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She laughs before her sobs get louder. “It’s not funny!”
“It’s not, but it is. I’m fine, and it’s the past.”
“I should get arrested,” she says, pulling back and wiping her eyes.
“You should come back to work. Before Suzanne makes sure you get arrested. She’s floundering without you.”
Her lip quivers, and it’s adorable. “You’re sure you want me back there after what I did?”
I can’t help it, even with him staring a fucking hole through me. I pull her back toward me and wrap around her. “Of course I want you back at work, Carina. You’re the most capable person for the job. I still stand by what I said when I hired you. You’re overqualified.”
She tugs back, wiping her face.
“Unless you don’t want to come back to the office, but I’ll understand either way,” I add quickly.
Gage clears his throat.
Here the fuck we go.
“I think before she decides, we need to be certain of what Conner’s role was in all this fucking mess.”
“Mmm, like we’re sure what your role was?” I snap, knowing it was a low blow but letting it loose anyhow.
Carina sighs. “Can we not?”
Gage and I glare at one another for a beat, neither one breaking the silence. While I know she’ll never be mine—too much history and all that—there’s still an envious little voice in the back of my head that says to make his life hell. To give him shit for being the one who was her comfort instead of the one in her nightmares.
“What are we going to do, find Wes?” Carina asks.
I break eye contact with Gage and look over at her. She’s moved closer to the couch. Closer to him.
“We can. Or I can. However, you want to play it,” I reply. Letting her take the lead is best.
She grips the back of the couch, dropping her head in thought for a moment. “I think you should find him, and we should get him somewhere safe. Somewhere he can eat and bathe. Let’s see for our own eyes how he is before we bombard him with questions. Especially if he’s in bad shape.”
I nod. “I’ll have Stan start his search and let you know when it’s done.”
She lets out a weighty breath, her shoulders dropping. “I’m glad it wasn’t you, Emery. Because if it would’ve been, I would’ve never trusted my gut again. Because even when I knew I needed to be careful, that I needed to keep the walls up when I was near you, I never once felt threatened by you.”
A piece of my shattered soul heals under the warmth of her statement, and I smile at her. It’s all I can do. Words are choked under emotion.
“We should go. I’ll be in touch once I—we—speak to Conner,” Gage says, standing and rounding the couch. His hand lightly touches her back as he looks down at her. It’s when I see the monster soften. Likely not something he lets anyone but her see.
I know she’ll be alright, then, because the world can’t get her with a villain standing guard.
* * *
It’s beenhours since Gage and Carina left, and I’ve been leaning against the glass wall that faces the Seattle skyline for what seems like hours, looking at all the people below. It’s a wonder anyone gets through a fucking day if they’ve got half the shit going on in their lives that we do.
My phone dings and it’s a text from Stan, confirming he has his orders and will be in touch when he finds Wes and has him settled somewhere. I instructed him to rent an apartment and furnish it and fill it with food and amenities. It’ll be somewhere soft Wes can land. He was in my inner circle. I played football with him three out of four years in school. To think that after I went on to become C.E.O. of a fortune five-hundred company, he’d fallen into disrepair confounds me. Makes my heart fucking bleed and ache for him.
Our junior year was when it happened, the infamous night at Westpoint House. Looking back, it’s easy to see the signs he wasn’t okay. He dropped out of football, quit coming around Conner and me. He also was more withdrawn in class, and he ate lunch by himself. But we were all too self-absorbed and too stupid to see it. Or maybe we did see it, and we just didn’t care.
Either way, he was struggling, and we did nothing.
Well, that stops now.
I know I’m going to be on edge until I hear from Stan, so I’ve been drowning my inner thoughts with enough whiskey to kill a lesser man.
