AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The fact that he was asking Axel specifically was odd to me. “I’ll help.”
Axel didn’t hesitate. “No. I’ll go with you.”
I don’t know why, but I loved him more for that. Volunteering without a blink.
“What about us?” Corey said, meaning him and myself.
“Let us leave,” Blake said. “Wait a bit, then you go in another direction. Then have Kayli do the same with someone else.” He crossed the room close to Corey and put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t go alone. Don’t be alone right now. Always be with someone you trust.”
“What happened?” Corey said. “Who did you trust? Did that person take your phone?”
I wanted to know this too. It wasn’t like him to lose his phone, least of all to someone like Alice.
But she was tricky. Conniving. Who knew what she did to him.
Blake’s lips twitched and the gold flecks in his eyes seemed to dim. “I’ll tell you later.”
That broke me. Whatever it was, it was bad.
Blake released Corey and met my gaze. The tortured look he had before disappeared, and he flashed that foxlike smile, only it felt forced. “Don’t wait for us. Get yourselves out of town.” He turned away, and he and Axel rushed out together.
Alice was possibly on the way. Staying didn’t seem like the smart thing to do.
The nurse and one of the security guards left with Blake and Axel. The second guard stayed with us. “We should get out of this room,” he said. “We’ll make it look like you left on your own and we’re trying to find you. It’ll be more believable.”
Corey nodded and reached for my arm. “We have to go.”
“I should change clothes.”
“No time,” he said. “Let’s leave now.”
Corey had me follow him through a maze of hallways within the hospital. We found an empty hallway on the ground floor and waited to give Axel and Blake a chance to make some distance.
Corey used his phone quickly, making contact to bring the others in on Blake’s plan.
“This was exactly what Dr. Roberts was afraid of,” I said as Corey tapped at his phone.
Corey slowed his tapping a little as he spoke. “She’s not after you right now. She’s after Blake.”
“And he led her here.” I motioned to the hospital.
“She could have gotten to us at any time. We’ve been at our apartments at the Sargent Jasper.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Waiting.”
“You wanted her to come find you?”
“We’re ready if she shows up. We should leave, but we’ll be okay there, for now.” He finished what he was doing and focused on me. “We should go there.”
I wasn’t so sure this was a good idea, but it was a better idea than staying at the hospital and exposing the Academy further. “We shouldn’t make her wonder about the hospital and take a closer look.”
“She shouldn’t find anything unusual here,” he said but also put a hand over his chest, and his eyes flicked from me to the hall to one of the doors nearby and to other random locations. He was thinking deeply, planning.
We had to stop involving the Academy. They were innocent. “If they want to chase us, we have to let them for a while.”
“It can’t be too obvious.”
“Let’s show I’m leaving,” I said. “Let’s get security footage. Let’s show her…I don’t know. Let me get some random tests done. And then leave like this is a normal hospital.”
This seemed to spark an idea in him. “Let her break into the security office?”
“It’s what we’d do,” I said. “Having too secure a security office for a hospital would be noticeable. Let me go back to the room. I’ll get taken around for a few tests before I leave for the apartments. She’s chasing Blake, right? Have someone watch whoever breaks into the security room. Let’s just make it god-awful obvious.”
He brushed his palm across his chin. “You’re right. But…you should go. I’d need to set up something…”
“A computer thing?”
He smirked. “Sure. Computer things. That’s what I do.”
“And if you’re ready for her at the apartments, that’s where I should go.”
He nodded. “Take the long route around if you want, but get there. Brandon’s on his way for you. He should be here in a minute. I’ll still leave separately ahead of you.”
“With someone.”
“Marc’s nearly here,” he said. “We’ll mix it up. Make it harder to follow everyone just in case, but still stick together.” He paused and reached out for me.
His hug surrounded me, stilling my body. I hadn’t even noticed I was shaking until then.
My fingers curled into fists at his chest, gripping at his shirt, the material tightening between my fingertips. “It’s not our fault,” I said.
He sighed, and I felt the heat of his breath on my scalp. “It’s mine.”
“No,” I said and pulled back a bit so I could look at him. When he wouldn’t meet my eyes, I placed palms at his cheeks, feeling the coarse hair where he hadn’t shaved in a while. His hair was so blond I couldn’t tell before. He finally focused on me, his eyes, usually happy, now deep and sad like his brother’s were. “It’s hers. Alice. Whoever she is with. We’re not murderers. We’re not kidnappers.”
He sighed and nodded. “I just feel like if I hadn’t been…messing in that world…”
I thought he meant his criminal past, which is why Alice and old Mr. Murdock thought him valuable. It was why they tried to kidnap him, and how this all started. I lowered my hands to his shoulders. “You wouldn’t have found the Academy. You wouldn’t have found me.”
“You would be safe.”
“I’d be in jail,” I said. “And I wouldn’t have you.”
This seemed to perk him up a bit. He scanned my face, starting with my eyes and then down to my chin.
He stopped at my lips for a long time before he drifted up to my eyes again.
“I want…” he started to say but he stopped.
I didn’t wait for him to ask. I leaned up, and I kissed him.
I meant to do it once, because I was still unsure how he felt about me. On the ship, he said he was interested in me, like Axel, Brandon and the others.
But that one short kiss I meant to leave with him, he leaned into it. In a breathless moment, he roughly turned me, pressed me against the wall of the hallway and kissed hard against me.
It was like unleashing something that had been brewing for much too long.
It wasn’t the time, and we had to focus, but I couldn’t help it. I welcomed it, pressing my hands to the back of his neck like I needed more.
The scruff of hair around his mouth scratched at my skin as he deepened the kiss. He pressed his hands to my hips, holding me against the wall like that, with a thigh pressed between mine.
He pulled away first, stopping, swallowing air. “Been waiting to do that.”
“If I’d known, I would have done it sooner,” I said.
“I won’t wait next time,” he said, fishing his phone out of his pocket to check it. “Marc’s almost here. Can you find your way back?”
“Shouldn’t I not go back alone?”
He nodded and motioned. “I’ll walk with you as far as a lobby or nurses’ station, whatever place we find first with other people. Go find…maybe Dr. Roberts. Talk to him. Don’t deal with anyone you don’t recognize right now, even if they say they are Academy. Just…for now, no one you don’t recognize.”
I’d have to explore this new connection with him later. My relationship with him, his brother, Axel and the others—it was complicated. However, since they all knew what was going on now, something had changed in me. If they wanted me, I accepted it. I just needed to be sure they were aware they weren’t exclusive. At least not now. I wasn’t sure how open relationships worked, and I wanted to set some ground rules. But for the moment, survival came first.
??????
r />
Corey left me when we hit an area where other people were. Once there, he took one hallway, I took another. Nurses and security, plus patients and doctors, were out in the hallway, making it look like a busy morning.
Trying to look normal.
Trying to appear to anyone coming in that this was a typical morning at your average hospital. Except I found security nearly everywhere and nurses in full force.
All because of us.
