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Preston
I jolted awake—no, the elevator jolted, ripping me from sleep.
Drake scrambled off the floor where we’d been snuggling.
My heartbeat sped, adrenaline crashing through me as I peered up at him.
We descended at a normal clip, not free-falling.
Our time together had ended.
Sadness flooded his eyes, and he held out a hand to me.
I accepted his help up off the floor but didn’t cling to his fingers like I’d have done as a teenager. A flood of people would be awaiting us on the ground floor.
Stepping away from him, I held his pained gaze, hating the feet separating us like a mile-wide chasm.
“Four hours of heaven,” he murmured through the thick silence between us.
“Four hours of perfection,” I whispered back, my throat tightening over how much deeper I’d fallen in love with him during our too-short hours of being stuck in close proximity.
The movement around us slowed.
Stopped.
Still, we stared at one another, our breaths loud in the stillness before the storm.
“Later,” he stated quietly, a hint of inquiry in his voice.
The door slid open before I could respond.
Voices raised, and a ruckus of questions and wandering hands assessed us. Jacqueline’s teary-eyed mess of makeup on her face hit me more than I’d expected. I’d never seen her so unkempt and ruffled.
Sudden surety that she truly cared about me in some way flooded me with wary hopefulness that things were about to change. That I might have a future with her that wasn’t fraught with grimaces and flinches on my end.
Even though she could be a bitch—was a bitch at her core—she acted as though she’d been concerned for my welfare. I hugged her for the first time in years, rubbing her back as she cried in my arms, clutching me as though afraid of losing her only child. My eyes stung, and I swallowed repeatedly to keep from blubbering like the little boy inside me who was still desperate for his mother’s love.
Devlin grasped Drake tight to his chest too, tears in both their eyes.
Emotions rose and dipped like a roller coaster, and I tired quickly, wishing the reunion, the EMTs insisting on checking out both Drake and I, would just go away. Authorities loitered around the lobby, and the explanation of a technical glitch answered my question as to why I’d been allowed those precious hours alone with the man I loved more than life.
Exhaustion lined every face I took in, but Drake’s eyes burned with desire whenever our gazes caught over the next forty or so minutes of chaos.
“The restaurant closed,” Jacqueline stated, still hanging onto my arm with a death grip, “but we have meals kept aside for you both.”
At eleven at night atop the drama and emotional upheaval I’d endured the entire day, I wasn’t sure I could eat. I wanted a bed.
And Drake’s arms.
After assuring everyone, hotel staff and authorities included, that Drake and I were fine, we settled at the bar. I picked at my food while Drake chowed down like a starving animal.
Jacqueline started in on assuring us The Bloomberg would face the consequences for the mishap. “I called my lawyers,” she stated, petting my forearm.
I didn’t pull away from her attempts at an assuring caress even though it felt…strange. A part of me had longed for the display for years, and now that she offered it, I would be a fool to withdraw from her touch.
“We’re fine, Jacqueline,” Drake interjected before she got worked up again. “Accidents happen, so unless there’s evidence it was more than that, don’t waste your energy.”
“But it shouldn’t have happened!”
