113. Chapter One-Hundred-Twelve
Chapter One-Hundred-Twelve
Riley
Five minutes pass. Then ten. Fifteen. Fuck, it’s getting close to twenty now.
No sign of Trick.
Kian has been staring at me the whole time, too. It’s almost like he’s trying to psychically make me change my mind and let him go after Scarlett alongside Trick.
“How long has it been?” he asks again.
“Long enough,” I admit, this time.
“Twenty minutes?” he asks, making me raise an eyebrow.
He frowns at me. “It’s not like I can’t count.”
“You’ve been counting?”
“So much for Trick being the obedient one. I didn’t see him come back ten minutes ago. Did you?” He crosses his arms.
“I’m sure he has a good explanation for taking longer than he was supposed to. We’ll just have to wait for him to get back to find out what it is.”
Kian snorts. “The explanation is she’s our mate, and it’s torture to stand around doing nothing while she’s missing.”
He’s not wrong about that.
It is torture.
Every passing minute makes it harder to wait.
We don’t know what’s happening out there.
And I’m the one who needs to make the hard decisions.
I don’t think Kian understands how difficult that is.
“Well, maybe you should have packed walkie-talkies, and weatherproof gear, when you were planning this whole thing,” I suggest.
He frowns at me, and I can tell he’s absorbing the point I’m making.
He’s the reason we’re out here in the first place, instead of at the resort where we wouldn’t have had to worry about things like stingrays and storms, and food supplies.
“You’re the reason we had to land here,” he mutters.
“What’s that?” I ask, sure I heard him wrong.
He clears his throat. “I said you’re the reason we’re here instead of at the resort.”
“I don’t get it,” I admit, wondering what he’s even talking about.
“You’re not gonna like the why,” he grumbles, looking away.
“Well, you’re gonna tell me anyway.”
He sighs and looks back at me. “If we’d been at the resort this whole time, what would you have been doing?”
“Doing?” I ask, confused. “You mean laying on a lounger by the side of the pool?”
“I mean flirting with every girl that passes, while ignoring our mate who’s right there with us and can see and hear everything.”
“Oh …” I murmur, not able to argue with his point.
I would have been drinking from the second we landed and flirting with every chick who looked my way. Everyone other than the reporter, who I would be attempting to ignore completely.
“Uh huh,” he says. “I did it this way so you wouldn’t make an ass of yourself.”
Now I feel kinda bad for calling him out on the lack of foresight about the weather.
Sure, he could have checked the forecast, but he was busy thinking about more important details.
“I knew it might rain today,” I admit. “I always check that shit for the first week of the vacation, but I got so loaded yesterday I forgot all about it.”
“Well, you were justifiably pissed off about the bumpy landing.”
“It wasn’t a fun way to be jolted awake.”
Especially because it was her scream that woke me.
I wonder if I would have woken up if we didn’t have a fated connection.
Somehow, I doubt it.
The sedatives always knock me right out.
Trick has it down to an art.
I woke up because my fated mate was afraid.
And because I couldn’t admit that then, I got lost in my own fear instead of trying to do something to help her calm down.
I can’t let that happen ever again.
“I’m gonna have to get over my fear of flying.”
Kian blinks at me. “Uh, what?”
“You think Xane might give me lessons?”
“You want to learn to fly? Riley, you can’t even handle the windows in the cabin being open before take-off.”
I nod slowly. “We can fly home with them open. And I won’t take a sedative.”
Getting through that will be a good first step.
“I think that stingray replaced your brain.”
I laugh, and he rolls his eyes.
“I’m just thinking clearly for the first time in a long time,” I admit. “That’s all.”
“Yeah, sure,” he mutters.
We’re quiet for a while, and then I check the time. Thirty minutes have passed in total since Trick’s been gone. I hope he’s at least on his way back by now. The rain hasn’t let up one little bit since it got started. The longer they’re out there, the harder I’m gonna worry.