Chapter 29
The night was the longest I had ever lived through.
I didn't sleep. I couldn't. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw him walking away from me down that long dark street, and every time I opened them, the apartment was still empty and my phone was still silent and the weight in my chest was still there,
pressing down on me like something I couldn't shake.
I turned and tossed and pulled his hoodie tighter around my shoulders, and I called him again at two in the morning, and again at three, and again at four.
Each time, the phone rang and rang and went to voicemail, and each time I hung up without leaving a message because I had already said everything I could think of to say.
Please be okay.
I'm so worried about you.
Where are you?
Come home.
None of it had brought him back.
The hours crawled by like they were stuck in molasses, and the sky outside my window stayed dark for so long that I started to wonder if the sun would ever rise again.
But eventually the grey light of dawn crept through the curtains, and I was still on the couch, still wearing his hoodie, still clutching my phone like a lifeline.
I had been staring at the ceiling for hours, my mind spinning through every possible scenario, each one worse than the last.
What if he had been in an accident? What if he was lying in a hospital somewhere, unconscious, unable to tell anyone that he had someone waiting for him at home?
What if something had happened to him on that mysterious work he never talked about, the one that made his jaw tighten whenever I asked?
I didn't know anything. I didn't know where he worked or who his friends were or what his last name was. I didn't have a single number to call besides his own, and his own went straight to voicemail every single time.
I had never felt so helpless in my entire life.
By the time the sun was fully up, I had made a decision.
I couldn't go to work. I couldn't sit at my desk and pretend to focus on spreadsheets while my mind was somewhere out there in the city, searching for him.
I logged into the HR portal and submitted a request for a week off, typing out a vague excuse about personal reasons, and then I closed my laptop before I could second-guess myself.
I couldn't just sit here. I had to do something.
But what? Where could I even start?
I paced the apartment for what felt like hours, my mind racing through every detail I could remember about him, every small clue I had overlooked.
He had found me in the alley that first night, which meant he knew my route somehow.
He was waiting there for me, which meant he also used that route often.
That meant someone might have seen him, might know him, might be able to tell me something.
It wasn't much. It was barely anything. But it was the only thread I had to pull on.
I put on my shoes and left the apartment.
The alley looked exactly the same as it had that night, narrow and grey, the walls streaked with rain and the pavement cracked underfoot. I stood at the mouth of it, the same spot where he had cornered me, the same spot where he had stood waiting for who knew how long, watching for me to come home.
I didn't know what I was hoping for. Maybe that he would be here again, leaning against the wall with that infuriating half-smile, asking me if I had forgotten him. Maybe that some trace of him would still linger, some clue that would tell me where to go next.
But the alley was empty, and the hours passed, and the only thing that waited for me was the cold.
People walked past without looking at me, their faces blurred and indistinct, and the sun moved across the sky and the shadows shifted and I stood there like a fool, waiting for a man who might not even be in the city anymore.
A few people gave me strange looks, and one woman asked if I was lost, and I said no, I was just waiting, but the words sounded hollow even to my own ears.
He had waited here for me. He had stood in this exact spot, in the cold, watching for me to come home. He had been patient. He had waited.
So I waited too.
But as the afternoon stretched on and the light started to fade, I realized that he wasn't coming. He wasn't here. He wasn't anywhere that I knew how to find.
The lump in my throat grew heavier, and my eyes burned, and I had to press my hand against my mouth to keep from crying right there on the street.
And then I remembered the bar.
The one where I had gone that night, the one where I had asked for an escort, the one where I had stumbled into a room full of men in dark suits and found him sitting on a couch like he owned the place.
He had worked there, hadn't he? That was where I had found him, where I had chosen him, where this whole thing had started.
It wasn't much of a lead, but it was the only one I had left.
I started walking before I could talk myself out of it.
The bar looked the same as it had that night, dark windows and warm light spilling through the door, the kind of place that felt expensive without being flashy.
I had been so drunk the last time I walked through these doors that I barely remembered what it looked like, but standing here now, sober and desperate, I could see that it was the kind of establishment that catered to people with money, people who expected discretion and got it.
I pulled on the door, and it opened, and I stepped inside to find a man behind the counter wiping glasses with a rag that looked older than me.
He was not the manager I remembered. This man was older, thinner, with a face that looked like it had never smiled once in its entire existence.
"We're closed," he said without looking up.
"I need information," I said, my voice coming out breathless and desperate. "There was a man who worked here. An escort. I was here some months ago, and I was with him, and I need to find him."
