Chapter 43 Aiden
“Are you done hating me yet?” I shoved past Rook, yanking open the fridge like I hadn’t thrown gasoline on an already raging fire.
“You mean hating my best friend who’s been sneaking around behind my back for months with my sister?” His tone sharpened, pushing at a wound that was already raw between us.
My jaw tightened and I tried to relax it, letting out a hard breath through my nose.
“Yeah. I fucked up there. I should’ve told you sooner.
” I met his glare head-on, refusing to back down.
“But don’t stand there and act like Evie’s some fragile little thing you have to protect from me.
She makes her own choices. You don’t get to control her life. ”
His expression darkened, something flickering behind his eyes. I knew that look—I’d seen it a hundred times before, usually right before we came to blows. But this wasn’t some bar fight over stupid shit. This was about her. And that meant neither of us was backing down first.
But I couldn’t start a fistfight here with Rook and expect it to end well.
“Can you maybe dial it back a little on the hating me? Like, we can fight, but I think a fistfight in the kitchen is pushing it.”
Rook scoffed, arms crossing tight over his chest. “Have you stopped trying to get with my sister?”
“No, and I won’t be.”
“And what if you aren’t good enough for her?”
I let out a short, humorless laugh, grabbing a water bottle and twisting the cap off harder than necessary. “That’s rich coming from you. Are you good enough for Regan?”
He went to say something, but his mouth snapped shut for a moment.
“No,” he finally said.
“Exactly, and if I told you to stay away from her because you aren’t good enough, would you listen?”
“No, and I would probably hit you.”
“I’m so glad you are understanding my point of view here.”
Rook’s face was stone for a second before a smile broke on his lips. “I truly think we are about to get in a fistfight in the kitchen. Regan is going to be pissed about the blood.”
“You can’t control Evie. We both know that, and that unfortunately is going to include this, too.”
“No, but I get to care when she’s making a mistake that could fuck everything up.”
I slammed the water bottle down. “Mistake? As in, I’m a mistake. You know damn fucking well I would do anything for her.”
Rook didn’t blink. “Tell me you’re in this for the long haul then. Tell me you’re not gonna wake up one day and realize you’re not built for this. Built for . . . well, her. Because if you walk away, it’s not just some breakup. You will destroy her. You destroy all of this.”
The weight of his words settled between us.
I knew he wasn’t wrong. But he also wasn’t right.
I was made for her—there wasn’t a part of me that wasn’t completely built for her.
Before I could fire back, Mason strolled in, tossing his keys onto the counter. “Are you two still bitching at each other? Fuck, at least make it entertaining. Throw a punch or something.”
“Shut up, Mason,” Rook and I snapped at the same time.
“Wow. True brotherhood,” Mason muttered, a sly grin growing on his face as he grabbed a beer from the fridge. “Speaking of the woman of the hour, where’s Evie?”
The words were casual, harmless—until I looked out the window and realized they weren’t.
I turned, glancing at the clock. It was too late. She had been out way too long. She already hated riding that bike and I knew she wouldn’t want to be out in the dark cold for hours.
“She should be back by now,” I said, more to myself than anyone else. My chest ached, my first instinct to start looking for her, but knowing she was angry.
Rook’s brows furrowed, checking his phone. “She probably stopped somewhere to blow off more steam.”
“Where’s Harper and Regan?”
“Hey, Rebel,” Rook yelled into the living room. “Have you talked to Evie?”
I held my breath, waiting for an answer, but one didn’t come. Instead, Harper and Regan filled the doorway.
“Not since this afternoon before the fight.” Regan looked at Rook. “Which shouldn’t be a fight, by the way, because I told you there was something there, so you had the heads-up.”
“You were speculating, and from what I understand, this was before anything even happened between them, so you—”
“Harper?” I interrupted. “Have you talked to her?”
Harper shook her head. “Nothing.”
I pulled out my phone and called her. The ringing pounded against my eardrums.
No answer. I tried again and waited, the call going to voicemail again.
The air in my lungs turned to stone.
“I can text her. If she’s out, she’s always happy for us to meet up with her,” Harper added.
Something inside me twisted as Harper texted.
I knew Evie wasn’t going to respond. I don’t know how, but I knew. I clicked into my phone, trying to find the damn app she set up with all our locations. Ours were all on our bikes, but Evie’s and Regan’s were on their phones. I scrolled through pages, not able to find it.
“Can someone please check the fucking trackers?” I asked, my voice sharper than I meant. “I can’t get the app to work, and I need to see where she’s at.”
Hero, who had been sitting at the dining table with a laptop, barely looked up. “She’s probably fine.”
“Check. The. Tracker,” I repeated, already moving toward him. I barked out locations, wanting every place I could think of checked.
Something in my tone must’ve gotten through, because Harper ran over, pushing Hero off the chair and clicking around on the computer. The room went silent except for the soft clacking of keys.
Finally, she stopped, her eyebrows furrowed as she looked over the screen. I was about to yell again, the world pressing in on me.
Evie ran off, hurt and upset, and I should have known it was bad. I was so focused on trying to fix things with Rook, so it was dealt with before she got back, that I didn’t think about how out of character it was for Evie to storm off without setting off a bomb.
When she got hurt, she did one of two things—she either burned everything to the ground or ran far enough to cool off before coming back and burning everything down anyway.
