17. Kingston
KINGSTON
My hand shakes around my phone as I stalk back and forth in front of the glass doors leading out to the garden.
After Tadhg dragged us inside, concerned for our safety, Tomasz followed me down to the ground level. He watches me like a hawk because he’s not stupid. I’m climbing the walls, looking for a way out. A way to go after Katherine.
Sweat rolls down my back, my heart rate hasn’t come down since our run, and my lungs feel tight.
What isn’t Alex telling me?
“I’m on my way back,” he says, that deep voice calm and soothing. Too bad it’s not working on me right now. I’m fucking vibrating.
What the hell happened out there? I still can’t wrap my head around it. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t get my hopes up ? What does that even mean?
“My team is on it,” he continues, “but I want to know what you saw. Anything you heard.”
“I told the detective everything?—”
“I know,” he says gently. There’s a beat of silence. Then, “I’m kicking myself for leaving this morning.”
It’s a confession I never saw coming.
From the moment we met, Alexander Hunt has been disciplined, decisive, and stoic. To hear him second-guess himself takes some of the anger.
“Of course you had to go.” Not many CEOs would lose sleep over one of their employees taking a bullet, let alone get on a plane to go see how they’re doing. Alex is one in a million. Katherine knew that, somehow, even before they started seeing each other.
“Yeah, but maybe?—”
The indecision in his voice makes my chest ache, which is saying something considering I already feel weighed down like a car parked its front tire on my rib cage.
“Let’s not do this,” I say.
“This?”
“The ‘What if’ game. What if you hadn’t flown to Boston this morning? What if I hadn’t gone looking for Gabe?”
I don’t know which is worse. Watching the woman you love being shoved in a car while your bodyguard holds you back from chasing after her, or being a state away and unable to start the search. I can almost imagine him pacing up and down the aisle of his private jet like a caged tiger.
“What do you mean, looking for Gabe?” he asks.
I collapse onto one of the low sofas, dragging a hand down my face, and fill him in on everything he missed after he left. “I keep wondering what would have happened if I’d stayed with her.”
“You’d very likely be in an ambulance behind Roman.”
He sounds so certain. The only thing I’m sure about is there’s a giant hole where my heart used to be. The woman I’ve counted as my best friend for most of my life was forcefully taken from me, from us, and I’m sitting here doing nothing.
I hear him sigh. “I thought he was finally getting past all that shit with Henry.”
How do you get over gaslighting of that proportion? Especially when you’re young and impressionable.
“I know he was worried initially…” Alex says. “About Katherine, I mean. But he’s crazy about her. I’ve never seen him rearrange his life like this. He’s sleeping more than ever. It’s like she’s this magical calm pill. And that’s still not enough to trust her.”
He voices the same confusion and frustration that I feel.
Deeper, really, because I’m just coming into this thing with Gabe.
But he lived it. He was Gabe’s shoulder to cry on back when it all went down.
Alex is the rock who’s supported the friendship for the decade and a half. Is he tired of that role? Frustrated?
Trauma rarely has a linear timeline, in my experience.
“How’s he doing?”
Those three little words are soft, cocooned with concern, and they reach down deep inside me, bathing me with warm fuzzies I should not be feeling right now.
Not when our girl was just taken. But I can’t stop the feeling because it’s so fucking obvious how much Alex loves his best friend.
He might not be in love with him, but the way he cares is legendary.
I close my eyes and steady my breathing. “Not great. It’s been one thing after another. He misses you.”
There’s another pause, and it’s easy to imagine him sitting on that plane, wrestling with himself.
“I’ll be home soon. Then we’re gonna go get our girl.”
I swallow the hope that surges inside me. It feels like, if I’m too sure, the universe will find a new way to fuck me over. Which is ridiculous. I know it. And yet, it doesn’t stop the caution sweeping through me.
It’s always the same. I have it too good.
No one deserves to be so blessed. And if I’m not careful, everything will get snatched away.
Which is in direct contradiction to my love of stunts and adventure sports.
Then again, those are the few times when everything gets quiet and I live peacefully with myself.
The voice isn’t entirely wrong. I was just settling into this amazing new life with Katherine and Gabe and Alex. Finding my joy and warming up to getting exactly what I want, and now she’s gone. Just gone…
“I should have told her.” The words tumble from my lips, a quiet censure.
“Told her what?” Alex asks, just as quietly.
My eyes water. “That I love her.”
“She knows.”
“She doesn’t.” I grit my teeth, frustration welling with the fear. “I’ve been in love with her for years, and I’m telling you before I tell her. What the fuck is wrong with me?”
“Nothing. Not a damn thing. King— The shock from my sister’s death was a black cloud over my life for years. I didn’t want to lose anyone else I loved, so the easiest way to ensure that…”
“Was to not love anyone?”
“Not let anyone else in my heart. My parents and Gabe. That was it. That was safe.”
But it wasn’t safe. Because life without love is… bland. Boring. Easy but unfulfilling. Why else would people spend so much time and energy searching for their other half? Just look at all those dating apps.
“Loving from half a world away isn’t living either.” Just like Alex, I was being safe. Existing.
I hear Gabe and his bodyguards upstairs, the low rumble of their discussion.
Have the cops cleared out? Curiosity prickles but the part of me that’s still in denial thinks that if I don’t go back up there, then none of this is real.
I can just stick my head in the sand a little longer, and Katherine will walk through the front door, gorgeous, sassy.
I know what an idiot I am.
Tomasz stands at the base of the stairs, watching me like a hawk. It’s nothing personal. I just figured if I fired him, he could leave and so could I.
“You’re not half a world away anymore,” Alex says.
“And you’ve found someone worth opening your heart to.”
He gives a rueful laugh. “What a pair we are.”
“You mean trio.” Despite his meltdown earlier, I know Gabe is in this with us, with Katherine. I thought he was going to elbow his bodyguard in the nuts. Who knew techie guys could be so vicious?
“I guess that depends on him,” he says.
“I told him he needs to grovel.” Which right now is the least of our worries.
“Oh yeah?”
I blow out a long sigh. “Before he left, he told her she probably shouldn’t be here when he got back.”
He groans. “Gabe… man.”
“I know. It was fucked up. She just shut down, and he was off the handle.” I was firmly in the middle, hating every second of it. “And now she’s gone, and I can’t breathe.”
“King—” Alex’s voice deepens.
“Yeah?”
“I know this is hard.”
“Your best friend has been kidnapped before?” Because unless that’s the case, he couldn’t possibly know just how fucking hard this is.