Page 43 of LA Reign

“I will. Bye, Lucia.”

I put the phone down and Jax stares at me. “She might be in New York. Speak to our friends at LAX and see if she got on a plane.”

“Will do,” Jax replies. “But where would she go? She wouldn’t see her folks, would she?”

“No. I don’t think so. But she has a friend there. Kelly?” I say as I try to recall one of our many conversations about Alana’s life in New York. “No, Kelsey. Yeah, definitely Kelsey. She lived in the same apartment building in Manhattan.”

I don’t know the address. I don’t know her friend’s surname. What kind of a fucking husband am I? I should know everything there is to know about my wife.

“I’m on it, amigo,” Jax says as he pulls his cell out of his pocket. “I’ll find her. We’ll have her back home within the next twenty-four hours.”

Assuming she wants to come home, I think silently, my heart in tatters but my face betraying none of that emotion. Jax is my best friend, but even he would be shocked at how afraid I am right now. I’ve only just found her, and I cannot ever lose her.

Chapter

Sixteen

ALANA

Ilook up and down the familiar hallway, feeling a complicated mix of emotions. Safe, because I know this place so well. I know every dent in the floor, every creak in the stairs. Everything about it, even the way it smells, says home.

But I also can’t help wondering if I even belong here anymore. It took me a while to settle into LA life, to the mansion that Alejandro and I share in Bel Air. I genuinely thought that was my home, that anywhere he was would be my home. But now? I don’t understand anything. This place is my past, he is my future. At least he was supposed to be.

I stifle a tear, tell myself to get a grip. I’ve come all this way, I might as well ring the damn doorbell.

I do exactly that, and a few seconds later it opens. The face that greets me makes me even more emotional than the apartment building. God, how I’ve missed those sparkling green eyes and that huge smile. Kelsey and I are best friends, but I’ve barely even spoken to her since I left for California, and now I realize how much of a mistake that was. I hope she’ll forgive me.

“Alana! What the hell are you doing here?” she shrieks as she throws her arms around my neck and squeezes me tight. I laugh, returning her hug with interest. Looks like she’s forgiven me. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

Tears sting my eyes at the thought of telling her why I am here. At the thought of everything that has gone wrong in such a small space of time. I sniffle as I pull back from her. “It was a spur of the moment thing,” I say with a shrug. I don’t have to burden her with it all. I can just pay her a visit, catch up, get Thai takeout and watch TV crashed on her tatty couch like we used to.

“Oh, honey.” Suddenly her face is full of concern. I should have known I wouldn’t be able to fool her. “Come on in and tell Auntie Kelsey everything, including who I have to kill.”

I smile. I have no doubt she means it, but Alejandro would be a hard man to kill, even if I wanted her to. Which I don’t, of course, because whatever has happened, I still love him with all my poor battered heart. I follow her into her tiny apartment, the one that is a carbon copy of the one I used to live in a floor down. I miss my old home, and I miss my new one too. I feel… homeless. Those tears finally get the better of me.

“Alana,” Kelsey says softly as she guides me to the couch in her living room. “What is it babe? What’s happened?”

I slump down and wipe my cheeks with the back of my hand. “So many things. It’s such a long story, Kels.”

“Well, why don’t I pour us the world’s biggest glass of wine, and you can tell me all about it?” she says with a reassuring smile.

It makes me feel better, against the odds. It’s so good to be here with her. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed her until I was in her company again. And as for it being a long story, well, I wasn’t lying.

I left my life here so fast, I didn’t have time to tell her much. I also didn’t want her to know that my marriage was a business arrangement, that I hadn’t had a somewhat normal whirlwind romance. Once Alejandro and I realized how we felt about each other, I meant to come clean and tell her everything.

Then my LA life got big and complicated and moved so quickly. I was too wrapped up in the shelter, in Lucia, in Alejandro, to reach out. I feel ashamed of that now. I don’t even know what’s been going on in her life, and I just turn up on her doorstep unannounced, crying? The fact that she responded with a hug and offers of wine reminds me of how important she is in my life. I make a silent promise to never lose touch with her again.

“I’m sorry I haven’t called much, Kels.”

“Hey,” she says firmly, passing what is indeed a pretty big glass of red, “that goes both ways, honey. I haven’t called you as much as I should either. But we are home girls, besties, BFFs forever. We will always have each other’s backs, and missing a few phone calls is never going to change that. Besides, you married a fine-ass billionaire and got whisked away to the land of sunshine and surf. I knew you’d be busy. Anyway. Enough of that. Why are you here now, and more importantly, why are you crying?”

An hour later, I’ve told her everything. I start at the beginning and am brutally honest about what my dad did, basically selling me to the Montoyas in return for cold hard cash. Kelsey never especially liked my dad. It was the only thing that ever caused any friction between us, and now I realize she was right. Her instincts were spot on. She’s horrified, but not entirely shocked.

I move on quickly, telling her how the fake marriage soon became something so much more. How I finally gave both my heart and my body to a man I loved, and who I thought loved me in return. I tell her about the shelter and my work there, and about Lucia, who I miss already. Finally, I work up to what happened today. Our visit to the doctor’s and the aftermath. It all takes a while, and she’s always on hand with tissues and top-ups of wine whenever I get overwhelmed.

By the time I finish I’m a blotchy-faced mess on her couch, surrounded by used tissues, my feet tucked up beneath me in the comfortable position I’m so used to. She listens to it all and shakes her head when I’m done.

“Wow Alana,” she says. “Sounds like you’ve had some six months, honey.”