A sigh behind me. Then the saddest, quietest laugh I’d ever heard. “There isn’t going to be a ‘next wife,’ Jaya.” “What?!” I whirled around. “What do you mean?” A wife was what he’d always wanted. How had I fucked this up so royally? “You will find someone incredible, Oaken. They aren’t all like me!” His face was calm. Composed. But his eyes were alight with something intense and unnameable. “But that is precisely the problem.” He smiled, but it was weak, wan, like it fucking hurt to do it. “They aren’t you.” My emotions spilled into one another. A heady cocktail of grief, guilt, confusion,
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