Page 32 of Nomad
JADE
One month later…
He killed him.
William shot Samuel and didn’t think twice about it.
I needed to confess to Della, or my brother, but I couldn’t. Not without getting William and the members of Demons United arrested.
The memory played in my mind over and over again. No matter how much I tried to push it away, I couldn’t. Samuel’s words of what he would do to do to me and what he had done to all those women would live with me forever.
“It could have been me.”
My anxiety had been at an all-time high since that morning. I glanced down at my shaky hands as I twisted them in my lap while sitting in Della’s office. I hoped my best friend could help me calm down and work through this without me having to divulge too much information.
“Jade!” Della shouted, getting my attention. “Did you hear anything I said?”
“No, honey.” I looked at my best friend, apologetically. “I’m sorry. What were you saying?”
“I asked how you were holding up with everything.” She grasped my hand. “I know the past few weeks have been crazy with Sam fleeing. I only wanted to see how you were hanging in there.”
I had come to her office on my lunch break because I needed her to ground me. Other than William, when stressed, she was the only one who could calm me. I needed to be calm to deal with the fact that the man I loved had murdered someone in front of me, and I didn’t give a shit that he was dead. I only cared that William was the one to do it, and I still loved him, anyway.
Everyone believed Sam had fled the country with the help of his mother, but I knew the truth. The truth was driving me insane. I completely compromised my morals. I knew Samuel deserved to die and rot in hell for what he had done to those women, but was it William’s place to do it? And how could I still love him? I’d wrestled with both questions since Samuel had taken his last breath.
William had saved my life and countless others when he killed him, so why couldn’t I get past it? Samuel was evil. I hadn’t been able to see it, but his confession showed me the man he truly was. He deserved to die; I believed that. But was it up to William to be the judge, jury, and executioner? That type of power for one person scared me.
“Jade, honey, what’s going on with you?”
I couldn’t tell Della any of this without betraying William and linking him to the murder of a prominent member of the community. I’d seen firsthand the power the Allen family wielded. I loved William. I wouldn’t throw him to the wolves.
“Can love conquer anything?” I asked, not sure if I’d opened the door to a more in-depth conversation, but getting some of this off my chest might help my anxiety. I missed William, but I wasn’t sure I could forget what he’d done, no matter whether it was to save me.
“Depends.” Della shrugged.
“On?”
“If it’s true love or not.”
I blew out a breath. “I don’t think it can conquer this.”
The flashbacks and going back and forth about how I could live with myself after seeing what he did...neither one of us had any remorse for the loss of a life, and it drove me insane. That forced me to question who the hell I really was.
What kind of person did that make me that I had no regret for Samuel dying? Although in shock after everything happened, William probably believed he’d scared me, but it was my reaction that scared me more than anything. The coldness and the numbness as I’d watched a man I’d once cared about take his last breath was hard to understand.
After that day, the one thing I knew to be true despite all the twisted feelings shrouding me was I loved William with everything in me. And I hated we were apart.
“Talk to me, Jade.”
“I can’t tell you what is going on, Della. But I don’t know what to do.”
“First, take a breath.” She gave me a hug, and I took in a deep breath and released it. “Did William hurt you?”
“No,” I responded without hesitation. “William would never hurt me, you know that.”
“Do you love him?”
“Of course, I do. You saw for yourself what I went through when he left the first time. It hasn’t gotten that bad, but I miss him so much.”