The man set down his glass and looked at me. His eyes were cold and flat, the kind of eyes that had seen everything and stopped caring a long time ago.
"We don't give out information about our employees."
"Please," I said. "It's an emergency. He's missing. I haven't heard from him in days, and I'm worried something happened to him, and I don't know where else to go."
The man's expression didn't change. "Talk to the manager who was working that night. He'll be here at six. I can't help you."
"You don't understand-"
"I understand that I like my job," he said, picking up another glass. "Come back at six."
I stood there for a moment, my hands clenched at my sides, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to shake him, to force him to tell me what he knew, to make him understand that I wasn't just some curious customer, that someone's life might be depending on this.
But his face was like stone, and I knew I was getting nowhere.
So I left.
I waited outside the bar for four hours.
I sat on the curb with my back against the brick wall and my knees pulled up to my chest, and I watched the sun move across the sky and the shadows grow longer and the city rush past me like I was invisible.
I checked my phone every few minutes, hoping for a message that never came, and I tried his number over and over, and every time it went straight to voicemail.
Please, I thought. Please be okay. Please let me find you.
At six o'clock, the manager I remembered finally arrived.
When the manager finally appeared, I almost didn't recognize him.
He looked different in the daylight, less like the man who had smiled at me and taken my money and told me he would bring me the best they had.
He walked past me without a glance, heading for the back office, and I had to call out to stop him.
"Excuse me. I need to ask you something."
He turned, and his eyes moved over my face without any sign of recognition.
"Please come in. What would you like to drink?"
"I'm not here for a drink." I stood up, my hands shaking. "I was here a few weeks ago. Late at night. I asked for an escort, and you sent a handsome man with tattoos and dark hair. He's about 6'4, I think..."
The manager's expression didn't change, but something in his posture shifted. "We get a lot of customers. I don't remember everyone."
"You said to wait in room three. You said you would bring me the best you had."
I was pleading now, and I didn't care. "Please. I need to find him. He's been gone for days and he won't answer his phone and I don't know if he's okay. I don't know where else to go." I slid some hundred dollars toward him.
The manager's smile faded. "We don't give out information about our employees. You know that."
"I'll pay you anything," I said, pulling out my wallet. "I just need to know who he is. Where he lives. Anything."
The manager looked at me for a long moment, then at the money in my hand, then back at my face. He must have seen something there, something desperate and raw, because he sighed and gestured for me to follow him inside.
"I can show you the employee records," he said quietly. "But you didn't get it from me."
I nodded, my hands shaking as I followed him to the back office.
"What room did I take you to?" he asked.
"Room three," I said without hesitation. "You told me to wait in room three."
He was quiet for a moment, and then he shook his head. "You never came to room three. I brought the escorts to room three, and you weren't there. I thought you had left."
I stared at him. "That's not possible. I was there. I walked into a room and he was there, sitting on the couch, and there were other men in suits lining the walls-"
The manager's face went pale.
"What room number did you say?"
"Three," I said, but my voice had lost its certainty.
He sat down at a computer and typed something, his fingers moving fast, and then he turned the screen so I could see.
CCTV footage, grainy and black and white, from the night I had stumbled into this bar and changed my life forever. I watched myself walk down the hallway, swaying slightly, my wine-red dress bright even in the low light. I watched myself pass room three, where the manager had told me to wait in.
I hadn't gone into room three.
The numbers on the doors were small, almost invisible in the dim lighting, and I had been drunk and heartbroken and not paying attention. I had walked past room three and kept going, and I had opened the door to room four instead.
"You went into the wrong room," the manager said, his voice tight. "Room four was reserved for private guests. Very important guests. The kind of guests that even my staff don't dare to approach."
I stared at the frozen image on the screen, at the door I had walked through, at the man who had been waiting for me on the other side.
"He wasn't an escort...?" I said. It wasn't a question, I already dreaded the answer.
The manager shook his head. "No."
"Then who is he?"
He looked at me for a long moment, and something in his expression shifted. Pity, maybe. Or warning.
"I can't tell you that," he said. "And if you're smart, you won't try to find out."
My heart dropped to my stomach.
He wasn't an escort. He had never been an escort. He was someone else entirely, someone important enough that the manager couldn't even say his name, someone who had let me believe he was poor and unemployed and desperately in need of saving.
He had lied to me. From the very beginning, he had lied. Caspian had lied. Was that even his real name? Or was that a lie too?
I didn't know who he was. I didn't know his name or where he lived or what he did. I didn't know anything about him, not really. And I had given my trust, my home, my heart to a man whose name I didn't even know.