Page 73 of Wild Promise

Or never. Never worked, too.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Zane

The busy chatter of The Summit was an annoying buzz in my brain, and I wished it would just go away. We’d been nonstop go from the minute my shift had started. I hadn’t even had time for a piss.

Normally, it wouldn’t bother me. Hell, normally I’d love it. But tonight, all I wanted was to leave the upbeat party atmosphere and go hang out with Melina. In private.

I missed her, body and soul, and it hadn’t even been a whole day.

“I wish your girlfriend’s office wasn’t so close to mine,” Nate complained as he propped himself up against the side of the bar.

Despite the drink order I was in the middle of preparing, I came to a dead stop. “Tell me.”

“Not sure I can give you much. I only caught the tail end, but Wyatt left her office looking tense, and your woman looked like she’d been run over.”

“Fucking hell.” I scanned the busy room.

Caleb was in the back on a break and Larissa was alone on the floor. I’d feel like shit leaving them to handle this place, yet there was really no other choice.

“Go,” Nate urged. “I know how to mix a drink.”

I didn’t deserve friends like him. Like any of them, really. But I’d spent my whole life trying to earn it anyway—showing up, being the life of every party, making myself indispensable—because that was easier than sitting still long enough to feel the hole my parents had left behind.

Fuck, I was still messed up in so many ways.

But with Melina by my side, it all felt manageable. I was a different person with her. I just hoped she knew it. Even though I still hadn’t told her.

“I owe you one,” I told Nate, handing him my apron.

He frowned as he came around the bar. “I’m not helping you so I can get something in return. That’s not how this friendship works. Besides, I’m not really doing it for you at all. I’m doing it for Melina. She needs you.”

A sense of urgency hit as I launched myself from behind the bar and raced toward the lobby. People turned with looks of curiosity, but I ignored them all.

The door to the guest services office was closed, but I ignored that too. Without knocking, I plowed straight in, my heart still trying to catch up with me.

Her head snapped in my direction, but her face was blank. Not a hint of emotion. Like she’d decided I wasn’t worth the energy.

“Hey,” I said through the lump in my throat. “Are you okay?”

She shrugged, her gaze filled with nothing but dull, lifeless apathy. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

Fuck. No spark, no drive, not even a smile. Whatever had happened had put her on the defensive. Melina was going to freeze me out.

“I don’t know,” I croaked, finding it harder to breathe by the second. “Nate said you were upset. He thought maybe you needed my help.”

Her eyes flashed bright with sudden animosity. “Your help? Don’t you think you’ve done enough?”

There’s the fire. But fuck, it was aimed at me.

“I’d do anything for you.”

With a shake of her head, she turned her attention back to her desk as she started packing her work into a drawer. “That’s the problem, Zane. I didn’t want you to do anything. But you did anyway.”

I stood in frozen silence, my mind a black hole and my heart dying in my chest.

She shut the drawer with force, the sound echoing in the tiny room and shattering my hope.