“What?” I demanded, my thoughts slipping. Maybe Rook was right, and I couldn’t take care of her right.
Maybe I fucked this all up right away.
Harper hesitated.
“Harper,” Rook said, his voice suddenly serious. “Where is she?”
Harper turned the screen toward us. A blue dot blinked on the map.
“Behind Sweet Haven Cafe. It says she hasn’t moved in almost two hours.”
“Why would she be behind it?” Regan asked.
I didn’t care. I was already grabbing my keys and heading to the garage. I needed to get to her. I should have already gone to her.
The bike rumbled to life beneath me, and I pulled out, surprised to see Rook catch up next to me.
We rode in silence to Sweet Haven Cafe, neither one of us ready to talk more about Evie or the new situation we had found ourselves in.
The cold night air cut through my jacket, but all I could feel was the weight pressing down on my chest. I didn’t know what the hell happened to Evie and the mix of rage and worry was terrifying. Every part of me kept screaming that something was wrong.
Rook pulled up first, his bike skidding to a stop outside the alley behind Sweet Haven Cafe. My heart pounded as I followed, killing the engine and jumping off before the kickstand even settled.
Her bike was still here.
Her bag sat on the seat, and I knew her phone would be inside. I had yelled at her so many times after she lost her third phone, because she would keep it in her back pocket while riding. As if it weren’t bad enough that it was dead half the time.
Everything was here, but she wasn’t.
“Check if she’s inside?” I said, already reaching for her bag.
“She wouldn’t be inside without her bag,” he said.
“I know, but can we at least check?”
He gave a sharp nod, not wasting any time and heading inside through the kitchen door.
I found her phone and clicked it on. There was nothing but missed calls and texts from all of us. The battery at one percent.
Rook came back out, shaking his head. Sweet Haven wasn’t a big place and I knew he would have seen her right away. He pulled out his own phone, hitting Harper’s number.
I took a step back, breathing hard through my nose, trying to force my brain to work past the cold knot of unease forming in my gut.
“She was mad,” I said, mostly thinking out loud. “She didn’t want to deal with any of us. Maybe she—”
“Went to wreak havoc? Any of the places we normally go she would have brought her stuff.”
I didn’t want to think about it, but I knew where her mind had been lately. She had been digging into things she shouldn’t, pushing too hard for answers that weren’t safe to get.
Rook was back on his phone.
“Harper, check the tracker again. Tell me everywhere she went before she got here,” he said.
“You know you can check it?”
“And right now, I don’t give a damn to learn how to log in—just check the fucking tracker.”
I pulled out my phone, hitting the name that made my lip curl.
Asher picked up on the third ring.
“Is Evie with you?” I asked.
“Lost your girl again? She’s a damn runner, isn’t she?”
“This isn’t a fucking joke. Is she with you?”
“No. I haven’t seen or heard from her, but I love knowing that you worry about me enough to think she ran to me. It’s not that out of line. What happened?”
“She got pissed and left.”
“Well, I know this isn’t the first lovers’ quarrel between you two. You know she explodes when angered.”
“Yeah? Does she also leave her bike and phone parked in a random fucking alley without a word?” I asked, my voice nearly shaking in anger.
There was a pause.
“She isn’t with me and hasn’t been. I’ll send guys over to the Vault to check there. Anywhere else you need people looking?”
A breath of relief filled my lungs.
“Hellfire, and maybe send one to Syndicate. There might be a couple of people out there tonight.”
“You got it. Keep me updated and let me know if you need more guys.”
“Thanks.”
“Anytime,” he said. “Well, for her anytime. Let’s not get too friendly.”
I shook my head, ending the call, but relief filled me.
It died when Rook turned to look at me, the confusion and worry on his face making me worried all over again.
He pulled the phone away from his ear, hitting the speaker on.
“Can you repeat that?”
“Evie’s phone hasn’t moved, but when I look at all our trackers, Zack’s is still live and . . .”
“And what?” I asked.
Harper was quiet for a second. “It’s six blocks over. I’m not saying that has anything to do with it, but I don’t know why he would be there.”
Neither of us moved.
Neither of us spoke.
“What is the location?”
“I don’t know. The businesses there have changed again and again. I can’t tell what it is now.”
“She wouldn’t go to him,” I said, shaking my head. “She wouldn’t actually go meet up with him for anything, would she?”
“She might. If she thought she could somehow fix this, she might think talking with him could help something.”
“Or he called her to help fix things for him and she agreed.”
Rook shrugged. “Doesn’t seem great either way, considering what happened to him.”
He was right. Rook hadn’t minded me handling Zack after he realized how pissed I was about him videoing Evie and me together. It happened after Evie had stormed off, and my knuckles were still bleeding from how hard I had hit him.
It wasn’t good at all.
I was already climbing onto my bike. “If she went to meet him, we’re going to need to find out real fucking fast.”
Rook didn’t argue. He was already right beside me as we pulled out of the alley, engines roaring through the quiet streets.
I didn’t know if Evie was with Zack.
I didn’t know if this was her making a bad decision in the heat of the moment.
But I knew one thing for damn sure.
If Zack had anything to do with why she wasn’t answering her fucking phone—he wouldn’t get the chance to regret it.