Page 120 of Severed Heart (The Ravenhood Legacy #2)

Chapter Sixty-One

T YLER

F UNERAL-APPROPRIATE, MORBID, AND bitter thoughts circulate through my mind as I stare at the light blue casket surrounded by hallowed ground.

Knowing there’s only darkness beneath the box, I resist the urge to collect her body from within it, even if it’s no longer hosting her.

Despite that, I fucking loathe the thought of leaving her in a hole.

Of some stranger that doesn’t know her worth tossing dirt on a body that, just weeks ago, I worshipped.

A body which contained the spirit, heart, and brilliant mind of a woman I’ll go to my own death loving.

I don’t want her here. I don’t want her last home to be a dark place without a trace of light. I don’t want any of this.

But life has a sick fucking way of ignoring those wants. I decide then that when I separate from my own body, and if my soul resides elsewhere, I want no trace of my remains anywhere for anyone to visit.

Though it may be a selfish decision, when I perish from this earth, I want memories to be where I reside in the minds and hearts of those who knew me, without a trace of the host to be found. I follow that line of thinking into a darker place as the crowd begins to disperse.

It’s then I also understand that funerals really and truly are for the living, and am only aggravated as I’m approached with apology after apology. Condolences by people who are probably thinking to themselves that one day, I’ll heal. That one day, I’ll live again. But how can I? She’s not here.

“I’m so sorry for your loss.”

The ricocheting condolence doled out by so many has me screaming inside. Screaming with my unvoiced reply. It’s not my loss. It’s everyone’s fucking loss!

The saying grates on me like no other because it’s a bullshit acknowledgment.

A polite pass-off. The person still breathing, saying those words, is forgetting about the person they’re giving condolences to in the next breath, their next blink, while your entire life stutters in their wake.

Forever altered by all the collective breaths in their life path.

The in-passing, parting remark more demeaning than any other I can think of when half your fucking soul is torn from you.

Spit out in routine by those who just want to say the right thing, to seem sincere, but they don’t fucking know it’s not just my loss, it’s theirs too.

Even if corrected, they will never truly know the gravity and weight of that person’s life and what they sacrificed for them.

Just like my fallen military brothers who get a day or two of recognition per calendar year but lived every day of their fucking lives for others who are “sorry for your loss.”

The woman I loved shaped soldiers of her own, soldiers who will save countless lives for generations to come.

Her loss is not just my loss. She’s everyone’s loss. The world’s loss. Just like Dom’s is, and I won’t let the world forget them. I won’t let the world be sorry for my loss. I’ll make sure they’re sorry for theirs.

One day, I’ll find a way to make it known exactly what two souls helped shape the fate of our country.

Someday, somehow, I’ll find a fucking way.

Faintly acknowledging the long hug and damp tears my mother stains my jaw with and the prolonged palm of my father’s hand on my shoulder, one by one, they file up to me.

All ready with an offered hug, or a handshake.

All of my birds there in support, their own words muted by the clanging in my chest. Their muddled condolences and lingering stares following my every move, save one .

.. Not long after the cars turn over, I finally sense his presence behind me.

He doesn’t say a word but just stands a few feet to my side, a silent support despite his own extended absence.

Truthfully, it feels like his soul departed the day we laid his brother to rest a few feet over.

Maybe he’s wordless because he already resides in the same wasteland I’ve just gained entrance to.

The land of broken heartbeats and lost dreams. The land of unconscionable pain.

Resigned to the fate and path of a loveless man, I tear my gaze away from the place I know my beloved isn’t. She’s more present in that field of wildflowers than she’ll ever be here. She’ll never be here, and therefore, I have no reason to be.

“I don’t know which of us has it worse,” I finally say to Tobias, my fury quickly rising to the surface.

“You because Cecelia still breathes, or me because Delphine wasn’t granted that privilege.

” I toss the handful of wildflowers I picked from our field onto her casket and, with one last lingering look, begin to walk toward my truck.

She’s not here, she’s not in that hallowed ground, keep walking, Soldier.

Her host betrayed her, and I have no use for a place she doesn’t exist.

She’s not here. I could search the entirety of this earth, and I won’t find her. That’s death.

