Page 46 of Justice

“Justice.” My name came out of her low and unsteady.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t think this is⁠—”

“Justice.”

Quest. Right at my shoulder, and I could’ve killed him for the timing. I let Skye’s chin go and sat back, and she pulled in a breath like she’d been underwater.

“I’m heading out,” Quest said. His face had gone serious now, the teasing all drained out of it. “But before I go, I need to talk to you. Business. Now, if you got a minute.”

I looked at him. I knew that look. That look was never nothing.

“Yeah.” I stood, buttoning my jacket, and glanced back down at Skye. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

I followed my brother off the floor and into the quiet of my office, leaving her behind.

24

SKYE

I was still sitting in the warm haze of it when Aubrey came back.

My chin still remembered his fingers. My body was still burning from that one long second where I almost let a man kiss me. Five years I’d gone without that. I sat there in a red dress, trying to talk myself down from something that felt dangerously close to happy.

Then I saw her face.

She came through those tables fast, purse-swinging, no grin, none of the loud joy she’d walked out of here with. She had that look I’d only seen on her twice in my life. Both times had been in a hospital hallway.

“We have to go.” She was already reaching for my hand. “Right now, Skye. Get up.”

“What?” I set my glass down. “What’s wrong? Is it Chase? The twins?”

“Baby, get up. Please.”

“Aubrey.” My voice came out strange to my own ears. “What is it?”

She crouched down beside my chair so nobody else could hear her. She took both my hands. Then she said the two words that ended my life for the second time.

“Roman’s here.”

I have never in my life understood the expression about the floor dropping out until that moment.

The music kept playing. People kept laughing. Somebody nearby was telling a story about a bad hand at the tables. All of that kept happening while every drop of blood in my body went straight down through the soles of my feet. The room tilted about ten degrees to the left. I gripped that table because I thought I might go down.

“No.” That was all my mouth would make. “No.”

“I saw him. Skye, I looked dead at him. It’s him.”

I was already standing. I don’t remember deciding to. My body had made the decision three seconds before my mind caught up, because my body remembered things about that man my mind had spent five years putting in boxes.

“Which side,” I whispered.

“Far side. By the long bar.” She got her arm through mine, and she turned us both toward the doors on the opposite end, putting herself on my right like a wall. “Walk with me. Don’t turn around. Don’t look for him, Skye, I mean it. Look at me.”

I looked at her. I walked. I have no memory of a single step of it.

I do remember the doors. I remember the cold air hitting my bare shoulders like a slap, and Aubrey’s hand tight around my elbow, and the valet asking us something neither of us answered. I remember thinking, in the calm dead center of the panic, that I had left half a drink on that table and a man waiting on me who thought I’d be there when he got back.