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I rip at my shirt, buttons popping off as I struggle to breathe. A low, threatening growl has been growing in my chest for that last couple of hours.
We checked everywhere. She’s not in a hotel or a shelter. Not in a hospital or a police station. She’s not in any of the parks or parking areas where people with cars sleep.
She is just gone.
“What if she left town?” I snarl.
“She won’t.”
“How do you know?” I ask Saint.
“Because she believes in love too much to give up on us just yet. She’s here. She’s just licking her wounds.”
Saints shoves his hands in his hoodie pocket and stares at the dawn.
“As long as we can see the sunrise, she can, too, and we can be happy with that. We will find her.”
“What if we hurt her too badly, and she decides we’re not worth it, and she just leaves?”
“Crow, you need to calm down and breathe. Relax. We will find her. Maybe we don’t find her tonight. Maybe tomorrow.”
“Maybe she’ll be hurt or dead by then. It would serve us right.”
Hunter hits me hard in the ribs. I wheeze and gape at him as I try to sort through the pain.
“What was that for?”
“Don’t wish ill on her. Nothing is going to happen. She’s smart, and she knows how to survive. She’s been on her own since she was sixteen. Bethany will be fine.”
The pain helps to bring my paranoid thinking back under control, but then I’ve moved on to the next awful image in my mind. Her living in a cardboard box. We pass her multiple times a day but don’t recoginse her, and she never calls out because-
Hunter grabs my jaw and drags me across the backseat and into his lap. “Enough, Oli Crow. You are catastrophizing. You are letting your thoughts run, and it’s not helping things.”
I breathe in his air and snuggle closer, needing the comfort of his touch. Hunter holds me tight, pulling me close, his arms locking around me almost painfully, but giving me exactly what we need.
“We need to sleep. So we’re going home, and we will regroup. Maybe one or two of us goes out and searches each night. Perhaps we can hire a PI. I don’t know, but we can talk about it after.”
We pull up into the driveway, and even though I know she’s not here. I’m convinced that I’ll find her here. So I spring from the car and race around, checking to see if the car is back. It’snot, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t get here another way. Saint opens the house, and I vaguely recall she doesn’t have keys or access, but that doesn’t stop the hope.
The hope only dies when I’ve searched the entire house and find the nest empty. I walk back to the front door, hearing the horrible words that we said to her yesterday morning.
Was it only yesterday? Less than twenty-four hours to completely derail everything.
I sit down where I can watch the front door. Right on the floor, my arms locked around my knees.
“She has to come back, right?”
“Crow, you need to come to bed and sleep.”
I shake my head. “When she comes back.”
Saint picks me up, and though I fight him, he drags me to the bedroom and starts unbuttoning my shirt. Hunter holds me while Saint strips, and then they get into bed with me sandwiched between them, unable to move or escape.
“We have to find her,” I plead over and over. I look between them and clutch at first Saint and then Hunter, trying to get them to understand the urgency, the panic that is throbbing inside me.
“We will,” Saint promises, he soothes. His hands run all over me, trying to calm me down, but I push them off, fighting as they whisper in my ear and tell me that it will be okay.
It’s not going to be okay, nothing is going to be okay.
