“Zane, Rafe! We’re outta here.” I turn and head back out, not waiting to see if they follow.
Call it a gut feeling.
Call it a logical conclusion.
I’d bet my right nut that Jeff Adams is holed up in the ice cream shop, with or without Octavia, and I have just enough of presence of mind to send a quick message to John letting him know my suspicions before I sprint down the street toward the dark sign with the ice cream cone.
Zane and Rafe are right behind me as I reach the ice cream shop and stop. My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I glance at it quickly, finding a message from John telling me he’s on his way and not to do anything.
Right.
“Round the back,” Rafe says, and we take off running again, finding an alley and diving inside.
There’s a door, but when I pull on it, I find it locked.
But that means nothing, because if this Jessica gave Jeff Adams the key in case he needed a midnight snack or maybe to meet her after closing hours for a quick fuck, then…
“We’ll break the door down,” Zane says.
“Or we wait for your good friend the cop to come unlock for us,” Rafe says, reasonably. “Besides, if we start kicking in the door, the fucker could panic and hurt your girl.”
Fuck, didn’t think of that.
So I call John directly.
“Hansen, where the hell are you?” he barks into the phone. “Don’t do anything, you hear me? Wait for me.”
“You got the keys to the place?”
“We’re looking for the owner, but she’s not answering the phone. Wait—”
I disconnect. “We’re breaking the door down.”
“Now we’re talking.” Zane rubs his hands together, a wicked gleam in his eye.
The sunlight reaching us over the rooftops strikes the door, blinds me for a moment.
Then Rafe lifts his booted foot and delivers a thunderous kick to the door, right below the lock. And another. He switches feet, and does it again.
My pulse is drumming in my ears, humming in my throat. My heart is beating so fast my head is spinning.
Is she here? Is she okay? What will I do if she’s not?
Zane shoves Rafe aside, takes his place and delivers a flurry of kicks to the handle and lock, until in my turn I pull him to the side, and slam my boot into the door.
Two more kicks and the fucking lock breaks with a loud crack. The door swings inward, and we burst inside.
Stacks of craters, a freezer, and another door. I shove it open, and it crashes against the wall.
And I see her. Bound and gagged in the corner of the storage room, her eyes closed.
She doesn’t stir, not even when I fall to my knees beside her and gather her in my arms. But I feel the beating of her heart, and I know she’s alive.
Here, with me.
Chapter Forty-Two
Octavia
Through the dark haze that’s pressed all around me, I hear sounds. Voices.
Matt’s voice.
I strain toward it but can’t move. I’ve been caught in this oppressing web since… I don’t know when.
And I’m slipping back into the black pit before I find out if Matt is really here.
I dream. I dream he’s here, I dream of Mom, and Gigi, and Merc, of sunlit afternoons in the garden.
Of a kiss that never ends.
It’s so cold in this dreamland. I don’t like it, and the sunlight turns to night, the stars fall out of the sky, and the garden withers.
I’m so sad.
When I open my eyes again, everything’s white, and there’s beeping and humming and weird puke-colored walls.
A hospital. I’ve never been inside one, but I’ve watched my fair share of House and Grey’s Anatomy to recognize one.
And Matt is here, asleep in a plastic chair, his hair falling in his eyes. I’m hit with a need so deep and urgent to hug him that I sit up and throw my legs off the bed, to get to him.
The IV in my arm tugs, startling me, but I just can’t let it stop me. I stand up on shaky legs, take two steps and stop, staring at his face.
Something’s different. It’s him, and not him.
His beard is gone.
He has shaved it off. His face is smooth, his jaw angular, his mouth soft. He looks so much younger than before, it’s disconcerting.
Fascinating.
God, he’s beautiful. So achingly handsome. There’s something boyish about him now, and it’s touching. It makes me want to kiss his eyelashes, his cheekbones, his chin.
Makes me want to cry.
I must have made a sound because he starts awake, eyes wide and unfocused. I’m still drinking him in. It’s as if he’s some enchanted prince, turned from a beast into a handsome young man, and I don’t even know what magic accomplished that.
So I lean in and kiss him, to seal the spell.
He shaved the beard off for me. He’s done hiding.
I love him.
“Tay.” He pulls me down to sit on his legs, pulls my arms around his neck. He’s staring at me as if memorizing my face, and his mouth trembles. “Jesus.”
“Morning,” I whisper and kiss his mouth again, and his cheek and chin, because I can, dragging my lips over smooth skin and light stubble.
He crushes me to his chest, burying his face in my neck, his whole body shaking. I don’t know what happened, can’t remember much of anything, but it looks like I scared him.
I rub his back and kiss his neck, and his tears soak into my skin, hot and magical. Binding me to him. Freeing me from the last threads of the nightmare.
“Please,” he says, a hitch in his deep voice, lifting his face to look at me, his dark eyes glittering. “Please, Tay, don’t ever leave me.”
I kiss him again, unable to help myself. “I’m not planning to.”
The circle of his arms is where I belong, and I never want to leave.
Turns out I was in the hospital for hours before I woke up. Jeff Adams injected me with an anesthetic repeatedly after he kidnapped me, and the doctors were afraid of serious side effects like damage to my organs, or even respiratory failure.
So they kept me for observation even after I woke up.
Today, I am finally discharged. My mom, Gigi and Merc are there, and Matt is holding my hand, his mom and his brother holding the kids. I met them briefly, and they seem super nice.
I also met Zane and Rafe who have already left. Nice guys, and I’ll never forget the role they played in finding me.
The story Matt told me is crazy. How they looked for me. How they broke down the door and discovered me in the ice cream shop.
Jeff Adams was captured trying to drive out of town. He’s now in jail, awaiting trial, and the truth has come out.
This year was the tenth anniversary of his sister’s death.
He lost his job and his fiancée left him.
He kind of lost his mind.
Turns out he’d been obsessed with his sister’s death all this time. The obsession turned worse, and he went to St. Louis to find Matt, only to find Matt was moving away. So he followed him here.
To the police he said he only wanted Matt to feel the despair he felt when his sister lost her baby and committed suicide.
But he refused to say what he’d planned to do with me.
A shiver passes over me, and Matt tugs me to his side, rubbing his hand over my arm. “Okay?”