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“What?” My eyes bugged out and I shot to my feet, pointing an accusatory finger in Kline’s face. “Walter is missing, and you didn’t fucking tell me?!”
His face was a mask of shame and Ah, shit, yes, and the combination of the two sent me running for our bungalow.
“Georgia!” I heard him call after me.
But I was at a damn near sprint, racing to get inside and pack my shit. Call me a lunatic, I didn’t care. My baby was missing, and I’d be damned if he spent another lonely night in some decrepit alley in New York.
Tears filled my eyes as I pictured him walking the streets, cold, wet, and with no goddamn food.
My husband found me in the bedroom, tossing my suitcase onto the mattress.
“Baby,” he said, voice hesitant. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?” I threw my hands out in front of me in a wild, erratic gesture of isn’t it fucking obvious. “I’m packing my shit. I need to get home! Walter is missing and cold and wet and lonely and just walking the streets of New York looking for me.”
I moved toward the closet to get my clothes, but I stopped in my tracks as my brain started conjuring all of the worst scenarios. “Oh, my God!” I covered my mouth with my hand as a shocked gasp escaped my lungs. “What if he becomes desperate, Kline? What if he has no other choice but to start prostituting himself for food? You know he’s not good at making new friends! There’s no way he’s been accepted by the good crowd. He’s probably already addicted to heroin!”
“Georgie,” Kline cooed in my ear, arms wrapping around my body and pulling my back into his chest. “I’m sure Walter is fine. You know Maureen. She made sure he has one of those GPS tracking chips. I bet Cass and Thatch have already found him by this point.”
“You don’t know that! They would’ve called if they found him.” I pushed his arms away and moved into the closet, yanking clothes off the hangers.
Kline was standing by my suitcase when I strode back in with both arms full of sundresses and bikinis.
“Call the airline! We have to get on the next flight out.” I threw everything into my suitcase and headed for the bathroom to grab my toiletries.
But my husband stopped my momentum, wrapping his arms around me again and pulling me into a tight bear hug.
“We don’t have time for this!”
He kept his hold on me, lifting me into his arms and carrying me into the hallway.
“Put me down!” I tried like hell to get out of his hold as he walked down the stairs, but it was pointless. He was too strong, no matter how much adrenaline I had running through my system.
He sat me down on the kitchen island, stood between my knees, and his hands gripped my thighs to hold me in place. “I need you to take a deep breath and calm down for a minute.” His voice should have been calming, but it was just pissing me off more.
“I can’t calm down!” I shouted. “Everything is all fucked up! Our cat is missing, and you didn’t tell me. You lied to me, Kline! I feel like you keep lying to me about a lot of shit.”
His eyes turned remorseful at my accusations, but they weren’t completely complacent either. “I know I should have told you about Walter, but I didn’t want you to panic.”
“You told me everything was fine and that Walter was good, but in reality, he’s sitting in an alley shooting up heroin!”
“Baby, I—”
“Do not baby me.” I pointed my index finger at him.
His eyes narrowed, and one thing became clear. Sweet, patient Kline was losing a little of both.
I knew I was probably being a little—okay, a lot—irrational, but I couldn’t help it. Ever since the whole Rose and Ruck debacle, my husband had made it a point always to be open and honest with me, but lately, he had been doing the opposite. I knew he wasn’t happy about my job situation, yet he just kept brushing it off and refusing to discuss it.
But it was bothering him. Big. Time. And, let’s be honest, the fact that it was bothering him was really bothering me.
And now, he’d lied to me about the cat. It felt like the icing on the dishonesty cake.
“Georgia,” he started to say, but I held up my hand.
“I can’t go there right now. I need to call Cassie and see if they’ve found Walter.”
I glanced around the kitchen, but I remembered the last time I had my phone was before I had hauled ass to our bungalow. “Shit! I think I left my phone on the beach.”
Kline grabbed my bag—that he had obviously carried inside for me—from one of the barstools and reached inside. “Here.” He handed the phone to me. “Call Cassie and see if they found Walter.”
