Page 178 of Jagged Souls

I shake my head, but his words drill into me. Fill up my soul and suffocate me with their honesty. I’ve already felt the effects of those crashes. It’s why I have been chasing a constant high. But if I can’t even have hope in the V, then how can I ever handle life’s misery?

“The only way the pain stops is if you face it.”

I cry out, sobbing hard now. Shaking in utter refusal. I can’t face her loss. Can’t face the idea of living without her. Ofhealingand moving on. Ofabandoningher while I live my life, and she doesn’t.

Hers has stopped. Mine should too.

“But I can help you,” Antonio says. “I have been where you are, felt that grief that destroys all you are. But I have not forgotten those I love. I have not left them behind.”

Each word he says pounds into me. Makes me feel as if I’m not alone. I’m drowning in this grief, raging stormy seas with no sight of land, and here he comes with a boat and a lifeline.

I just have to make the choice of whether to grab it.

Or sink to the bottom of the sea.

My throat tightens as hope and despair war inside me. I struggle to breathe. To think.

“She needs you to be her mother.”

His words crash over me like a tsunami, shoving me down, tossing me head over heels and heels over head until I can’t tell which way is up anymore. Can’t tell which way to swim.

Do I cling to the past, where my baby’s death swirls like Charybdis’ mouth?

Or do I drag my exhausted limbs to a sand-patch island? Where death might come slower but inevitably? Starved to death with no food to eat – agonizing moments felt in their greed? Where the land itself might get washed away when the next storm rages, killing everything that remains even as I try to build a castle – fucking ruins that crumble around me as I scream into an uncaring sea?

My throat swells as the waves crash, carrying me down.

Down.

Down.

I shake my head.

Ican’t.

This hope is too terrible of a thing.

“I’mgoingto get Siome back,” Antonio says, his voice so strong in its certainty. “You have seen what I can do. Do you think I’ll fail?”

I flinch as I remember how easily he took her from me. He fought his way through a whole yard of monsters called forth from Sau’s shadows. He moves fast enough to dodge a bullet. Too fast to properly see. And his strength…

His willingness to do whatever it takes to get her back...

Cross whatever line.

Sau would do anything for her children, and yet even she failed to keep her grandchild safe. I failed. Dayne failed. Varius failed. And all the Shadow boys and Blood Fangs’ members he took to kill Antonio out at the crocodile park – they all failed too.

I remember how easily he fought Sau the first time he broke into the Shadow House. How he ripped her apart faster than she could heal…

He heard the impossible – heard that he wasn’t strong enough to trek into the Underworld, and so he made himself stronger. He was struck by grief just like me, but instead of crumbling, he shoved more sticks into his foundation to keep him going.

He didn’t leave them behind though. He didn’tmoveon.

He figured out a way to bring her back, and it is not hope that drives him.

It is determination.

Dedication.