Page 123 of Falling Into Forever
But he has the same thing haunting his eyes that Saylor does—sadness.
“When was this?” I ask, searching for time stamps, but they range from one to three hours ago as every media outlet picks it up.
“At least a couple of hours ago,” Grady says. “Have you heard from her?” The inflection in his tone sets the hair on my arms on end.
“Why do you ask like that? Where is she?”
“I’m not sure, but she’s not home and isn’t answering her phone.”
If Blake did something to upset her, to cause her harm when I’m not there to hold her, I don’t care what his pedigree is. I’ll kill him.
“Grady…”
“I know. I’m sorry, but I know. We’re looking for her.”
“Did you call the hospital? Did you talk to Ainsley?” My heart is grasping for any explanation for where she would have gone. Where the hell does she go when she walks alone?
“Her car is still in the garage, so she hasn’t gone far…”
He doesn’t finish his thought because we both know where it leads.
“The lake.”
“Sassy isn’t stupid, Dante. She’s lived by the lake for years and has never gone in.”
“Except when I scared her with my words,” I say, repeating her accusation from the first day I went home.
“Adam and Harrison are in the boat.” A fear I’ve never known tries to cut off my airways. “She’s not out there, Dante. It’s just a…”
“Then where the fuck is she, Grady? I know she doesn’t go in the lake, but she did fall in recently. She can be clumsy, but she hasn’t even gone on a walk in the dark for weeks. Not with all the assholes hounding her house.”
“Dante.”
“And what the hell was Blake doing at her house in the first place?”
“Dante.”
“What if he upset her and she—”
“For fuck’s sake, Dante. Shut the hell up for a second.”
The velocity of his tone stuns me into silence. “Kingston got the media to back off. Mrs. Walker said she only sees one random one wandering through town now. My best guess is he showed up to make sure she was okay, gave his talk, and went home. She’s most likely walking somewhere to work through her thoughts. But I didn’t want you seeing it and freaking out when you couldn’t get ahold of her.”
“Screw this.” I hiss out a breath. “Thank you. But screw this. I’m done being away from her. There’s literally nothing Trent can do to us now. Nothing. He’s put all our shit out there, and we survived.” I hope. “I’m coming home, and he can burn in hell for all I care.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Fuck off, Grady.”
“Stop fucking swearing at me. If you didn’t care about the asshole, you wouldn’t have been diddling around this whole time.”
“Fu—”
“Don’t interrupt me. I didn’t say it’s a bad thing. He’s your family. I get it. But don’t say you don’t care because everything you’ve done to this point proves otherwise.”
“Fine. But I’m done trying to fix people who don’t try to fix themselves.”
“I learned the hard way, Dante. You can’t fix people, only things. You’ll do good to remember that. Lena is dropping Poppy off with Mrs. Walker, and we’ll tag team all her favorite spots.”
