He Saw My Ghost All Along, And Grew Tired Of My Clinging Chapter 06

He Saw My Ghost All Along, And Grew Tired Of My Clinging Chapter 06

In the days that followed, I barely moved.

I stopped talking. Stopped drifting toward Reid. I just sat in a corner and felt myself thinning, fading, dissolving at the edges.

Once I was gone, I could finally leave.

Then one day, something changed.

Reid walked into a room I hadn’t seen him enter in years. He reached for the top shelf and pulled

down a black box.

It was my urn.

He’d kept it tucked away in a corner for four years. It was the last piece of me he had.

Now he carried it out with his own hands.

He turned, walked over to where I was, and looked straight at me. No warmth. No hesitation.

“Come with me, Elise.”

I didn’t move at first. But what was left to lose?

My spirit was still tethered to him. So I followed, silent, trailing behind him like a shadow as he

walked out of the estate.

Before he reached the car, Nadine came running out.

She eyed the box in his hands. “What’s that for?”

Reid paused. His face softened the way it always did when he looked at her.

“Just getting rid of something that shouldn’t be here.”

He was looking at Nadine. But those words were aimed at me.

My hands curled tight.

I was the thing that shouldn’t exist.

That’s all I ever was to him. A burden.

Nadine walked over, stood on her toes, and kissed the corner of his mouth. She smiled. “Don’t be

late. I’ll wait up so we can eat together.”

“I won’t be

He pulled her us then let go. He got in the car.

1 tarned away, the thing left for me to watch.

The car drove us they fill away behind us. It stopped at Ravenport Memorial Gardens.

Gravestones covered the hilson in every direction. Droad settled into me like ice water.

Reid carried my u apote winding path and stopped beneath a massive oak.

A new gravestone was waiting ther

My photo was set in the same

The girl in the picture was smiling Beneath her was a single line carved into the granite.

[Here Lies Elisej

Reid knelt and lowered fie im me the ground. His hands were careful. Almost tender.

I watched him do it, and my mind went blank

He was the one who would ten me go. The one who refused to accept that I was dead.

When had he arranged all of this?

After I died, everyone aut im to lay me to rest. He fought them like a man possessed. No one could

get through to him.

He was so teriflet smere would take my ashes that he slept with the urn in his arms for a month.

He kept saying I was treat, just sleeping. That he ‘d keep me close until I woke up.

And now he built ne & Ave

He lowered my sites are with hus coom hands.

For just a second, something in lus face stufted Softened

My vision blurred for one healthcat, I saw the old Read, the one who used to lose his mind over a

scratch on my hand

Reid stood and brushed the dirt from bus ads. He looked at me, or what was left of me, as I stood

there, barely visible

“I had someone pick this spor

“It’s a good view. Quiet hillside, water down below.”

I looked at him without speaking.

He dropped his gaze. When he spoke again, his voice was flat.

“Nadine hasn’t been sleeping. The nightmares are getting worse. It’s taking a toll on her

Of course. Nadine. It was always about Nadine. –

“The priest told me you’ve stayed too long. Your presence is poisoning the energy around the living.”

He looked up at me. He looked tired, genuinely tired. “This is where you’re supposed to be, Elise.

The dead need to rest. It’s been long enough.”

There it was.

Always Nadine.

His new love was uncomfortable, so I had to be erased.

The smiling girl on the gravestone stared back at me. She looked like a stranger. She looked like a

lie.

I looked at him. My mouth twisted.

My chest felt like it was caving in, but I’d be damned if I let him see it.

He really didn’t want me here. Not even as a ghost. Not even as a memory.

He said nothing. He just stood there, waiting.

The silence stretched. Then he quietly said, “Elise, can you go

now?”

Every foolish hope I’d carried for four years died with that sentence.

There was nothing left to hold on to.

It was beautiful here. Peaceful. No Nadine. No Reid. No one to remind me I wasn’t wanted.

If I could sleep here forever, that would be enough.

I nodded. Crimson tears spilled down my face.

“Okay. I’ll go.”

The words left me, and so did the weight.

My feet dissolved first, with tiny points of light breaking away and drifting upward like sparks.

My vision blurred. The oak tree, the gravestone, and Reid’s face all pulled further and further away.

In the last second before everything went dark, I thought I saw something fall from Reid’s eye. A tear. From those eyes that had been nothing but ice for four years.

But I couldn’t be sure anymore.

The dark swept in. And then there was nothing.