Page 166 of Walking in Darkness
A cavern that had been carved out in the middle of me.
One that gaped from the woman who sat stoic at his side.
Agony.
Misery.
The sheer breaking of her heart.
The rest of our family rushed up behind us, grieved exhalations heaving from them when they stumbled on the loss.
I could feel the weight of his pain when Pax set his hands on my shoulders.
Could feel it spilling. A torrent that gushed through us all.
Tears streaked down my face as I reached for Josephine’s free hand, squeezing it tight as we all knelt around the man who’d loved us so fiercely.
The one who’d watched over each of us as a father.
The one who’d carried the weight of us all on his shoulders.
His devotion forever and complete.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Pax
I think we were all numb as we pulled into the hotel in the next city we came to, about thirty minutes outside of where it’d all gone down.
I’d driven since Dani had barely been able to walk after we’d found Ellis, and the whole ride here, she and Timothy were completely silent, curled up in the back seat.
Aria sat in the passenger seat next to me.
In a spot she’d so often been over all these weeks.
Weeks that felt like a century.
An eon.
Our worlds merging and our axis cracking apart.
A lifetime.
A beginning.
An end.
A reemergence.
I could almost taste the questions that swirled through the car. The uncertainties.
The loss.
The relief.
The pure absolution I felt when I put the car into park outside the lobby of one of those chain hotels found along every highway, and turned my gaze on Aria.
Aria, who would never fail to steal my breath.
