25. Rae
25
RAE
“Y ou guys seem good,” Annie says over her non-alcoholic cocktail as we sit around the couch. The living room looks out on the patio and pool and West Hollywood beyond.
“We’re figuring it out,” I admit.
“You sure looked like you had it figured out at Spago last week.” She holds out her phone with a gossip column picture of me and Harrison after our meal at the restaurant.
“Since when do you comb the gossip online?”
“Since they started posting pictures of my favorite private couple. What was he saying to you?”
My hand is laced in his, and he’s whispering in my ear.
“Don’t remember.” I blink back at my friend.
“Bullshit.”
She’s right. I totally remember.
Annie’s six-year-old half sister, Sophie, climbs up next to me with a book in hand.
“You want me to read?” I ask her, amused.
“No. I’ll read to you.”
She starts to, and I tuck back the soft hair that falls over her face.
“Watch out, or you’ll have some of your own soon,” Elle jokes, dropping onto the chair across from us.
My usual knee-jerk shudder isn’t there.
“Not soon,” I correct. “Maybe someday.”
Annie leans in, hopeful. “Do you love him?”
I sneak a look at Harrison.
“You do,” she goes on without my answering.
“It’s almost like the harder it gets, the closer we are. If that makes sense.”
She nods, enthusiastic.
My phone buzzes with text from Leni, along with a picture.
Excitement jolts through me. “Oh my God. No way.”
“What?” Elle demands.
I explain what I’ve been working on, and Annie sighs.
“Send me a picture of his face when you show him.”
Elle nudges her with a toe. “A, His face is going to be eating her once she shows him.”
Annie claps hands over Sophie’s ears, glaring at us both.
Like it’s my fault my boyfriend is a billionaire with a magic fucking tongue.
The rest of the afternoon is fun, and it’s almost twilight by the time we leave.
“You’re right,” I say as Harrison navigates the roads from the Hills. “We should stop at the club.”
He cuts me a surprised look. “Since when?”
I lift a shoulder. “Since now.”
He reaches over to take my hand in his.
When we turn onto the street, the sun setting behind us and leaving long shadows from trees and buildings, Harrison starts to tense.
High in the air, lights beckon, growing brighter with every second.
“What the…?”
My breath hitches. “We’re not even in the parking lot,” I prod.
He ignores me and parks the car on the street, shifting out to stare up at the marquee on the side of the building.
Kings.
It’s lit up in orange and gold, shaped like a crown. It reminds me of the Ibiza summer or a Phoenix rising.
I round the car and lean against his side. “Everyone who sees this will know it’s yours. We wanted to surprise you. Okay, I wanted to surprise you,” I amend. “Leni helped.”
How we see ourselves is important. How Harrison sees this place is important.
He grabs me and pulls me against his hard chest. His heart hammers through the clothing that separates us, but it’s his expression of awe that humbles me.
“You’re unbelievable,” he murmurs against my hair. “When you said I could put Ivanov in the past, I didn’t believe you. But now, seeing this place, it feels possible.”
“You don’t need to protect your parents’ legacy anymore. You can have your own.”
His arms are an iron grip around me.
* * *
It’s three in the morning, and I’m awake.
Not because I’m stressed or anxious. Because I’m happy .
We’re lying in bed together, Harrison asleep while I replay the moment he saw the sign I ordered over and over, when the phone vibrates on his side of the bed.
He stirs, groaning before he reaches for it to answer.
The moment he does, his gorgeous body tightens, and he shoots to sitting.
“Since when?”
He curses, and alarm bolts through me. I grab for his arm, but he’s already halfway out of bed and still on the phone.
“What is it?” I demand.
Harrison hits the lights by the door before moving to the dresser to grab clothing. He drags on sweatpants, still listening.
“What’s wrong?” I repeat, shifting out of bed after him.
He hangs up and riffles through his drawer. “Leni got a notification the security cameras are down at Kings.”
“We turned off the exterior ones this week so the sign would be a surprise.” I grab him a long-sleeved T-shirt and hold it out. He tugs it on with a grateful look.
“There was a problem rebooting them, and now all the cameras are down. We have no video of the premises.”
