CHAPTER NINETEEN
SIX MONTHS LATER
Henry’s stomach was growling, but he didn’t care enough to do a damned thing about it. He’d stopped shaving and he rarely bothered showering anymore. He was a zombie, hardly going through the motions of life and work anymore. Sleep was an evasive and cruel mistress. One day trickled by after another and none of them were worth noting.
Without Grace in his life he seemed to have lost his ability to function. He’d searched everywhere for her. He’d even driven back to Chicago with Parker and Michelle looking for her in her old neighborhood. It had been an awkward and strained car ride, especially given the fact that the usually happy-go-lucky Henry had made it abundantly clear at the barbeque that he’d never hit a woman in his life but he just might make an exception for Michelle. But he’d accepted Michelle’s apology, and she’d accepted his, and that was that.
But just because they’d made peace didn’t mean that his life problems had been solved. As Henry sat there on the couch, achingly alone, he almost wished his friend had ended his sorry life instead of giving him a hand up from the ground. After they had ended the fight, Henry had been swarmed by well-meaning pack members. They’d sought to offer help and to comfort him, but they’d done more harm than good because they’d all slowed him down. By the time he’d been able to get away he’d arrived to a devastatingly empty home.
Grace had disappeared without a trace. Even if he hadn’t spied the closet gaping open and empty in her room he would have known she was gone because the house seemed vacant and soulless without her warm presence to fill it. He’d bellowed her name over and over again until he was hoarse, but it didn’t do any good. Wherever she was she was too far away to hear him.
He’d shifted and sniffed around outside, but her trail had ended abruptly at the end of the sidewalk before the driveway. He’d retreated back indoors to look for more clues to her whereabouts. When he’d scented her blood he’d gone absolutely crazy. He’d lumbered back outside and spent two full days running for miles in every direction. He’d sniffed wildly, against all odds hoping to catch a whiff of her unique fragrance, but it was as though she’d been erased from the face of the planet.
That’s when he’d finally cast down his pride and called in reinforcements. Parker had been eager to lend a hand, but it had been Michelle who’d offered up the idea of returning to their old apartment, a ballsy move on her part given the fact that the tiger shifters were likely still on the lookout for her. She’d risen a few notches in his estimation in that moment.
When they’d arrived at the rundown apartment complex there had been a faded eviction notice taped to the front door. They’d half expected the unit to be empty inside, but to their surprise the girls’ meager belongings had still been where they’d left them. None of it was worth stealing.
Michelle had broken down. The stress of Parker seeing her shitty lodgings combined with the fact that her stupid big mouth had made her sister run away had reduced her to an incoherent ball of tears. Henry had felt like crying himself, but instead he’d gone down to talk to the landlord to see if the man had heard anything from Grace or knew any details regarding her whereabouts.
Henry could scent the honesty in the man’s voice when he revealed that he’d seen neither hide nor tail of either of his occupants in weeks. Feeling defeated once more, Henry had thanked the man, paid the girls’ back rent, and inquired as to where he could procure some moving boxes. By the time he returned from the moving store Michelle had stopped crying, and she was moving robotically from one cabinet to the next.
She planned to donate most of her stuff, but she helped Henry separate out all of Grace’s items into a pile of their own. She didn’t want to be responsible for taking anything else away from her sister. She already had so much to atone for.
All of Grace’s earthly belongings had fit inside three small boxes, and that was including the old faded sheets and blankets he’d fastidiously stripped from her bed. It wasn’t much of a bedroom, just a sad old mattress on the ground. Witnessing the extremes of poverty she’d endured was like a knife in his gut, and suddenly it made sense how she’d always been so enamored of life’s little luxuries.
If it hadn’t been for the small strip of black and white photos inside of the tacky dollar store frame it would have been difficult to believe that she’d ever lived there. There were homeless people with more valuables than Grace and Michelle.
Now it clicked how she’d been blown away by his having a washer and dryer right there in the house. Now he appreciated why she’d been so over the moon about buying new clothes. Other than the sad picture frame, which actually belonged to Michelle, the only thing of significance he located was his mate’s wallet, and not because there was any money in it . . . because there weren’t two nickels to rub together in the ratty old bit of fake leather.
The only important items were her license, birth certificate, and social security card. Those three things should never have been crammed so carelessly together in one place. Hadn’t she realized how easy it would be for someone to steal her entire identity? Given the sad quality of her life, had she even cared?
Henry ended up returning to the office and paying ahead the next few months of rent for the empty apartment. Just in case she wound up returning after all, he wanted her to know where her stuff was. He left a burner phone and a note just inside the doorway where she’d be sure to see it. In the note he poured out his heart and begged her to come back to him.
But the months had trickled by and she never called. Initially he’d reached out to friends and family, harassing everyone he knew and asking them if they’d seen her. He’d printed off missing persons posters, and even used his connections with law enforcement to spread her image to countless officers. But it was as though she’d disappeared off the face of the earth.
