It reinforced those same thoughts she’d had the week before about her own work. Although she considered herself part of a unit with the rest of her fellow ADAs, their work didn’t carry the same camaraderie. Did that come from putting your life on the line?
Or was it something more?
Were the people determined to live with honor and sacrifice and protection more able to feel these things, so they were drawn to police work? Or did it embrace you the moment you became a member?
“That’s what will get Jayden through,” Sera said, conviction and certainty coursing through her. For the first time, she felt a small shot of hope that the smiling, happy man she’d met out on a sunny spring day would find a way to piece his life together. He’d never be the same, but someday he would feel the sun again. More important, he’d have support to keep the dark at bay.
His biological family and his work family would ensure it.
It didn’t change the reality of what he faced, Sera knew, but it was assurance that he wouldn’t face it alone.
The sense of motion had them both quieting, and Sera and Marlowe turned their attention to the front doors of the church. Jayden stepped through the doors, holding his mother’s arm as he helped her down the marble steps.
The casket followed, carried by six officers in their finest dress. Wyatt and Gavin were at the front, with Arlo directly behind Gavin and three others she didn’t recognize making up the rest of the pallbearers.
Each moved with purpose, their steps heavy with the solemn duty they carried.
And as she brushed away tears, Sera prayed for the man she barely knew. For the family who held him up. For the lovely, vibrant man who would never grow old.
Chapter 13
Gavin stared at the heaping table of food that ran along the wall of the large hall in the basement of the church where they’d honored Darius’s life. The delicious fixings were designed to be comfort food on an impossibly hard day, but as he took in the tables generously laden with food, he found it anything but consoling.
Instead, his need to rant and rail—to break something—only increased moment by moment as they moved closer in the receiving line. Nothing could distract him for long from staring at Jayden’s positively destroyed visage. From bristling at the sheer anger of an absolute waste of a life.
Or from how vividly he still remembered those days.
Although the loss of a parent was different than a spouse, the pain of such sudden and explosive loss after a murder was unfathomable. No matter how much living prepared a person for death entering their world, such a cruel, deliberate action added a layer of heartbreak that simply shattered the soul.
The soft hand that touched his shoulder pulled him back into the moment, and Gavin looked over to see Sera, her gaze gentle. “Are you okay?”
He only nodded and was grateful as she took his hand in hers, holding tight as they waited their turn to speak to Jayden and his family.
The Houstons’ church family had turned out as magnificently as the NYPD, preparing a feast in honor of the family’s loss. They’d extended the food services to three other locations in the neighborhood to feed every single person who came to the funeral.
But it had been at Mrs. Houston’s insistence that he and Sera had come to the church seating.
It was an honor neither of them had taken lightly. It was also one that she’d handled beautifully up to now, seeking out Jayden’s brothers and sisters, sharing her condolences.
Although he wasn’t surprised, he had been deeply touched to see how much warmth and kindness she’d extended to each person by name. In return, so many had asked after her own well-being since the shooting, a warm, embracing circle that could still provide care even in the midst of such grief.
It gave him hope, that circle. It was one of the few things today that managed to push its way past that need to break things. The other was Sera’s unwavering support. Of him. Of his friends. And of the entire Houston family.
She might have carried her own grief over Darius, but she’d set it aside to focus on Jayden and his family. And she’d done it with an effortless grace that simply awed him.
He wanted to tell her all of that, but the line that had seemed interminable suddenly felt much too short as he and Sera stood before Jayden. His friend’s dark eyes were red-rimmed, a layer of exhaustion Gavin had never seen before in their depths. Their work ensured that they regularly pushed themselves to the physical limit, but what Gavin saw now was a soul-deep exhaustion that wouldn’t be erased with rest.
“Jayden. I am so very sorry.” Sera leaned in and pulled Jayden close in a hug, the move so easy and natural it stunned him. That this warm, caring woman had ever had a stray thought—even once—that she wasn’t lovable or deserving of her parents’ warmth and affection...
Especially when her innate kindness welled up and spilled over with such care and compassion for others. She murmured something to Jayden, the words themselves far less meaningful than the warmth of her touch and the obvious outpouring of support.
And then she moved on to Mama Houston, leaving Gavin to his friend.
To the stark reality that nothing he could ever say would bring Darius back. That he and Sera had been the object of the shooter before they’d somehow shifted their attention to Darius. And that forevermore, the time in his life when he learned he’d be a father would be wrapped around his friend’s dead husband.
It hit him in a wave, even as Gavin also knew he was one of the few people in this room who understood the grief and loss and sheer anger at the senseless killing of a loved one.
How did he reconcile that?
And how did they navigate through it?
The weight of it all had been far heavier than he’d realized, until Jayden reached out and pulled him close. Tears laced the man’s words, the hard echo of a sob vibrating against Gavin’s chest.
“Thank you for being here.”
“I’m so sorry.” The words were a croaked whisper, but they held all the interminable grief he couldn’t wash away. “We were there. On the sidewalk. I’m so damn sor—”
Jayden’s arms tightened once more before he shifted back, his broad, capable hands never leaving Gavin’s shoulders. “Be sorry he’s gone, but don’t, for one damn minute, think you’re the reason this happened.”
“But we were...”
“There. You were there, Gavin, that’s all. And you stayed and cared for him and did everything you could. We’re going to find the bastard who did this. I will never stop searching for answers, and there’s no distance they can run I won’t follow.”
“You’re not going to chase him alone. We’ll make sure of it. None of us will rest, you have to know that.”
Whatever carried him through the hug and the conviction of his words winked out, Jayden’s eyes shuttering with the weight of it all. And somewhere down deep, Gavin knew, the inner vow the man had made to himself had become his north star above all else.
There was no way Jayden was going to rest until Darius’s killer was found. Which meant Gavin and his fellow cops just needed to be sure they found the killer with him.