“Tyler,” Tobias barks on my heels, a one-eighty from the last funeral we attended where I was on his heels to keep him from fleeing to Cecelia. When I buried another of the closest people to me. Not even a year. I couldn’t even get a fucking year between them thanks to this unmerciful fucking life.

The life of a soldier, Jennings, keep walking.

“You won’t be alone tonight,” he says in more order than request, which only pisses me off more.

“That’s not your decision, but no, I won’t.”

“I don’t want to fight,” he rasps from beside me, “please brother, let’s not fight.”

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry for your loss , but I don’t give a fuck about what you want,” I snap.

“Tyler, stop,” T utters in a pathetic order. One I don’t follow.

“I’ve got somewhere to be,” I lie as Zach meets my eyes from where he waits for me at the hood of my truck.

He stayed at the back of the crowd purposefully because he didn’t want condolences.

He’s too raw for that right now. I didn’t want so much distance between us during the funeral, but I respected it.

This loss will no doubt change his makeup if it hasn’t started already, and I have to keep that in mind, him in mind.

Keep marching, Soldier.

“You have nowhere to be,” Tobias says, calling my bluff.

I scoff. “I have a thousand places to be, and I don’t need you to return the favor.” It’s a low blow, but I was the only one who was able to reason with him once he imploded after Dom’s funeral.

Dom.

Delphine.

Tobias is the last living member of his whole goddamned family.

In a sick way, I envy him. He has nothing holding him back from being the emotionless monster he’s trying his best to become.

Getting closer by the day in succeeding, his concern for me is surprising, considering he’s a living ghost at this point.

But my whole being has an aversion to him right now, and I say as much.

“I’m going home with Zach. If you really want to be there for me, then stop walking,” I snap. He stops his footing instantly. The pain in his exhale is evident, but I ignore it, focusing on my own for once. Unsure of how I’ll ever resemble a fraction of the man I was.

I’m a soldier now. Nothing more. But it’s then I look back into the eyes of the boy I’ve come to love in mere months and know that I’ll have to be more than that.

Left. Right. Keep marching.

Thankful. I’m supposed to be thankful for the time I had and for the memories we made, but I hate each second as it passes because of the distance it puts between the time she was breathing and the reality now in which she isn’t.

That’s fucking death. Each breath I take becomes agonizing as I will myself to stay in the moment, not to blink out for the kid standing curbside at my truck, looking as broken and lost as I feel. Will this be his life if he stays with me? Who will fucking protect him if I don’t? I can’t fail him.

“Tyler—” Tobias calls after me.

“Hey, get in the truck, okay?” I tell Zach, who doesn’t move, sensing something’s afoot.

“Please, Zach. Please don’t make today harder,” I ask him, knowing our day of reckoning is coming. The grudge in his eyes in the days after her death still there even as he does my bidding and climbs into the cab.

“Brother,” Tobias clips behind me, “let me—”

“I’m all soldier right now, T,” I snap back at him, rounding my truck and opening my door. “Don’t expect anything else anytime soon.”

On my heels, he palms my open door shut, crowding me against the truck. “Don’t do this,” I grit out. “Don’t fucking do this, T.”

“You aren’t alone tonight. I’ll be a shadow, I won’t say a fucking word, but you aren’t alone tonight.”

“I know your place, but so do you,” I grit out. “This is personal, and I’m not asking permission.”

Both our cell phones rattle as we’re summoned for another battle, and I find relief in a new mission, a distraction to keep me from coming apart. “I’ve got it,” I say.

He pins me with his stare. “You’re sitting this one out, Tyler.”

“I don’t sit shit out . In case you’ve conveniently forgotten again , we’re in the middle of a fucking war.”

“You are sitting this one out today. You just buried the love of your life, and I just buried my last relative.”

“You hated her,” I spit at him, slapping his chest with my palms. He doesn’t so much as flinch, his lifeless eyes peering back at me even as he speaks words of contradiction.

“I loved her, and she knew that, and so do you,” he admits without pause.

“Tyler,” Zach calls through the partially lowered window of the truck, his eyes watering as I realize he’s watching me lose my shit. In seeing his state, all the past months I’ve spent trying to give him a stable home, stable footing start to feel tarnished.