There's a reason Eloise and Kevin were lovers once . . . and why either one of them would die for the other in a heartbeat.
Rose, do not threaten me over this! I got her through it in the end, after all!
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“Do you know what time it —?”
Kevin Usher stopped dead as he opened his door and the doorbell stopped buzzing.
Eloise Pritchart stood there, her dark slacks streaked with something far darker, the cuffs of her white blouse black and stiff, her face still smeared with streaks of dried blood her mopping hands had missed. There was more blood in her hair, under her fingernails, and the nightmare heart of hell was in her eyes.
“Eloise?” he said very, very softly.
“Kevin,” she replied, and his jaw clenched. He’d never heard that flat, cold deadness from her.
He moved wordlessly aside and she stepped past him so the door could close behind her. She looked around his living room as if she’d never seen it before, but he didn’t think she was really seeing it now, either. She simply stood there, hands by her sides, her expression empty.
He touched her shoulder, and she let him steer her as if she were a mannequin as he seated her in one of his well-worn armchairs.
“Eloise?” he said again and she blinked. Then, slowly, those desecrated eyes focused upon him..
“She’s gone, Kev.” The words were no longer dead, and his heart flinched from the endless ocean of pain that filled them, instead. “She’s gone,” she said again. “Just . . . gone. I’ll never see her again. Never hug her. Never —”
Her voice broke, her shoulders quivered, and she buried her face in her hands. She jackknifed forward in the armchair, and he went to his knees beside her, wrapping his arms about her, as the sobs tore loose at last and ripped the heart right out of her.
(No, seriously. I'm pretty sure it's somewhere in the Haven Constitution. Or at least 
)