Her hard plastic ID was a permanent fixture in his hands, and he’d long since committed every detail to memory, from her license number to her birth date. He’d contemplated breaking into his best friend’s home to steal the sad little photo strip in the cheap frame, but fortunately he’d had just enough control to call Parker and ask for a copy instead.
Time crawled by and nothing changed but the seasons. He’d stopped looking, but he simply couldn’t force himself to move on. He just sat there day by day, staring at the door as though he could will her to walk back through it. If it hadn’t been for Parker’s loyalty he would have been fired months ago, as he most definitely wasn’t earning his paycheck.
***
He was still in the exact same spot on the couch when Jackson came barging over uninvited to check on him. When Henry didn’t respond to his knocking Jackson grew impatient.
“Dude, I know you’re in there. I can smell you all the way out here, and I honestly wish I didn’t have a bear’s nose because you freakin’ reek.”
Jackson used his key to open up the door and then forced himself inside only to gag on the concentrated aroma of unwashed male body and countless tins of rotting takeout. He began to open windows in order to get the air moving about. Summer and fall had given way to winter which meant that the fresh air was freezing, but Henry didn’t seem to notice or care.
“Just leave me alone,” Henry growled. His eyes were rimmed in red and bloodshot. There was no hiding that he’d been crying and that he wasn’t sleeping enough. If Jackson had realized he was half this bad he would have burst in much sooner.
“Not gonna happen. I’ve decided that it’s time for a little brotherly intervention; after all, I owe you for that time you covered for me when I snuck out to tee pee the sheriff’s station.”
Henry wasn’t even looking at his brother while he spoke. He was staring out the open door, imagining Grace walking back through. In his vision she looked just as perfect as she had on the day she’d left him, and she was even wearing the same dress. His mind meandered on blissfully to how she’d agree to be his mate, and how she’d never leave his side again. The only place he was happy lately was in his imagination, because that was the only way he could be with Grace.
“Are you even listening to me?” Jackson asked, exasperated. “This whole thing has gone on for way too long. You’re both obviously miserable apart from each other. Quite frankly, I’ve had enough of all the drama. You’ve turned this family into an episode of Oprah, and it’s throwing off my game with the ladies. I actually asked a woman out for what I thought was the first time. She waited until after dessert to slap me and reveal that it was our ‘second’ first date. Definitely not one of my finer moments. Is it my fault she wasn’t memorable?”
Henry may not have been listening to his brother yammering on, but his bear had been paying attention and he’d heard something that more than piqued his interest. The primal beast crawled his way out of the near hibernation he’d been residing in for months and leaped off of the couch. Gripping his brother by the front of his shirt he picked him up and slammed him roughly against the wall.
“How the hell do you know that Grace is miserable?” he growled, bits of spit flying from his mouth as he spoke. Bones cracked along the column of his spine and bushy hair began to erupt from his pores. He was a hairsbreadth away from shifting full out.
“Breath mint, you’re killing me,” Jackson gasped, waving a hand in front of his face to dispel the stink.
Henry wasn’t amused. He tightened his grip and leaned in closer. Forming words was difficult as his face had already grown a snout and there were far too many teeth for his still human mouth to hold.
“Where is she?” he spat out furiously.
“I’ll tell you,” Jackson said. Then he paused dramatically for emphasis. “But not until you shower. Trust me, you do not want to go to your woman looking or smelling like this.”
Henry roared in Jackson’s face, letting loose six months of accumulated desperation and rage. Jackson’s face grew pinched, but not from fear. It was the stink that was getting to him. But God awful B.O. or no, he refused to budge.
Admitting defeat, Henry snarled a barely human “Fine,” stomped off, and slammed the door violently to his bathroom. He brushed his teeth, flossed and gargled multiple times. When he emerged from the shower several minutes later he was still sporting an overgrown beard, but he was at least clean and wearing fresh clothes.
“Now,” Henry mumbled, reaching once again for his brother’s neck. Jackson danced just out of his reach.
“Enough with the hands already. I said I’d tell you and I will. Sheesh. First off, you can’t tell anyone that I spilled the beans.”
“Whatever, agreed.” He’d have acquiesced to anything to get his mate back.
“When’s the last time you visited Nanna?” Jackson asked casually.
“What kind of a stupid question is that? You know damn well I haven’t been to see her since the day of the party. Did you come all the way here to give me a guilt trip? You’re starting to sound just like mom. Maybe that’s why you can’t find a date.”
Jackson didn’t say anything else. He just stood there patiently, waiting for his brother to reach the inevitable conclusion.
“No . . .” Henry gasped.
“Yes,” Jackson countered obnoxiously.
Henry didn’t even bother putting on shoes. He grabbed his keys off of the coffee table and sprinted towards his car like the devil was on his tail. Could it be this easy? Had she really been that close all along?