Page 75 of Flirting With Forever
Another groan left him. “No. Because if we were, she wouldn’t have taken off and left like she did.”
“Ahh, so that’s it. I’m sorry, son. Love isn’t for the faint of heart.”
“I don’t love her.”
Silence followed his words, and even Gage heard the lie in them.
“Son, I hate to point this out, but you’re sitting on a park bench at midnight because you’re heartsick about her leaving.”
Gage ignored the knowing tone in Bruce’s statement and focused instead of defending himself. “It would be stupid to fall in love with someone who couldn’t even be honest with me about her last name.” Gage ran his hands over his head and tugged at the ends. “That’s not love. And it’s certainly not love when she can take off in the middle of the night.”
Gage rubbed his hands up and down the tops of his thighs. He’d worn winter running gear, but cold muscles were cold muscles.
“Doesn’t sound like the best way to start a relationship,” Bruce agreed. “You know why she lied about her name? Could be it wasn’t about her being dishonest but her wanting to distance herself from her past.”
“Same difference.” Gage fought the urge to snap at Bruce for giving Sloane the benefit of the doubt when he needed ammo to keep himself from losing his mind due to his turbulent emotions.
Gage shoved himself to his feet and began stiffly pacing in front of the bench. “I just don’t get it. I thought— I thought we had something. Something real.”
“Maybe you did.”
He rounded on the man. “Then why did she leave? Why not let me help her deal with her toxic family? Wolfe said he heard her brother threaten her, and so did I.”
“When was this?”
Bruce looked concerned now, more cop mode than friendly mentor. Finally.
But Gage couldn’t blame the man when he’d left out so many pieces to the story. “Thanksgiving Day. Wolfe convinced her to let him give her a ride back to my place, but later her brother—Noah—showed up there too. And again at the rentals building.”
“You got a last name for this Noah?”
“Harrington. Out of Chicago,” Gage spat. “Can you check into him for me? See if he’s got any kind of record or anything?”
“I’ll do that right now,” the man said, pulling out his phone.
Gage stared at the older man, wondering why he hadn’t already done the same search. It showed just how messed up he was about all of this, that he hadn’t even googled the guy.
“He one of them?” Bruce turned the phone around for Gage to see.
The picture was of three men in expensive-looking suits. An older man sat in a high-backed leather chair while two younger versions of the guy stood on either side. “Yeah, the one standing on the left.”
Gage pulled his own phone out and quickly typed in Sloane Harrington. An image of her appeared as a graduate of some prep school academy. A few more for various awards and athletic achievements. And there she was in an older picture of her and her family, mom included.
His jaw locked. Sloane came from money. The kind of money that owned second or third homes on Figure Eight Island. Not a townhouse stacked twenty deep in a little corner of Carolina Cove.
He kept clicking through photos, noting the Harrington mansion pictures taken at some sort of charity event. These people were—not the type to sleep in their cars or work as maids or salesclerks at a surf shop. But the realization brought more questions than answers.
What was going on? Who was she?
“You looking, too?” Bruce asked.
“Yeah, I?—”
The sound of a diesel motor rolling up drew their attention, and Gage lifted his head as one of the Carolina Cove emergency vehicles stopped in the street behind the bench. A door slammed, and Gabriel Wolfe appeared as the passenger side door opened and Gage’s youngest brother, Hudson, hopped out as well.
“Everything okay here?” Wolfe still wore the lower half of his turnout gear.
“Could ask you the same,” Gage said, taking in Wolfe and Hudson’s soot-smudged expressions.
