Scream in the Wind (Paranormal Peacekeepers: Book Two)

Chapter Fourteen

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Miles

I didn't bother unpacking. What was the point? Even if I wanted to stay at headquarters, my body wouldn't let me. There was only one place I wanted - needed - to be.

So I left. I took the truck and broke every speed limit between North Vernon and Triple Oaks.

As I drove, Grace dominated my thoughts. But I knew that before I could ever think of visiting her, I had to get some sense knocked into me. I needed a sounding board. I needed a rock. And I needed honesty.

I needed my family.

The second the screen door opened, my mother launched herself into my arms, offering me the hug I'd been longing for. Her tight grip grounded me in ways nothing else could and I had to focus all my energy on not falling apart in her arms.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered. "So, so sorry."

"Why didn't you tell me?" I croaked out. My chest shook with the effort of holding myself together.

"I didn't know how, bub. I didn't believe it and even when I did... I just couldn't do that to you."

I pulled away, wiping at my stinging eyes as I looked over her shoulder.

"Where's dad?"

"At work. And Daniel's at school. C'mon, come inside and sit."

I followed my mother into the kitchen and immediately stopped short. I'd been in and out of that room a thousand times. My family and I had shared countless meals on that dining room table. However, the one memory that decided to assault me was one from Grace's eighteenth birthday.

We all sat around the table, smiling as we watched her blow out all eighteen candles.

The memory was too much, so I backtracked and found myself in the den. Another room filled to the brim with memories. I was in my childhood home, but I still couldn't escape thoughts of her.

But the memories were all good. Warm and vibrant. Just like Grace. Once she figured out who and what she was, she was a force to be reckoned with. Even before she was a Peacekeeper, she had a kind of resilience most people envied.

Back then, if you'd have told me Grace was a cold blooded killer, I wouldn't have believed you. In all honesty, I probably would have decked you in the jaw for even implying such a heinous thing.

But now?

Now, I didn't know what to believe.

I just wanted to rewind everything and go back to the day Grace laughed in Bodhi's face when he realized someone was wearing her body like a suit. I wanted to go back to that day and do everything in my power to save her, protect her, shield her away from the world and all its evils.

But very rarely do we get redos in life. And I sure as hell wasn't getting mine.

"So, what's the plan, sweetie?"

My mother sat, her back straight, her fingers steepled in front of her as her dark gaze bored holes into my heart.

"What?"

"Your plan. What is it? You didn't come all this way just to get clarification. You came here to do something... So, what is it?"

I slumped down onto the couch, wishing it would swallow me whole and dump me out somewhere where the love of my life wasn't being poked and prodded and medicated.

"I... I don't know."

Speaking those three words made me feel like a heaping pile of shit, but maybe that's what I was. In all the hours it took me to drive home, I hadn't formulated one coherent thought, let alone something as helpful as a plan.