“I swear to God, you either show me those fucking papers or I will ruin you! You won’t be able to pay someone to come to this place when I’m done with you.”
“We are attempting to locate the physical copy of your sign-in papers. Our records are digital.”
“Try harder!” I yelled as they both scurried from the room.
I snatched the telephone off the hook. My cell phone had died shortly after hanging up with Sam, but I’d been using the phone in the conference room to repeatedly call Henry. I knew he was traveling to see me, but his flight should’ve landed already. The really unnerving part was when I got the same radio silence from Devon as well. Something was going on, and clearly, I was the only one in the dark.
“Hey, beautiful!” Henry purred when he fucking finally answered.
“Swear to me you didn’t know about this shit with Sam,” I gritted out through clenched teeth.
Henry gasped. “What did my lover-boy do?”
“Sam didn’t do anything. But someone put his name on my list of banned visitors. You filled out my paperwork, Henry. Please, please, please, tell me you didn’t do this.”
“Son of a bitch,” he whispered then sighed.
My pulse raced for whatever answer he was about to give me.
“I didn’t fill out your paperwork, Levee. I started chatting with the male orderly, so Devon filled out your papers.”
My heart splintered. I almost wished it had been Henry instead. We could’ve had a huge-ass fight where he explained why he had done it, and I would have put him in his place for interfering. We wouldn’t have spoken for a week, but we would have eventually gotten over it.
I couldn’t say the same for Devon. While I considered him part of my family, I couldn’t lose sight of the fact that he was also my employee who obviously didn’t know his role. I was supposed to be able to trust this man with my life, and he was taking advantage of that trust for some reason that was lost on me completely. Fine, he didn’t like Sam, but he wasn’t required to. His only job was to make sure I was safe. And the way my stomach knotted at this little revelation made me feel anything but.
“Shit,” I hissed into the phone.
“I’m sorry. Look, Carter and I will be there in about an hour. Devon’s on the flight behind us. We’ll all come together and figure this out. Just tell them to let Sam in. They can’t keep you from seeing him.”
I groaned. “Apparently, they can. They’re refusing to let me see him until they speak to a member of my family. I’m not calling my parents to ask permission to see my boyfriend, Henry.” Tears welled in my eyes.
It was too much.
All of it.
I was supposed to be relaxing and getting things under control. Instead, I felt like a prisoner inside not only these walls, but my entire fucking life as well.
And just like that, the familiar free fall engulfed me.
I closed my eyes and fought the ache in my lungs.
“Is Sam still there?” Henry asked.
“I think so,” I managed to squeak.
“Just tell him to wait. I’ll be there soon. We’ll get this fixed, okay?”
But I didn’t want to tell Sam to wait. I wanted to see him.
And go home with him.
And let him do exactly what he had unwittingly been doing since the day we met—healing me from the outside in.
Suddenly, my eyes popped open. Why couldn’t I have that?
Yes, my life had spiraled out of control. But the only person who was stopping me from taking charge of my own future was me.
Levee Michelle Williams was a fighter. I hadn’t gotten my success in the music industry by sitting around and letting people tell me how to run my life. I had done it by clawing my way to the top with nothing more than a guitar and head full of dreams.