Page 90 of Slow Burn

I don’t say anything in response, because I still haven’t accepted the fact that Lyla is leaving. I certainly don’t feel like explaining it’s because of me.

“I’m right, aren’t I? Lyla’s leaving?”

“She got a job in the city,” I say.

“And you’re okay with that?” he asks, his eyebrows twitching upward in surprise.

I sit back down behind the desk, and start rearranging a stack of papers to make me look occupied. “I don’t have a choice.”

He scoffs. “Bullshit you don’t. Your pride is wounded, but if you could look past it for once in your life, you’d see that you have something worth fighting for. Just because you made a mistake, doesn’t mean you can’t fix it. Take it from me, son. A little wounded pride can really get in the way of getting what we really want. What we need. It’s fine to lick your wounds, but sometimes in order to heal, you have to do the hard thing.”

I glance around the room as if looking at the entirety of my father’s handiwork. “Coming from the man who ran this place into the ground before he was ever willing to make the tough decision, do the hard thing.”

“Listen, I know I’ve made plenty of mistakes. I wasn’t a perfect dad, nor was I ever close to being a good one. After your mom left us, I was on my own to figure it all out and I know I fell short in many ways. I’ve chosen to give myself grace for that, even though you may not want to. But in doing so, I was able to learn how to let the past be the past, and focus on how I want to show up moving forward. Sometimes there’s no way to fix our mistakes, so that’s all we can do. It’s what I’ve tried to do for you, hiring Lyla. Don’t let your ego get in the way of that opportunity.”

I don’t have a chance to respond, because my phone vibrates across the desk, and when my eyes flick down, it’s Austin’s name that comes up on my screen.

“Hey man,” I say. The greeting feels wrong, too casual for the fact that this is the first time I’m talking to Austin since our fight.

Austin and I have never fought like this. We’ve had the occasional argument over work, or the usual kind of disagreements between friends, but we’ve never left it the way we did the other night. With him walking out on the conversation, telling me that I wasn’t even worth a punch in the face.

It left me gutted and raw. It was a kick to the gut when I was already down. I didn’t think I could feel much worse than I did when Lyla walked away from me, but having two Morgans do it in the span of an hour? It was a whole new low.

But it was my own damn fault, and I should have seen the consequences coming a fucking mile away. The lying and sneaking around was bound to catch up to me.

“I know I shouldn’t be calling this late,” he says, his voice almost breathless.

“You can call me anytime.”

“It’s Lyla,” he says.

Panic surges through me, because his tone tells me he isn’t talking about anything related to my relationship with her. It’s something else, something urgent. My dad is eyeing me from across the room, his brow furrowing in concern when he notices the shift in my demeanour.

“Skye and Sutton called saying she left the bar to walk home, but they can’t find her. They went after her but she was nowhere to be found in town. They think she walked home, but they called a cab and didn’t find her along the route back to Wild Sage.”

My thoughts scramble as my stomach drops, leaving behind a sweeping wave of nausea. Lyla can handle herself, she’s shown me that time and time again. But she’s also emotional, she’s been upset, and she’s been drinking. The rational part of her brain is likely offline, and that’s a dangerous state to be in.

Fuck fuck fuck. The panic turns into sheer terror, and I have to force back the thoughts of what could have happened to her. She could have fallen in a ditch off the side of the road, gotten lost on one of the backroads, or any number of things involving wildlife, or worse.

“Have you tried calling her?” I can’t seem to hide the terror in my voice.

“Uh, yeah, we tried calling her.” Austin sounds annoyed, but I know that’s just his protective streak. He only ever gets angry when someone he loves is in danger. His voice softens a bit when he speaks next. “She’s either out of service, or her phone is dead because it’s going straight to voicemail.”

“I’m on it, Austin. I’ll find her,” I say.

I’m up out of the chair, striding toward the front door before I even have a chance to think about what I’m doing, where I’m going, where I need to start looking. My hands and feet work on autopilot as I grab my keys from the dish by the front door, and slip on my boots.

My dad follows behind me, waiting for me to get off the phone and explain. He’s become close to Lyla over the last couple months, loves her like a daughter at this point.

“Keep me posted, okay?” Austin asks. “I’m in Calgary. I’ll head home now, but I won’t be back for another hour and a half or so. Beck?”

“Yeah?”

“You gotta find her before then.” His voice wobbles, and my gut twists.

“I will,” I say. I hang up the phone, and look at my dad, worry etched into every line on his face. “I need to go get Lyla. No one knows where she is.”

I’m already halfway out the door when he calls out to me.