me still carries the beliefs of the mermaids. That’s why I chose to place her in the sea, and with that came a kind of peace, knowing she’ll always still be there somewhere, waiting.” She curled her fingers into a fistful of his coat, smiling faintly. “I like to think she’s protected there.”

Viola heard him sniff, and she began to pull back to look at his face, but he held her tightly so she wouldn’t move. When she tried to wiggle out, he said, “Don’t move. I want to hold you like this.”

His voice was whispery and huskier than normal, which made Viola wonder if he was finally crying, but she didn’t ask and instead tightened her arms around his waist.

“When I came back from Moonwillow years ago after my parents died,” Sebastian said, his eyes going to the hazy night sky as he held his wife against his body, “Alex was waiting for me with little Zoe in his arms, she was just a little toddler then. I thought I could shut them out to focus on finding who killed our parents. But my little sister looked at me and smiled, holding her little chubby arms to me, and something in me knew I couldn’t turn away from her.

“It was then I swore I wouldn’t let any harm come to her as long as I lived, and she… she would be the remaining connection to our parents. Amor, how can I ever live with myself knowing I’ve lost her? I will wake up every day with the heaviness in my chest. It’s going to kill me if I don’t lock these feelings away…” His voice turned thicker.

Viola understood what was wrong at that. Her husband hadn’t learned how to handle his own feelings and emotions like every other person, and though he might be physically strong, inside him was someone who was weak with emotions and afraid of them. She began to run her hand up and down his back in comfort.

“We learn to live with it, and with time it hurts less, but if you don’t let it out, my love, you will burden yourself more and make it hurt more when you get exposed to the reality,” Viola said softly, feeling him swallow convulsively.

“I don’t know how to do that. This is the only way I know, but this time…” He whispered, “Even my way feels like it’s not working to free me. Help me. I want to learn how to be normal.”

He buried his nose in the crook of her neck, and Viola felt wetness against her skin.

“Help me…”

“You’re not abnormal, and there is no normal way to do it. But I need you to not shut anyone out of your life and try to live every day like everyone else,” she said, and he nodded against her neck in a boyish way that made her heart tremble for him, for he had had such protective mechanisms since boyhood that his adulthood was finding it hard to cope with.

“Why does it have to hurt so much…” he groaned.

“Because it is meant to hurt. When we lose our loved ones, it is meant to hurt. It’s life, my love, but I will always be here for you, and you can always talk to me about it,” Viola said tenderly.

She felt him nod again, and this time, she held him without words, standing on the terrace of his office while outside, the snowflakes kept falling down and settling over the blankets of white already covering the ground.

“I will always be here for you.” She promised quietly.