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Chapter Thirty-Seven
Ryker
Ryker’s heart skipped a beat.
“What do you mean, she’s missing? You and Ian never let her out of your sight. How can she be missing? Are you sure she isn’t just playing hide and seek?”
But that didn’t sound like Cosima. She wouldn’t leave their sides by choice and if she had been playing, she would’ve come out at the first hint of worry in their voices.
“No, she’s not playing, we’ve looked everywhere. We had a meeting down in the club and she said she would stay in the play room. She was nervous but she was being so brave and we were right here.”
“Sounds like you weren’t,” he snapped. Which was the absolute wrong thing to say.
“Don’t you fucking dare. I might’ve been on a different floor, but I didn’t fucking abandon her like you did, did I? Where the fuck were you, Ryker, huh? Where thefuckwere you?”
That was fair, but wow did it hurt. Hudson’s yelling, like a knife blade, went right between his ribs and straight into his heart. Yeah, he’d fucked up, big time. Huge. He’d been sick about it all week but he hadn’t done anything to fix it. And now look what had happened.
“Hey, hey, hey,” he heard Ian yelling, and then there was a scuffle in the background before Ian’s voice was the one on the phone instead of Hudson’s. “Alright, we’re all on speaker now and no one’s going to yell. Because it doesn’t matter. What matters now is Coco. I have a really bad feeling about this. There’s no way she would’ve left the loft without us.”
“No,” Ryker agreed. He hoped eventually they’d get her comfortable enough to take a walk down the street by herself during the day, get her a driver’s license so she could visit friends or take classes or whatever she wanted to do, but she wasn’t ready for that. It was exhausting for her to go down to the club for a couple of hours even with friends she knew, and she liked walking outside but only when she had at least one of them with her, holding her hand.
He regretted all the time he’d wastednotholding her hand. Not tucking her under his arm, not spanking her bottom, not taking the scruff of her neck between his teeth while he fucked her, not having her curled up at his feet in a nest of blankets. He regretted every single second he could’ve been touching her and didn’t because it didn’t make it any easier now that she was missing.
He couldn’t imagine being more panicked than he was right now, worry gnawing at his stomach. He wanted to shove his feet in his boots and start prowling the streets for her but that wouldn’t do any good, it would only waste time and energy. They needed more information.
“So what would’ve gotten her to leave?” Ian asked.
“What if she thought she was destroying our friendship and Ryker would come back if she left?”
Hudson’s question made his stomach plummet. Was this his fault? Had he made this happen by leaving?
“No,” Ian insisted. “She’s been asking about that for days and we’ve both told her in no uncertain terms that it’s a problem that her daddies need to work out and her leaving wouldn’t solve anything. I don’t know about you, Huds, but I told her if she even thought about running away I would light up her ass like she’d never felt before. And she promised she wouldn’t. Pinky promised. You know she takes that seriously.”
She absolutely did, earnest little princess.
A terrible thought hit Ryker’s brain like a ringing gong. “Judah.”
“You really think she would’ve gone with that fucker?” Hudson demanded.
“I don’t know. I’d like to think she wouldn’t, that she was happy with you guys—”
“Withus,” Ian interjected.
Though Ryker didn’t feel like he deserved that given that he’d up and left when she needed him most, he’d take it.
He shoved his free hand into his pocket as he stalked the room from end to end and back again, looking out at the waves crashing onto shore like all the horrible images assaulting his thoughts.
“Maybe she decided to go back to him,” Ian continued. “It takes a lot of people a few tries to leave their abusers for good.”
“But why didn’t she tell us? At least leave a note?”
He had to agree with Hudson. That didn’t make any sense. Even if she thought they’d argue with her and try to convince her not to go back to him, she would’ve sent them a message or something once she’d gone. Cosima wasn’t one to flounce without a word. Or flounce at all. Sure, some littles were bratty but he’d never seen even a glimmer of that in her amber eyes. Actually, he’d love to see her try—that’d be funny as hell and he would have a fantastic time correcting her.
“I don’t think that’s likely,” Ian chimed in.
“I don’t think so either,” Ryker concurred. “Any reason to think someone broke in? Any signs of a struggle? Like someone made her go? Did she take her phone?”
He hated the idea of someone grabbing Cosima, putting marks on her that weren’t made out of love. If someone had taken her, he was going to hunt them down and kill them.
