Chapter 74
ELI
Finley didn’t show up for the game. I looked for her. Jayden looked for her. During our shifts on the ice and while we were on the bench. Her seat next to Paige and Lily remained empty to the last buzzer.
“She’s not answering her phone,” I tell Jayden as we get in the car, and he urgently taps at his wrist.
My bracelet vibrates.
Bile burns up my throat at the empty seconds that follow.
In the back of my mind, there’s an insidious rumble. A reminder of the promise Presley made the night he assaulted me.
“Jayden…” My voice is a hoarse whisper, trembling so hard it breaks.
“It’s been a long day with a lot to process,” he starts at the same time as he begins cruising home through the last smattering of fans outside the arena.
They pause and wave, hollering at us with the excitement from our win.
The usual buzz that vibrates in my chest from their show of passion is stymied by the growing lump in my throat.
By the time we get close to home, it’s a fucking iceberg, threatening to tear me open and drown me in a bottomless ocean of anxiety.
Jayden and I are caught in fraught silence. Each of us too afraid to vocalize our worries. Finley hasn’t called or texted. She’s not responding to the vibrations of our bracelets.
Fuck.
Reporters are waiting when we turn onto our block. As we pause for the garage gate to lift, flash after flash pops against the tinted glass, even though all they’ll get are our murky shadows.
“What’s wrong with these people?” Jayden mutters, backing into his spot in one swift move.
Finley’s space between our vehicles is empty.
I’m trying to keep calm. Maybe Fin left her car at work and took an Uber directly to the front of the building. With the press outside, it would make sense. Less bullshit to wade through.
It makes sense, I’m telling myself as we rush out of JJ’s SUV.
“Come on, Sunshine—” I breathe out an aching sigh. “—let’s go find our girl.”
We race to the elevator, side-by-side. The backs of our hands colliding with the propelling swing of our arms.
“Fin’s okay, right?” Jayden asks as the doors close ahead of us.
“Yeah.” There’s no other option.
Except that jagged rock in my chest starts prying open a seam of doubt. I hear the last words Presley said to me:
Next time it’ll be your whore. I will ruin every fucking hole she has, and I’ll make sure she knows it’s because of you.
“That expression doesn’t say yeah.” JJ turns into me at the same time as I swivel to face him.
The pain in my chest is pounding so hard I can’t swallow around it, let alone breathe. “You said forty-eight hours, right?”
Jayden’s brows pull into one dark line, blackening his gaze.
“For bail,” I clarify when he doesn’t reply.
“Bail hearing…yeah, it can take up to forty-eight hours.” His tight expression eases. “Natasha would’ve updated us if anything had happened. Besides, she’s going for no bail, and so far, everything she’s gone for…”
“Right.” I nod when he trails off with a shrug.
“Fin is probably hiding out and taking time for herself. We’re going to walk into the apartment, and she’s going to have stress-cooked a feast that we won’t be able to eat alone.”
At his wistful chuckle, I drag in air that hurts as much as the hammering behind my ribs. I nod again. “Yeah.”
The doors ring open to Salem pacing in the hallway. Blanca howls on the other side of our door.
“Is Finley with you?” Salem asks, her face echoing the relentless banging in my chest.
“No,” Jayden answers first. The put-on ease vanishes as we stride to the apartment. Bee bolts past us, nose down, searching for our girl.
We’re left staring into the dark entryway. The smell is wrong. There’s no trace of the floral, powdery perfume she was wearing this morning. No warm, mouthwatering scent of freshly cooked food. Everything sits exactly as we left it after Fin went to work this morning.
“Call Parker, he’ll be with Summer and—” Jayden pauses, noticing I’m already texting Fin’s boss’s husband.
No sooner have I sent the text than my phone is ringing. An unknown number that I would normally decline. Every worst-case scenario runs through my head as I answer, and when Summer’s panicked voice echoes down the line at me, a fissure quakes through my universe.
Jayden’s calling Fin while Summer tells me, “I made her go home when the news about Presley broke. There were reporters outside and—” She pauses with a sigh. “—I could tell Finley was anxious about it. God, I should have made her accept Parker’s offer to drive her…”
“It’s not your fault,” I say, watching JJ mouth, Keeps going to voicemail.
I end the call with Summer and try Christina.
“Pick up,” I beg, over and over, until it flips to voicemail, too.
“Why the fuck can’t anyone answer their goddamn phones today?” JJ barks, smacking his palm to the wall.
Blanca goes into a spin.
Salem’s sharp gasp shrouds us in silence as she scuttles away from us.
It’s when I look at him that all the fear roiling in my gut wrenches up into the back of my throat. Filling it with an acrid burn that blurs my vision.
With trembling hands, I swipe through my phone. Looking for an answer that I won’t find, and if I did, I wouldn’t see it because my hazy stare is swimming with the throb of my frantic pulse in my head, my throat, my chest…
The screaming in my head is telling me what I should do—
Call the cops.
