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“You haven’t gone yet, have you?”
Swallowing hard, he shook his head.
“Then we’ll go together. Right now.”
“Naomi.”
“You need to do this.”
He didn’t disagree.
“Come on. I’ll be there with you the same as you’ve been there for me. Promise.”
“Fuck,” he whispered. “Okay.”
The drive wasn’t long.
I never paid attention to the roads or what landmarks marked the desert around us. I was far too focused on Shadow and concerned as he became withdrawn and moody. I didn’t judge him since I couldn’t imagine having someone that I cared about so intimately torn from my life in such a vicious way. He was hurting and I didn’t know what to say to take that pain away.
We parked and trudged across the scorching desert sand until we arrived at our destination.
Shadow didn’t say much as we approached Stefanie’s grave. His chin lowered and I thought I saw tears in his eyes before they were out of sight. His shoulders drooped and I tried to look away but then I caught how his hands fisted at his sides and the rage within began to build.
“I know this isn’t easy,” I began.
“Easy?” he scoffed, “She’s fucking dead, Naomi. Gone. Never coming back. No, it’s not easy.” He lifted his head, inhaling a sharp breath. “They took her from me! It’s never going to be okay. I,” he choked off, unable to continue for a few heartbeats of silence, “I feel like I’m slowly dying too.” He pounded a fist against his chest, punctuating the sorrow that oozed from his soul. “Every breath hurts. Every minute I’m without her pisses me off. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to pretend it’s okay.”
“Shadow,” I whispered, my heart breaking for him.
“I don’t want to sit on my ass and do nothing while the men who took her from me thrive and continue to make money off girls like my Stefanie.”
“I understand.” Better than I could describe.
“No! You don’t!” he railed. “I want to find them and torture them. I want to slowly make them suffer for days until they beg for their death. I want to make them bleed and hear their screams.”
Swallowing hard, I nodded. “You want vengeance.”
“Yes,” he snarled.
“She was your girl.”
“Stefanie was more than my girl. She knew me. She saw me, Naomi.” His chest heaved and he let out a strangled cry of anguish. “She completed me. Everything about her. When no one else believed in me, she did. When no one else saw my worth, she did. Stef was my pretty pageant girl. She. Was. My. Everything.”
He broke down, falling to his knees, clutching at his chest as I slid down beside him, cradling his body close as he wept with a sorrow so visceral that tears filled my eyes and spilled over. Sobbing, he raged at the world and finally let the grief he’d been carrying start to surface. I cried with him, my own heart full of anguish and suffering for my friend as Shadow tried to comprehend the loss of his greatest love.
I had no words of comfort.
There were none to give but I hoped that someday he would recover from the pain of Stefanie’s loss.
“How long has she been gone?” Grim asked, his features pinched with aggravation. “Where is Shadow?”
There was no sign of either of them in my room or around the Crossroads and Shadow wasn’t answering his fucking phone.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, ready to hunt down Shadow and make good on my promise to kick his ass. Should have pulled him aside last night and had a chat then, warning him to be careful with my girl. “Maybe Mimi just wanted to go for a ride and get out of the clubhouse.”
“She ever say she wanted to do that?”
“No,” I growled, pacing with frustration.
