Page 68 of Flirting With Forever
“Okay, I will but?—”
She shook her head and exhaled a loud breath. “No, Dawson. You can’t change my mind. I have to do this. Gage deserves someone without so much baggage. This is me lightening the load; otherwise it would never work.”
Dawson looked ready to self-combust and unsure of what to do. Whether to snatch her and drag her inside to sit on until Gage could get there to handle things or let her go.
“We can help you.”
“Do this for me, and you are helping me. Look, it will never work between me and Gage if I don’t go. My father won’t allow it.”
“Okay, I get that, but if you’re in danger?—”
“I’m not. But Gage will be if I don’t end this once and for all.” There. Could she be any blunter than that?
“If that’s the case, you shouldn’t go alone. At least let me come with you.”
A low laugh bubbled out of her. “No. Definitely not. Dawson, please, just do what I’ve asked, okay? Now I have to go. I need to go. Just keep Gage here and let me go handle my life.”
Dawson swore under his breath, his entire body practically vibrating with anger. “By Christmas,” he said in a low tone. “I’ll do what you’ve asked—but I can’t guarantee you won’t have the lot of us tracking you down in Chicago if you don’t show up at the end of the week.”
She managed a smile. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
Chapter Twenty
Sloane was gone.
Gage felt it in his soul before he even opened his eyes. The lack of her presence in his bed. The house.
He shifted on the mattress where he’d carried Sloane last night and slid his hand over the sheets. Her side was empty. And ice cold.
He jerked upright and listened hard for some sound, something that would indicate he was wrong. But when he heard nothing but birds chirping happily outside the closed windows, he pressed his palms to his eyes and rubbed hard. “What have you done, Merida?”
Gage tossed the blanket back and yanked on a pair of gray sweatpants before he went searching for her, even though he knew he wouldn’t find her.
The house was too quiet. Too still for all of Sloane’s intense energy.
She wasn’t there. Not upstairs. Not in her room. Not in the driveway where her car should have been if she hadn’t left him sleeping away and content in his bed after such a special night.
Growling and swearing, he stomped his way back inside and slammed the door so hard it rattled the house before raking both hands through his hair, pulling hard on the strands and closing his eyes as though he could will her return. After a moment, he jogged up the stairs to find his phone.
He had to call her. Talk to her. Hear her voice even if it was to just hear her excuses. He needed that. Needed it like he needed his next breath.
His angry roar filled the house when the phone screen remained black. The device was dead, laying on the counter where he’d set it before heading to the dinner table the night before.
After dinner and the way the night ended, he hadn’t given a thought to charging it. Now he scrambled back to the bedroom to the charger to juice it up enough to make the call he so desperately needed to make.
He paced impatiently and wondered if he’d have any hair left by the time the phone turned on.
To keep from going crazy, he grabbed a T-shirt and swapped his sweats for jeans before going back to the phone to check it again. This time, the face lit up, and he swiped up to unlock it, leaving the device connected to the cord as he did so.
Gage sucked in a breath when he saw Sloane’s name but the text?—
Don’t come after me.
That was it. Nothing about last night. No apology for leaving the way she had.
Nothing.
His legs gave out, and he sank onto the mattress, his mind replaying the events of the evening and hours afterward in full detail.
