Page 222 of Speechless

Bridget laughed again. “You do need your luck. I hope I’ll see you again.”

There wasn’t a chance to say goodbye, because Brooks was walking me backward, a dangerous glint in his eye. “Good to see you’re in full form, baby. You’re going to need all the strength you’ve got.”

“I promise I’mnotbeing a brat when I tell you that all the hints are making me more nervous than not. Can you please tell me something? Because it’s starting to scare me.”

He stroked a hand over my hair. “Take a breath for me and give me a color.”

I did. “Yellow.”

Brooks waited a moment longer, listening to what he could feel through our bond. “We’re about to go where we need to anyway, so I don’t see why you can’t know.”

“Thank you.”

He smiled and kissed me softly. “I’m not going to say we won’t ever scare you, but there’s a difference between scaring you in a scene and you beingscared. We don’t want that. But the scene you interrupted?”

“Yeah?”

“We have the rooftop garden and plenty of time. We’re all going to hunt you, baby.”

Thepuffof perfume around me was so thick and immediate it might as well have been visible. Bastian approached with a sly smile. “You told her?”

“I did.”

“Ready to sneak?”

I nodded. “But please don’t rip this dress. I like it.”

The others joined us and bundled me into the elevator. When the doors opened, everything was how I remembered it, other than the cool autumn air. The roof was soaked in moonlight with a daunting hedge maze. Plenty of secret corners to sneak in, and plenty of clearings for them to catch me and do… whatever they wanted.

“There’s a very easy solution to the dress problem,” Brooks said, spinning me so my zipper faced him. He lowered the zipper so my dress fell and pooled around my feet. “The roof has been cleared.”

I took my bra and panties off. All that was left was my mask. The way they all looked at me felt like fire beneath my skin. Not the heat, but close.

“You’ll have a head start,” Aiden said. “So use it wisely.”

Logan looked at the others. “I think five minutes is good enough, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Bastian answered.

“Time’s ticking,” Theo looked at his watch.

“Wait,” I stepped into the middle of them. “I… I’d like you to hold me first.”

They converged around me, holding me together and somehow all managing to touch me individually. “I love you,” I said. “So much.”

The words didn’t have to be said out loud for me to hear them clear as a bell in my chest.

“We love you too, baby.” He pulled back and kissed my shoulder. “Four minutes left.”

I gasped. “That doesn’t count.”

“Yes,” Theo said, sliding his hands into his pockets. “It does.”

Staring at them, I tried to see if they were kidding. They weren’t. And they were letting their instincts rise.

I turned and sprinted into the maze, needing to hide, but never more excited to be found.

The End.