Chapter 163: Forget-Me-Not
Gen's POV
The cemetery in Oakhaven's western outskirts felt removed from ordinary time.
February had stripped every tree to its bones. The sky sat low and iron-colored, pressing the morning flat. I walked the crushed-gravel path slowly, a small bundle of pale purple forget-me-nots held against my chest, their petals already stiffening in the cold.
My mind kept cycling back through the last two days without my permission.
Mom's body transferred from the prison mortuary. Ryker on the phone with the funeral home while I sat at the kitchen table and stared at my own hands. The cremation paperwork. The casket selection — three options on a printed sheet, and I had pressed my finger against each photograph, taking longer than necessary because I couldn't make my eyes focus. He had spoken to Freya about the bereavement leave before I thought to mention it. The gratitude I felt had no clean edges — it sat too close to grief to be separated from it.
Ahead, in the southeastern corner where the hill curved down toward a small frozen lake, I could see the grave. He had chosen the spot himself. It faces the water, he had said.
I reached the grave and crouched in front of the headstone, setting the forget-me-nots on the stone ledge until they lay still.
"Mom," I said. "It's me."
My voice came out steadier than I expected.
I arranged a small smile and started talking. I told her about the chocolate — the good Swiss kind she used to hide on the top shelf behind the cereal boxes. I had found it twice. Both times she had caught me, and both times we had ended up chasing each other around the kitchen island, her in her slippers, me shrieking with laughter, the two of us crashing against the refrigerator and gasping for breath.
I had forgotten how loud her laugh was. I didn't know when I had lost that sound.
I told her about the party the summer before OIT — snuck out on a Thursday night, came back at three forty-five in the morning to find her sitting in complete darkness with a cold cup of tea. We hadn't spoken for three days after. I had meant to apologize properly. I kept meaning to, right up until it was too late.
My voice slowed when I reached my father. Anthony's company going under. The creditors. The morning he simply wasn't there anymore. Mom had taken on every one of his debts without a word of complaint in front of me.
The first snowflake landed on the back of my hand.
I watched it melt and felt the smile leave my face.
I was kneeling without remembering the decision to kneel. The gravel pressed through my coat. The cold had gone past the surface of my skin, and the words coming out of me had nothing controlled about them anymore.
"I'm so sorry." Each word arrived in pieces. "I should've protected you. I'm so sorry, Mom."
The wind picked up. Snow gathered in the grooves of the headstone's lettering. I sat back on my heels and pressed my palms together, looking up at the sky gone the color of wet ash.
"God," I said quietly. "Please let her find peace."
I don't know how long I stayed. Long enough for snow to gather on my shoulders.
I felt him before I heard him. Warmth, and pine, and the particular stillness he carries when he isn't trying to fill a space. His coat settled across my shoulders from behind, heavy and immediately warm.
"It's time to go, love."
I looked at the headstone one more moment — the forget-me-nots already half-covered in white. Then I let him bring me upright. My legs had been kneeling in the cold for close to two hours and refused to cooperate. Ryker made no comment. He gathered me against his chest and carried me toward the parking lot through the falling snow.
I let my head rest against him and said nothing, and neither did he.
---
The fever arrived that night without warning.
I remember the drive back — the blurred city lights, the exhaustion that had become something closer to absence. After that, the night came apart.
My mother's hands cupping my face the way she had when I was small. The warmth so specific and entirely hers that for a moment it was simply real — not a dream, just her. Then it dissolved and I was somewhere else. A corridor, long and poorly lit, and I was calling her name over and over but no sound came out. The silence felt permanent, and no matter how far I walked the corridor didn't end and she didn't answer.
I woke to Ryker's hand pressing a cool cloth against my forehead.
Thirty-nine degrees by midnight. I was only aware of the cool cloth and his hand and the steadiness of him at the edge of the mattress.
"I've got you," he said quietly.
I closed my eyes and let myself believe it.
The bond carried everything he wasn't saying — awake, attentive, unhurried, not going anywhere. I had spent the last several days holding myself together through sheer force, and lying there with a fever I understood that I didn't have to do that anymore tonight. I turned toward him the way a person turns toward the only solid thing in a tilting room.
He shifted without hesitation, his arm coming around me, the cloth still moving slowly across my forehead. He didn't speak. He didn't ask me anything. He simply stayed.
Each time I surfaced through the night, his hand was there. The cloth, cool and careful. His voice, low and even, saying my name or saying nothing at all.
The fever broke close to four in the morning. Ryker was still beside me, exhaustion rolling off him through the bond in waves he'd decided not to acknowledge.
"Stay," I said.
He moved to lie beside me without making it into anything, his arm settling around my shoulders, and I put my head against his chest and listened to his heartbeat until my eyes wouldn't stay open anymore.
Just before I went under I heard him, very quietly.
"I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to be here when you wake up, and the morning after that, and every morning after that, for as long as you'll let me." His hand moved slowly through my hair. "That's not a comfort. That's a promise."
---
Two days later, when the color had come back into my face, I told him I needed to go back.
He didn't argue. He drove.
Fresh snow had fallen overnight. The cemetery was quieter, the paths unmarked. We walked together to the southeastern corner, the frozen lake pale silver below the hill.
"I chose the best spot for her," Ryker said simply.
I crouched in front of the headstone. The new snow had buried the forget-me-nots entirely, just a faint suggestion of color at the very edge of the ledge.
"Mom." I kept my voice even. "I'm getting married. I'll be Mrs. Sterling soon." I paused. "I'm going to come back every month. I'll tell you everything."
A gust moved through the cemetery. The snow on top of the headstone lifted in a small spiral, turned once, and settled again.
Ryker's hand rested briefly at my back. "Take your time. I'll give you a moment with her."
I walked back to the car. Through the windshield I watched him cross the snow toward the grave alone, his footprints the only marks on the white ground. He knelt — one knee to the ground, deliberate and unhurried, his lips moving. I couldn't hear a word, but I could see the stillness of his posture, the way a person holds themselves when the words they are saying are genuinely meant.
When he rose, he pressed his hand to his chest and traced a slow cross, then stood for another breath before turning back.
He had been speaking to her as a son-in-law.
It moved through me with a force that had nothing to do with the cold — something spreading outward through my chest, filling the spaces the last several days had emptied out.
He settled into the driver's seat beside me. I looked down at my hands.
"Thank you," I said. "For everything."
He took both my hands in his, lifted them to his lips, and breathed a long slow warmth across my knuckles until they weren't cold anymore.
Then he drew me toward him, one arm around my shoulders, and lowered his mouth to my ear.
"Marry me, Gen. Be mine forever."
Snow fell beyond the glass, fine and steady. I closed my eyes. A single tear moved along my cheekbone and disappeared into his shoulder.
"Yes," I said. "I will."