Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHARLIE
With the right motivation, I found my brother’s address in twenty minutes. I slammed the side of my fist against the door and hollered at him to let me inside. If he had Athena in here, I swore to fuck, I would—
“Damn, no need to be loud,” a pink-haired woman mumbled, opening the door.
Before she could slam the door in my face, I stepped into his apartment and scanned the room for any sign of Athena. She fucking had to be here. She had been here when I called. Where was that fucker hiding her?
“Where is she?” I snarled.
“Where is who?” Derek asked, walking out of a room with a towel hanging around his shoulders, another fastened around his hips, and beads of water rolling down his chest.
I shoved him out of the way and hurried into the room.
“Athena,” I called.
The bathroom was empty.
I gritted my teeth and briefly looked into the other rooms in this hallway, spinning around when she still hadn’t come out after I yelled her name. Was she that pissed at me? Did she really not want to see me? She would surely let me explain, right?
“Where the fuck is she?” I growled, shoving my brother into the wall. “Huh?”
“Who?”
“Athena!”
“Oh, her.”
Before I could stop myself, I slammed my fist into the side of his face. He stumbled back against the wall and swiped the corner of his lip with his thumb, wiping away the blood. He stared back at me through hooded eyes, his pearly-white teeth covered in blood.
“You like her that much?” Derek hummed. “I can tell you that she doesn’t feel the same.”
“Shut up,” I snarled. “Where is she?”
“She cried in my arms when I picked her up off the street like the dirty whore she is.”
I hit him again, this time so hard that he fell to the ground. And when he opened that stupid fucking mouth again, I dropped to my knees, grabbed two handfuls of his hair, and slammed his head on the floor.
And all that fucker did was laugh.
“Next time I see her, I’m going to fuck her until she screams for me to stop.”
Slam.
“I bet her pussy is tight as fuck if you’re this obsessed with her.”
Slam.
“You wish she loved you like you do her.”
After another slam, the pink-haired bitch got between us and pushed me back. I held back my fist because I wasn’t going to hit her and get thrown in jail—I really wouldn’t find Athena then—and stood.
“Relax,” she said. “Who are you looking for?”
“The girl he just had over,” I growled.
She helped Derek to his feet, but he pushed her away. After rolling her eyes, she shook her head and walked to the couch, grabbing a pack of cigarettes.
“Sweet girl,” the pink-haired girl said, opening up the door to the balcony and lighting up a cigarette. She puffed on it and blew it out the door, drawing her silky purple robe together. “Don’t know where she ran off to though.”
“So, she was here?” I asked, cutting my gaze to my brother.
Derek raised his hands, as if he had done nothing wrong, and I stared at him for a few more moments to figure him out. He liked Athena, and if he had her alone, of course he would try to do something with her.
He wouldn’t have brought her all the way here and not made a move.
Once I finally broke my glare, I stormed to every single room in his apartment, yanking open all the closet doors, looking underneath all the beds, pulling out all his shit to see where he had hidden her.
She had to be fucking here.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Derek shouted, following me around, but not attempting to stop me. He might’ve been my older brother, but he knew I would kick his ass if I found her here. “I already told you that she’s not here.”
“Where did she go?!”
“She left.” Derek shook his head. “Why don’t you fucking believe me?”
I twirled around, grabbed him by his neck, and slammed him up against the wall. “I don’t believe you because you’ve been trying to fuck up my life since we were kids. And there isn’t a better time to do that than now, when I’ve finally fallen in love with a girl.”
The words slipped out of my mouth before I could stop them. It was the first time I had said it aloud—I had thought it a million times—but to hear those words … it was jarring. I had never loved anyone the way I loved her.
And when I’d finally gotten close enough, she was gone.
Derek’s lips curled into a smirk. “You love her?”
Flaring my nostrils, I shoved him back and stormed out of the room and to the front door. The pink-haired girl flicked her cigarette out onto the balcony and closed the doors, her robe now drenched in rainwater.
“If I see her, I’ll holler.”
“Please, fucking don’t,” I murmured underneath my breath.
I didn’t need Athena running around with someone like Derek or her, who apparently liked torture. It would’ve been completely fine, but I really, really didn’t like her fucking vibe. It gave off predator.
And I didn’t want her convincing Athie to try being a masochist for Derek.
So, I left. And when I had absolutely nowhere else to turn, nowhere else to check, and nobody else to call, I drove back to the apartment and parked in the underground lot. I pressed my lips together and tried to hack my brain for something—anything.
Where could she have gone off to? Why hadn’t she answered any of my calls? Was she that angry at me? Would she let me explain? And would she believe me if she did give me the chance? She had been so sad at Radiant when I locked eyes with her.
My clothes stuck to my body from the rain. I stepped onto the elevator and hit the button to close the doors. I paced inside it and ran a hand through my hair, my mind buzzing.
“What am I going to fucking do?”
The elevator stopped on the main floor, and the doors opened.
Halfway into the elevator, the woman stopped. I lifted my gaze to see the woman I had been looking for all night, her cheeks stained with tears and her eyes wide as she looked at me.
“Charlie …”
My eyes widened twice as much as hers did. “Athena …”