Page 111 of Unleashed By Eden

“You’re on a Qantas flight. Your boarding pass is at gate fifty-six. If you don’t go now, you’ll miss it, and then Chris will be even more homicidal than he already is.”

“Shit.”

Gate fifty-six is practically in another zip code. I don’t have time to think or argue.

I don’t want to go. Every cell in my body rejects the idea of leaving him.

But this isn’t just about Carter anymore—this is my job, my reputation. And right now, I’m radioactive.

I run.

I blow past designer shops and crying kids and people carrying duty-free bags the size of a small suitcase. I leap onto a travelator and sprint down the middle of it, lungs burning, calves screaming. The lights overhead turn into a flickering tunnel.

Halfway there, I yank out my phone to text Carter and nearly drop it. I fumble it again, hands shaking, and finally flip it upright—

I jab the screen.

Nothing.

Black.

“Come on,” I rasp, hitting the screen again. “Come on, you piece of—”

It’s dead.

“FUCK!” I let out a sharp, ugly sound that earns me a side-eye from a businessman. I couldn’t care less. I shove the useless thing into my pocket and keep running.

I need to tell him. I need to explain. I need him to hear my voice.

Carter lives under a microscope every damn day. His every move dissected, every breath recorded, yet he still fights like hell to keep the last scraps of his life private. And now even that—the one corner of himself he guarded, the one part he never shared with the world—has been ripped away from him. Violated and exposed.

I can’t wrap my head around what that’s doing to him.

The idea of him seeing those pictures—our pictures—my mouth floods, and I swallow it back down.

Somewhere over the speakers, my name cracks through the terminal commotion.

“Paging Violet Henderson. Passenger Violet Henderson, this is the final boarding call for Qantas Flight 508 to Sydney. Please proceed immediately to gate fifty-six.”

My heart thrashes hard enough to bruise bone.

When I skid up to the gate, chest heaving, the attendant isn’t impressed.

“You’re lucky,” she says. “We’re about to close the doors.”

“Sure,” I manage, out of breath. “Feeling real lucky right now.”

My vomit breath nearly makes me gag again.

She scans the boarding pass that’s already been printed and hands it over.

“Straight down the jet bridge,” she adds. “They’re waiting.”

The terminal noise fades behind me, replaced by the low drone of the aircraft and the hiss of air-conditioning.

I reach my seat, and everything inside me is scoured out. My job is gone. My reputation is hanging by a thread I can’t see. My photos—my art—have been twisted into something ugly with my name printed underneath. I’m boarding a flight home with no way to contact Carter, no way to explain.

The worst part is, I don’t know how to fix this.