AllFreeNovel
Share Us
BECK
Before I’m even outside the building, there are camera shutters clicking. Questions being hurled at me from every direction.
“Beck, are you back together with Vivian?”
“Beck, when’s the wedding?”
“Are you meeting Ms. St. James now?”
Oh sure, like I’m gonna answer any of that misleading bullshit from these paparazzi fucks. I stride past them and straight to my car. I fire it up, zip out of the parking lot, and head home.
But before I even make it to the highway, my phone pings with a message from the security company I hired to watch Sloan.
ALERT: Subject has evaded security detail.
I grit my teeth and smash my phone down in the center console. How much more danger does Sloan need to be in before she gets it? What kind of horrible shit needs to happen before she understands that this is fucking serious?
I don’t know in this moment if I’m angrier at her or Viv. I’ve got enough rage to spare for both of them.
Because she’s not just running off on her own; she’s taking chances withourbaby, too.
She damned well better have a good explanation.
I’m squeezing the shit out of the steering wheel, wishing I could squeeze some sense into Sloan. I want to hunt her down and turn her over my knee to give her a lesson and a spanking. For a moment, all I can think of is how satisfying it would be to leave the outline of my handprint in red lines on her ass.
I pull out my phone and call my head of security. When he answers, I don’t waste words. “Once this shit gets resolved, I want someone on her around the clock. Someone she won’t see.”
He knows exactly what I’m talking about. He’s the same guy they had tailing me when I was up to my asshole in partying trouble and they needed the ammunition to blackmail me into good behavior.
“You want this to start today?”
“I wanted it to start when I fucking hired you.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll send someone immediately.”
“You’ll need to find her first.”
“She… well, she doesn’t seem to want to be found just now, sir.”
“Then fucking do something about it!” I roar. My heart is pounding against my chest. I’m seeing her in my mind’s eye the way I saw her when I found her in that warehouse.
Bloodied. Pale. Terrified.
I won’t let that happen again.
“I assure you we are trying, sir,” the man says. “We are—oh! Actually, I’ve just received a report from one of our teams. Miss Reeves has been located at the restaurant where she used to work.”
I exhale. Knowing where she is quiets some of the rage inside, but as soon as this is over, the team and I will be having some words.
“Keep track of her this time.”
I hang up, still simmering with unvented anger. I’m not really mad at him, as incompetent as he was today. I’m not even mad at Sloan, or Viv, or Coach, or any of the other people in my life who refuse to follow in line.
I’m just mad that the future I never thought I deserved is close enough to taste, and yet I just can’t seem to get a handle on it.
I trust Sloan.
All I need to figure out is how the hell to make her trust me.
