Eli intercepts him, driving him back into the crowd with both hands. Connor grabs another guy by the shirt before he can decide whether he wants to be stupid. Tate moves toward Olivia’s group, trying to carve space around them.Too much movement. Too fast.
The crowd starts to surge. Someone screams. Someone shoves. The music keeps pounding for another few seconds before cutting off abruptly, leaving the panic louder than the bass.
I keep one hand on the first guy’s neck, pinning him down. “You touch her again,” I say near his ear, “you lose the hand.”
He freezes.
Good.
I shove him down and turn.
Olivia.
For one second, I had her. I knew where she was. Tessa had her arm. Mia was beside her. Tate was moving in. Now the crowd rolls between us. A wall of bodies. Moving. Shoving. Panicking. I lose visual. One second. That’s all.
One fucking second.
And my blood goes cold. Not rage. Not anger. Fear. Sharp. Immediate. Unacceptable.
“Olivia!” I roar. People flinch away from the sound.I shove through the crowd, eyes cutting left, right, over heads, between shoulders.
Tessa’s voice cuts through somewhere to my right, shouting Olivia’s name too. Mia is yelling. Eli is trying to push against the surge. Connor’s got one man shoved against a post. Tate is swearing near the table. Too much noise. Too many bodies.
No Olivia.
My hands curl into fists.
The room narrows down to one absence.
Her.
I move harder, pushing bodies out of my way without caring who hits the floor.
She promised. Stay close. No wandering. No disappearing. But crowds don’t give a fuck about promises. And if someone else touched her while I was putting down a drunk asshole, if someone used that chaos, if I let one hand on her hip distract me from the threat that mattered…
I’ll tear this place apart.
“Find her!” I bark at the prospects.
Eli’s head snaps toward me. His face drains. Because he knows.
They all know.
This fight wasn’t the danger. It was the opening.
And I just lost sight of what’s mine.
The music cuts wrong. Not all at once. Not cleanly. It stutters first, the bass jerking through the room like something tripped over the cord, then drops into a warped echo before dying beneath the swell of voices. The absence of it makes everything worse. Without the music holding the chaos together, all that’s left is shouting.
Bodies push from every direction. Someone slams into my shoulder.
Tessa’s hand slips from my wrist.
“Mia!” I call, but my voice gets swallowed immediately.
Another body knocks into me from behind, shoving me forward hard enough that I catch myself on the edge of a table. Glass skitters across the floor near my boot. Someone screams. Someone curses. A man laughs like he thinks this is part of the fun until someone else shoves him hard enough to change his mind.
I try to turn around. I can’t. There are too many people. Too many arms. Too many shoulders. Too many faces flashing past mine, none of them the one I’m looking for.