Try Christina again.
Go look.
Yes. That seems like the best idea. We can’t stand in the middle of our home, freaking out like that’s going to bring our girl back.
Pulling at my tie, I grab my car keys from the bowl by the door and shove the tie in the pocket of my slacks.
Because Fin hates it when I leave my keys, my ties, my cups…
“Where are you going?” Jayden’s voice stops me. The lost-puppy look hits like a suckerpunch.
“I have to look for her. We have to—”
“She’s here.”
I blink.
It’s palpable she’s not. Our home feels emptier and colder, and—I balk at the pin on his phone.
Pulling up the Find My app, I hold our phones next to each other. Sure enough, they both tell me our girl is right on top of us. The pins from her AirTags are all practically stacked minutely to the side of our two overlapping dots.
Relief and anger collide in my chest. A push and pull that makes it impossible to think. Impossible to rationalize.
I’m moving before my thoughts catch up with my logic. Jayden’s chasing me with Blanca leaping at his heels with pleading whimpers not to be left behind.
“Wait,” he tells me, gripping my hand as I head for the stairs leading up to the rooftop garden. “Just… I don’t know… take a breath…”
“What?” When I attempt to shake him off, JJ claws his fingers into my hand.
“You’re mad and…”
“I’m not—” I stop abruptly at the knowing cock of his brow.
“Exactly,” he murmurs. “When Momma found out she had cancer, she needed time alone to percolate her feelings and sort through them. Presley is the worst kind of disease, Eli. Give Fin time to compartmentalize and…”
Dark, mossy eyes flit past me, over my shoulder, lightening with a soft smile that trips my heart into an unsteady stutter.
I feel her before her perfume whispers in. Before her soft steps sound on the stairs.
Then, slender arms wrap my chest, and her cheek finds the crook of my neck. My pulse fires when Finley breathes me deep.
Cool fingers lace with mine. I wrap my hand around hers and tug Jayden closer. He kisses each of her knuckles, then playfully pecks the tiny Comets decals on her ring fingers with our numbers.
She’s so fucking cute about game-day nails. It’s frivolous, but the sight loosens the knot that’s been choking me since I couldn’t find her in the stands.
When JJ kisses the back of my hand, my lungs finally unlock. Warm air floods in, laced with her florals and his peppered cologne. It’s so darn good that my stomach flips. Their scents, the closeness… completely ground me.
“I’m sorry I missed the game,” Finley whispers into my ear with a kiss. “Today got crazy.”
“It did.” A weary sigh escapes as Jayden tightens his grip on my hand. “We were worried about you.”
“I’m so sorry, Love,” she rasps as I turn in her arms and lift her off the step, tucking her between us.
“Don’t apologize,” I say, as JJ adds, “All that matters is that you’re okay.”
“For a moment, I was overwhelmed, and I… I…” She looks down, tugging the hem of her custom Comets hoodie. “I needed to work through the crap in my head.”
“Why didn’t you call?” Jayden tips her chin up.
“Because I had reporters following me when I was driving home from work, so I kept driving. Ended up at Christina’s place, but she wasn’t there, and I had to run errands for Summer this morning, so the charge on the car was low…”
“Where’d you leave it?”
“At a parking lot close to Tina’s place. I left it on charge there, thinking you could drive me to pick it up after the game. I had an Uber bring me home to get ready. It was insane out front, and when I was leaving for the arena, it was worse. So, I… I…”
“So you didn’t go,” I finish, skimming a thumb across her flushed cheek.
“I could see them all outside. Waiting. It got too much and I couldn’t go out there.
” She blinks fast, then steadies herself with a slow inhale, a long exhale.
“Because I couldn’t face being alone, I went up to the garden…
and turned my phone off to shut the notifications up. Then I sorta fell asleep.”
“Crazy is exhausting.” Jayden gives the loose tendril that’s escaped the knot on her head a playful tug.
“I’m sorry.”
“Sweet angel—” I kiss the crown of her head. “—stop apologizing.”
There’s a shuffle behind us, followed by the excited scratch of Blanca’s nails on the slippery stone floor before she leaps up into us.
Salem trails behind her. Relief smoothing the deeply etched lines of her face when she sets eyes on Finley.
“Thank God you’re okay.” Salem offers a watery smile.
“Are you?” Fin moves toward her, and Bee’s wet nose nudges back to my shin.
“It’s been… a day.”
“Have the two of you had dinner yet?” With Bee sniffing at his ankles, Jayden heads for the door. When they both shake their heads, he announces, “Come on, I’m making pasta.”
And this is why I love him. Time and again, he proves how selfless he is.
It’s almost midnight, after a long day and fiery game, and while Fin is prepping sweet mint tea, he’s pulling out ingredients to make his sunshine pasta for us all.
Whoever said perfect doesn’t exist was wrong.
It does exist. And it’s the two people pottering around the kitchen in front of me.