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I frowned. “What do you mean, ‘shit’?”
A door opened down the hallway. The nightclub’s music blared loud, and someone said “Hey!”
Not Kash/Definitely Chase cursed again, but the door was pushed wider and we heard more shouting, then a stampede was happening, and all the hallway lights were switched on, and he was gone.
I mean, it didn’t happen just like that. He didn’t vanish.
His whole face pinched in on itself. He took two steps back, grabbed the door, opened the door, and was out the door. The SUV’s back door was shoved open and I surged forward.
I had to see. I had to see.
I saw—and my lungs seized.
They stopped working, too, because there was no way.
I was seeing a ghost.
Chrissy Hayes was staring right at me, and there wasn’t a flicker of recognition on her face.
My mother was alive.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Bailey
“Bailey!”
Kash was there and his arms were around me, and he was carrying me back inside the club.
It was pandemonium all around me. Guards were running outside. Kash’s arms were tight around me, but he was barking orders at the same time. Guards were sent to every exit. Every floor. Every room. They were checking the entire club, and then checking the perimeter around the club. I knew all this, heard all this, because Kash refused to let me go.
We were in the stairwell.
Kash was bounding up them, two at a time, still with me in his arms. He was carrying me like I was a baby, and then we were in his office. He laid me back down right where the imposter had woken me. I kept that to myself, knowing Kash would further lose it.
So I sat, and I waited.
Fitz ran in, took Kash aside.
“What the fuck happened out there?” Kash growled.
Fitz’s head went down and he was talking, but in a rushed,panicked way. I knew he was giving Kash a report on what happened, and with a searching look at me, Fitz nodded when Kash told him to go. I didn’t hear his instructions for him, but I knew there were some. The rest of the arrivals started.
Torie first. Melissa was right after.
Tamara came with them; she started fixing my hair. Her eyes were worried. She was biting down on her lip in a fierce way, but she couldn’t sit. And she couldn’t stop touching me, so my hair was fixed one way and then another. My shirt was righted. She swept over my top, making sure the creases were all smooth. When she went to my ears, to fix my earrings, she had to pause. I didn’t have earrings, and she shot me a wry look.
“Oh God, girl.”
I held my arms up and she crumbled. She buried her head into my shoulder, her arms wound around me tight, and I held her as she cried.
Torie came over, reaching around her roommate and took my hand. She was blinking back tears, giving me a shaky smile, and I saw the concern from her, too.
I mouthed to her,“I’m fine.”I patted Tamara’s back. “Help her?”
Torie blinked away more tears, clearing her face before she patted Tamara’s back. “Hon. Tam. We gotta go.”
Tamara let go of me, reluctantly, but she was nodding as Torie grew more insistent. “Yeah. Okay.” Tamara eased up from the couch but looked back at me. “If you need anything—anything—you’ll call us?”
