45

Kyle My ears buzz as I slowly open my eyes. The first thing I see is a beautiful woman. Her hair cascades on either side of her face, the blonde strands camouflaging her expression. The angel who came to visit me in my last moments…only, were they my last moments? She’s diligently wiping my chest, her expression solemn and her brows concentrated as if she’s in the middle of the most important task of her life. I don’t dare disturb her, because all I want to do is to look at her—really look at her, and engrave this view and her to memory, and keep her there. With me. At that moment when I thought everything would be over, the thing I thought about wasn’t my mission or the people whose hearts I couldn’t rip out with my bare hands. The only thing that came to mind was this beautiful spitfire of a woman who was finally opening up to me after hating me for years—or maybe I told myself she was opening up. I thought about how she would be all alone again, how she would become closed off and w