A chill runs through me. “Can’t someone else deal with it?” It’s late, and this is why he has people who work for him.
“I have a bad feeling.”
I follow him to the door. “I’ll come with you.”
The look he shoots me is quelling. “No. Stay here. I’ll call you if something’s wrong.”
That stalls me enough that I let him go. I stand numbly in the foyer.
I can’t reconcile our day with the middle-of-the-night call.
My feet carry me down the hall toward the bedroom.
It occurs to me how different this is from the last time I found myself alone in Harrison King’s room in the morning without him nearby. In Ibiza, I was afraid he didn’t have feelings, that everything that had gone down between us was a lie or a flirtation.
There’s none of that fear now. He loves me.
The bedroom feels disrupted, the covers on the bed thrown back. Hastily opened drawers stare back at me.
I won’t wait for him , I decide. I’m going after him.
I pull on jeans and a sweater, not bothering with a bra or brushing my hair. I snap on my gold cuff like a security measure before heading for the elevator.
The concierge looks worried when I demand a car, but he relents, waving over the valet to pull around a Nissan that evidently belongs to the concierge.
I jump in and navigate to the club. Even at three thirty in the morning, the drive is half an hour.
When I get there, the first thing I see are the flames. I hear sirens and see the lights of the approaching fire truck. They cut me off before I can turn off the road. I follow them in, my heart dropping through my stomach as I take in the sight before me.
The club is on fire.
Acrid black smoke pours out of broken windows. The sign isn’t lit, or the bulbs have shattered from the heat. The building is concrete, but the inside is wood.
Worse, Harrison’s car is in the lot, angled awkwardly with the driver’s door open.
There’s no sign of Harrison.
The sound of tires screeching in behind me has me whirling to find Leni, who I recall lives twice as far from the club as Harrison.
“Where is he?” she hollers, wide-eyed.
“I don’t…” I turn back toward the building in horror.
Firefighters pour out of the fire truck, a couple of them uncoiling the long hose from the vehicle’s side.
I start for the building and make it to within a dozen feet of the door before heat blasts open another window, glass flying outward. My hands fly up too late to shield myself, but the next second, Leni’s there.
“We need to get you back,” she says.
“But Harrison—he must be in there!”
I can’t breathe, and it’s not only because of the smoke.
I run to the firefighters. “You need to find him.”
Before the firefighter can say anything, two others bring Harrison out of the club. He’s stumbling between them, breathing through a mask, his arms clutched against his chest.
I’m over there in a heartbeat, and Harrison’s pushing something into my hands before they usher him into an ambulance.
* * *
“You were with him.”
I look up to see an officer blocking the hallway I’ve been pacing for the last two hours. It’s been a long night at the hospital while Harrison has been put through a barrage of tests. I’ve heard almost nothing about his condition except that he’s stable. The doctor told me that as if I should have been relieved—like the fact that the man I love running into his burning building had a happy ending after all.
“Who are you?” I demand.
The officer gives me his name. “I need to ask you a few questions. Let’s find chairs and talk.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
He sizes me up, his gaze landing on my bracelet. He nods toward the side of the hallway, and I grudgingly step out of the way of traffic.
“You were the first person on the scene.”
“Second,” I correct. “Harrison got there first.”
The last time a police officer surveyed me so intently, I was a teenager at the front desk of the local branch, deciding whether to report what had happened to me. I was nervous, sweating. In the end, fear overtook me, and I turned around and never went back.
Not only fear of the police, but fear of being found out, exposed, judged, ridiculed, hated.
“How did it start?” I demand.
“It’s too soon to say.”
“Was it…? Tell me it wasn’t the marquee.” My voice fades to a whisper.
He relents. “I heard the firefighters say there was some kind of accelerant inside. Now, Mr. King was found in the building. The only person found in the building.”
Hostility slices through the fear in my gut. “You don’t think he did this? Kings is set to open in less than three months.”
“Why would he be inside?”
“To try and save his damned club!”
He sighs, and I play with the strap on my purse.
“We’ll be reviewing security footage. If anyone was staking out the building after dark this week, or arrived tonight, maybe we’ll be able to see who.”
No, you won’t.
Thanks to me, the exterior security cameras have been out for the past two days.