Page 31 of Bonds of Fate

“Oh god. Listen to me, Jamie. He knew I knew you. I met him the last time I went to Ripley Records looking for you.” His voice feels like it’s coming from far, far away.

Dawson kept Jamie from him. Tortured him, and he knew Jamie wasright there.He’d been to Ripley Records’ lobby a few times in the first few months he’d been in Nashville–before they were dating–and it’s sheer hubris that Dawson would think they’d never run into him.

He’d been so close—how Dawson must have laughed.

“What are you saying?” Grayson asks, pacing the small space, and Jamie is braced in the door frame, eyes blazing. “That Hayes knew you were looking for us—Jay? That he hid you onpurpose?”

“I can’t. Oh god. Jamie.” His stomach churns in sheer horror. He makes it to the toilet this time, and he loses the water and tiny pretzels Grayson had fed him earlier in the tub. “Oh god. Oh god.”

There is a large hand rubbing his back and another pushing his hair back out of the way. He plops down on his butt, and Grayson is there to catch him. Jamie takes his feet into his lap and warms them with his hands while Grayson wipes his mouth and kisses his cheek.

“I went to Ripley Records when I got to Nashville for school, you remember how that was the plan?”

Jamie nods, sadness etched in every feature. “I do.” There’s a squeeze to his foot.

“I went, and I asked for you, but the receptionist said there was no Jamie Rhodes there and that if I didn’t leave, they’d have me removed. I tried so many times, but it was always the same. I was a student, you know, and I wondered if they turned their noses up because I was poor-looking?”

He had been poor, living on a meager stipend his scholarship had provided and ramen for his single daily meal. His schedule hadn’t allowed for a part-time job, and with studying, every extra minute had been spent sleeping—and there hadn’t been many.

“No, baby. You werehuman.Ripley Records is a Were company. They’d have wanted to discourage you from entering.”

“Oh. I memorized your parents’ phone number, and at first, she never answered. But then she finally did. Why wouldn’t your Mom have told me when I called her? I begged, Jamie. I was so lonely; I needed you.”

He had been heartbroken, barely holding on to the dream he had cherished for four long years—the dream of going to Nashville so they could live the life they had always talked about.

“You called my mother?”

Nix never wants to see this look on his love’s face ever again.

It’s the epitome of grief, remembered pain, and something else that has him gripping his feet harder, his jaw clenched.

“She didn’t tell you I called? I asked her to, and she said she would.”

“No, she didn’t. She wouldn’t.” Jamie’s voice is deadly quiet. Nix remembers her curtness on the phone, demanding Nix leave her son alone. Said she would tell Jamie, but if he didn’t call Nix back, he should move on because her son had.

“But why? She said you’d moved on, but I didn’t think that meant fromme.I was so sad, and they knew you loved–love me–wouldn’t she want you to be happy?” Nix is confused. Parentsare supposed to love their kids—good people are supposed to do good things.

Jamie looks over his shoulder at Grayson, and they share a look of anger and of something else.

“What? What is it? Please tell me.”

“My parents told me you died with your family in the car accident, and I believed them.” Jamie’s expression flickers with shame and anger, emotions Nix wishes he could erase from the face of his first love. “I don’t understand. What really happened? How did you end up in Nashville all alone?”

Nix swallows around, a lump in his throat before he can answer. “I was so sick when you left. A broken heart, my mom said, but they had planned to go to the beach, and Ivy was so excited, so I told them to go without me. I should have been with them that day,” Nix whispers.

“But…they didn’t c–come home, and I just shut down for a while after that. By the time I came back to myself, my grandmother had canceled my phone, and…she…sold everything, I think. Brought me to Jacksonville to live with her, but as soon as I could, I came here looking for you.”

The day Hayes had found Nix sitting on the front steps of the Ripley Records building after once again being turned away flashes through his mind. He’d been so close—and Hayes had known it.

“You were right there, and what? Because of them, I thought you were dead. I mourned you—we all did. I could have been searching for you this whole time.” Jamie’s voice cracks, raw with disbelief and fury. “And Hayes—he knew you were looking for me? He kept you from us for five years—in that hell?”

His alpha is beyond furious, his scent thick with the heat of a forest fire, burning wild and untamed.

Jamie drops Nix’s feet and bolts from the room.

He and Grayson are barely seconds behind, but he’s goneoverthe balcony to the living space two floors below. By the time Nix gets to the gym for the second time in twenty-four hours, the broken door is still on the floor, and Jamie has torn into the heavy bag with fearsome claws out—snarls of rage echoing in the large space.

Feeling his heart break for his love—and for himself—Nix can only watch.

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