The Demon's Whispers

18- Promises can't always be kept

Before I had even set a foot down on the door mat, the door was pulled open and Cody was stood there looking over me, making sure I was okay. Relieved that I was here.

He stepped out to touch me but paused and gave me a sheepish smile "Hey."

"Hi." I mumbled slipping past him and into my home. Hearing the door shut, I looked back to find him wiping his palms down his jeans.

He was nervous, but it was the nervous tick and hand wiping that made me frown.

"What's wrong with you?" I asked instantly.

"Me? Nothing. I'm okay. Yeah. I'm good. Heh.." He answered before frowning to himself and hurrying to the chair across the other side of the room.

I watched as he pulled the table back in front of him and gently looked at the photos in front of him. All laid out, all frames and albums removed, just the developed pictures against the glass coffee table.

"You're missing one." He states making me look up to his face.

"What?"

"A photo." He responds casually "You're missing a photo."

What's he on about?

I moved around the couch and settled into the couch opposite him. "We need to talk..."

He nodded. "Definitely a picture missing."

Cody then grabbed the albums on the floor and began going through them erratically, his face getting more and more stressed by the second. His hands were almost frantic, until I pulled off the back case onto my phone and carefully removed the photo.

Swallowing back the emotions that welled up in my throat, I unfolded it gently and led it out on top of the coloured paper.

His hands stopped and eyes snapped to the picture. He looked at it for a few more seconds before pushing the albums onto the floor and picking up the photo.

"You found it." He smiled happily before sitting back, holding it against him.

It was of us, at the beach, we were sat with our backs to the Polaroid camera, whilst a stranger kindly took out photo as we watched the sunset. I didn't think it would work. I was wrong. The photo was beautiful, breathtakingly beautiful as when it went off, Cody was kissing my forehead and my hand was rubbing his back.

The day I got the knock at the door, the day my life as I knew it had ended. I cried until my soul hurt, I sobbed until I couldn't catch my breath and sometimes I passed out because of it.

They said they couldn't give details, just that he was killed in combat, but the information was slowly leaked out and I found that he had been burned alive. My poor baby would never come home, intact with a smile on his face. Instead I had this photo...

I clung to it, more than the rest as it was one of our last ones together. My mind concocted the perfect lie..

"I told myself that you were out at sea, not in the ground. That you were now roaming the waves, like some God, waiting for me to join you. Not cold in the ground."

"You almost sound disappointed that I'm alive." He responded.

I wanted to feel hurt, but I didn't, instead I rose to it. "It makes all this a little bearable. To know I was the one you came back for. The one that your heart still loved."

His eyes look to me in hurt.

"Because the day you left you made me a promise and you never broke those promises. You said—"