| |
––––––––
I CAME TO AND REACHED over to her side of the bed to pull her into my arms. Half-asleep, I wanted to feel her body against mine before I dozed off again.
But she wasn’t there. I sat up at once, looking around, half-expecting to see her wander through the door and slide back into bed with me.
That’s what I was hoping for, at least.
But there was nobody else in the room, and I couldn’t hear the sound of her footsteps out in the hallway, either. Panic rushed through my system, and I did my best to shut it down. It might have been nothing, right? Just my brain jumping to conclusions way quicker than it needed to.
I climbed out of bed and headed downstairs. The house was eerily quiet—maybe it was just because of how crazy things had been before, but the silence hung heavily in the air, the weight of it pressing down on top of me.
It was the silence of not having Silver around, I guessed. I still couldn’t believe she was actually gone. I wished Lily had let me take the fall for this one instead. At least I knew Tony wouldn’t have tried anything too dangerous with me—I would make way more trouble for him than a dog would. But Silver...yeah, I didn’t even want to think what he would do with her.
I might have told Lily that it was all going to be okay, and I wanted to believe it, more than anything, but I wasn’t stupid. I had learned what kind of man Tony was a long time ago, and ever since then, he had done nothing to prove to me that I hadn’t been dead right with my first impression. He was the kind of asshole who never let go of old grievances, the kind of guy who wanted to make everyone around him suffer if he didn’t get his way. And if an innocent dog got hurt in the process? Well, that wasn’t going to stop him.
Normally, Silver would have been right behind me, hoping to get leashed up and taken for a walk, but the sound of her tapping paws on the wood were conspicuously absent. I headed to the kitchen. Lily was likely just down there getting herself a glass of water, right? Nothing weird was going on. I didn’t have to worry. I was just letting the stress that had filled the rest of the day get the better of me, and I needed to pull myself together...
But it wasn’t as easy as that. No matter how much I wished I could just shut down the fear inside of me, it was starting to ramp up, and a rush of old emotions were coming to the surface. With Silver gone, it was as though this little life I had been building for myself had just fallen apart at the seams again. How many times was I going to have to watch this happen? How many times was my life going to be ripped right out from under me...?
I stepped into the kitchen and found it empty, the only sound that off the drip of a tap that hadn’t been quite turned off. I tightened it, filling the room with silence. I looked around for any sign that Lily might have been in there—a glass of water sitting out, or something—but there was nothing. The place looked exactly the same as we had left it after dinner, the dishes still soaking in the sink where Lily said she would get to them tomorrow.
Had she left? She wouldn’t have gone without me, surely. She knew how much she would have been risking if she had. She didn’t need to do this, didn’t need to go after Silver herself, but she was a headstrong woman, and this might have pushed her over the edge.
I had seen something snap in her before, when Tony had been mocking her. Like she was finally sick of his bullshit and ready to stand up to him. But she didn’t understand—she was going to get herself in more trouble than she could handle if she went out there alone, no matter how much sense it made in her head right now.
“Come on,” I muttered to myself, trying to slow the flood of adrenaline that was coursing through my system. I counted out my steps to ground myself, heading to the living room, which was also empty. I glanced to the window, where she had been watching her mother and Barry before all of this had kicked off. I wished I could go back in time to that moment, when she seemed really happy. The moment Silver had been taken from her, she had been hollowed out, missing a fundamental part of herself and unable to move on without it.
I checked the rest of the house from top to bottom, even going in to the bathrooms to make sure she wasn’t in there. I stuck my head around Diane’s door, on the vague chance she might have crawled into her mom’s bed for comfort, but there was no sign of her there, either.
“Lily, where are you?” I murmured as I headed back to our room. She had to be here. Was she avoiding me for some reason? She had seemed okay when I had fallen asleep, but maybe she had just been faking that to keep me from worrying too much.
If she was out there alone right now, I couldn’t do much to protect her, and that thought made me feel fucking sick. I had done everything I could to keep her safe from all of this, only for Tony to turn up out of nowhere and make it clear that he wasn’t going to be backing down. He had taken Silver. How could I have let him do that? I should have fought him on it, told him to fight me and let us keep the dog, but he knew how much it would hurt her. He knew that this would be the final straw for her, and he wanted nothing more than for her to be desperate and willing to do whatever it took to get Silver back.
I grabbed my phone and called her—no answer. It went to voicemail. I didn’t bother to leave one—she knew what I would have said to her anyway. She knew I would have begged her to come back and be safe here, with me. I would tell her we could handle all of this together, in the morning, but that I needed her by my side right now because nothing else made the remotest bit of sense to me. That I missed her, even now—that I might even have fallen in love with her.
I stuffed my phone into my pocket and slid on my shoes. I didn’t like being here without her. It felt wrong. Like I was an intruder in my own life again. I recognized that sensation all too well, and it was one I thought I had finally left behind when I had found her, but here, now, it was hard to believe for a second that I was where I belonged.
Stepping outside the house, I inhaled a lungful of the cool night air. I searched for tire marks, footprints, anything that might have given me a clue as to where she had gone. I lifted the phone to my ear and made another call, though I was sure there was no point. No answer, again. Had she taken one of the cars? I started to head to the side of the house to get a better look, when I felt my phone buzz in my pocket.
I snatched it out at once—a text from her. I opened it, reading it quickly. My eyes widened when I took it in.
She told me not to worry. That she was done playing the waiting game, and she had to take this into her own hands. That she didn’t want me or anyone else she loved being caught in it any longer.
And that it was going to be over soon.
I tried to call her again, but she rejected it. Shit! She was out confronting Tony by herself. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe I had let this happen. I should have sat up with her all night if that’s what it had taken, sat with her and made sure she didn’t go out there and try to pull off something as stupid as this. Did she know how much danger she was in? Did she know what she was up against? Was she just so blinded by her love for Silver that she didn’t care about any of that in the first place?
I headed back inside and glanced up the stairs toward Diane’s room. Should I tell her what was going on? If Lily’s text was anything to go by, then it was as much for her as it was for me. I clenched my jaw. No. I couldn’t worry her with this. She needed to rest, and Lily would never forgive me if I pulled her into the middle of this and got her hurt again.
I got dressed quickly, hands shaking, trying not to think about how bad things might have gotten. She had texted me, what, a matter of minutes ago? Could something have happened to her in that time?
I fired off a text to her. Told her not to do anything stupid, and to wait for me wherever she was. I tried to convince her to give me her location, but my phone remained silent. She was done talking, she was ready to act, and I was terrified that her hot-headedness was going to get her into a mess she wouldn’t be able to find her way out of.
I breathed hard as I tried to figure out where she might have been. The shelter? Maybe. She could have gone to Silver to try and get her back, focused all her energy on that, but something told me it wasn’t that simple. Something told me she was looking for something more final. She wanted to end this, tonight, and that meant she would go straight to the source.
Tony.
What if she was already there now? Shit, he might have been the one telling her to send those texts—maybe that’s why she wasn’t able to answer my calls, because he knew the sound of her voice would be enough to give away how much danger she was in. Well, if he thought he could get away with it that easily, he had another think coming.
I hurried to the door and grabbed the keys to my truck, scrambling into it and pulling away from the house. It was the dead of night, and everywhere around me was totally silent. As though the whole world was holding its breath, waiting to see what was going to happen next.
I couldn’t lose her. I couldn’t. I had spent so long so sure I would never feel at home again, and she was the first person to make me real believe I was capable of it. If I lost her, I would lose all of that, too, and I couldn’t stand the thought of it. My leg was aching, and I tried to ignore it. It was almost as though the flare was there to remind me of how bad things had been before I’d met her, and just how easy it would be to slip back down that path and let myself get swallowed up by the sadness all over again.
I tore out on to the road. Where would Tony be? Would he have taken her somewhere else if she had turned up at his place? I had no idea. I didn’t know the way his twisted, sick mind worked, and I didn’t want to try to guess. I needed answers.
My headlights cut through the blackness ahead of me, and I drummed my fingers on the wheel impatiently. Every second that passed was another he could have been hurting her. Or Silver. Or both. None of those options were acceptable to me.
He had lunged for her when she had jumped on him before, and I knew he wouldn’t hold back from really hurting her if he got the chance. Away from witnesses, in the middle of the night—he wouldn’t have been able to plan a better attack on her if he’d tried.
And she was walking right into it, head blazing with so much anger about Silver that she didn’t know how to protect herself.
This was why I loved her so much. Because she was selfless and brave and put everyone ahead of herself, even when it would get her hurt. And it was for all those reasons and more that I couldn’t let anything happen to her, not a damn chance in hell. I would tear apart Tony’s whole lair if it meant getting her out of it alive. He would bring a case against me anyway for the punch I’d landed on him before, so why not really make it count?
I put my foot down on the accelerator and picked up speed as I headed toward Oakville. He had to be somewhere there, right? Once he’d found out he couldn’t actually hurt the dog without ruining his case, he had probably slunk off to town to drink and gloat about getting one over on her anyway. Taking Silver was twisted, a deep cruelty he had conjured up because he knew how it would tear her apart.
But he was about to find out what happened when he messed with the woman I loved.
As long as I could get to him in time.
THE END
You’re scared you wasted your love on the wrong person...
