Page 4 of Heal Me, Love Me

I sent him another text:

Call me when you get this

By the time I got downstairs, everyone else was already gathered in the lobby and I still didn’t have a text or call from Rowan. Mason was leaning against a pillar, talking animatedly with Enzo and Coach Luis. Derek stood nearby, smiling at a couple of women who’d just walked in. But still no sign of my boyfriend.

I stopped near them. “Anyone hear from Rowan yet?” I asked, although I assumed if anyone had heard from him, it would be me.

Derek lifted his gaze. “I texted him about dinner, but he hasn’t responded yet.”

I checked my phone again before I could stop myself.

Nothing.

Mason noticed. Of course he did. “You all right?”

“Yeah.”

He squinted at me. “You don’t look like it.”

“I’m fine.”

A minute later, Devon walked over, glanced at the small circle we’d formed, and asked, “Problem?”

“Rowan hasn’t shown,” Enzo said.

Devon’s brow furrowed slightly. “He in his room?”

“I knocked,” I mentioned. “But he didn’t answer. I tried texting him too.”

Mason shoved his hands in his pockets. “Should we have someone from the hotel check on him?”

Devon exhaled. “Not yet. He’s a grown man, and it hasn’t even been that long. There are a number of reasons he’s not answering. If we don’t hear from him by the time we’re done with dinner, then we can come up with a plan.”

Maybe he was right. If I weren’t in love with Rowan, I probably wouldn’t be as worried.

Devon glanced toward the doors, then back at us. “Standing around isn’t going to do any good, and we still need to eat. How about we grab something from the restaurant here? Maybe we’ll catch him when he comes back.”

I wasn’t thrilled with not searching for him immediately, but at least we weren’t leaving the building. Once inside the restaurant, the hostess led us to a table near a window where we could see the lobby, and everyone settled in.

Before I had a chance to look at the menu, my attention went straight to the dark screen in my hand. Rowan still hadn’t responded to my text or call.

Derek leaned slightly forward. “You sure Rowan didn’t say anything to anyone?”

“No,” several of us replied.

“Maybe he had his headphones in when you went to his room. Pretty sure he has those noise-canceling ones,” Enzo suggested.

“Maybe,” I agreed, and while that was a logical explanation, I was pretty sure Rowan would have seen the texts and calls on his phone screen. And if he had, then that meant something else was going on, and every possible scenario seemed worse than him ignoring me.

After all, Rowan wasn’t the disappear-without-a-word type, especially not on a night when we’d both won and should’ve been riding that high together. We should’ve been sneaking glances across the table and waiting for everyone to go to sleep so he could slip into my room.

Instead, I was sitting in a restaurant pretending not to panic while staring at a silent phone as conversations buzzed all around me. Mason recounted parts of my fight with enough exaggeration that by the end, I was pretty sure he believed I’d knocked my opponent unconscious just by staring at him. Enzo laughed at something Derek said. Devon talked to Coach Luis across the table about matchups, timing, and who’d impressed whom tonight.

For the most part, I ignored them and typed out more messages to Rowan:

Answer me

Then: