Page 38 of Torch
Me:Naked? As in right now you’re fucking naked? Without me?
What sucked was that I wasn’t alone right now, and I wanted a fucking picture of her naked, so I could rub one out over it later.
“Fuck’s sake, brother, can you focus right now?” I lifted my head from my phone, and thoughts of Grace’s sweet pussy, to see everyone glaring at me. Fuck. What did I miss?
“What?”
Stitch glared at me with more fury than I’d seen yet.
“We’re trying to find a missing fucking brother right now. Can you get your head back in this shit? Who saw him last and when?” That question was sent back at the rest of the group as I joined them again, my phone in my pocket, even though I felt it buzz with a new message, and forced myself to hold back on checking it again.
“I have him coming in yesterday morning, and I know he was on dinner shift, so he’d have left in the evening,” Ice said, scanning through camera feeds. Thank fuck he recorded everything, and held weeks’ worth of shit on his drives. Without this, we’d be even more blind than we already were.
“Huh.”
We all waited impatiently for him to explain what the fuck that meant, but the fucker could drag this shit out for hours if he wanted to. Finally Stitch groaned.
“Seriously, Ice, get to the fucking point.” He lifted his eyes from his screen, looking more than frustrated or worried. He looked scared.
“I can’t find any sign of him leaving here, and uh… we have a bigger problem.”
“Which is?”
He glanced at Grease, whose eyes widened as he looked at what was on Ice’s screen.
“We have a camera blackout at the utility entrance. It was out for almost ten minutes last night.”
What the fuck.
Grace
Torchhadn’trepliedtomy last message, in response to his cranky one about me being naked. I wasn’t, obviously, because I’d been on shift, but it had been fun to play with him, even though I knew he had so much going on right now. Maybe I felt like he needed the distraction, or something to smile about. Now I was worried that distraction might have caused him to come to harm.
I watched time pass after that last message, and finished my shift, getting home after midday, and still with no response. I didn’t want to message him again right now, in case I was being needy and pathetic, but what if something was wrong?
I ended up messaging Lissa, because I was out of ideas, but worried enough to try something.
Me:Hey, just checking in to see if everything’s okay? Torch has gone quiet on me. Ally seems to be doing well, by the way.
Lissa’s response was almost instant.
Lissa:Thank you for that. We’re so relieved she’s awake and starting to heal. I’m not sure exactly what’s going on here, but the fire alarm was triggered really early this morning, and something’s going on.
Shit. The fire alarm? I started grabbing my keys and heading for my door, but what exactly was I going to do? Rush to the aid of a man far more capable of protecting himself than me? Risk getting hurt in my dumb attempt to protect him? Show my face in the one place he and others of his club had warned me to stay away from?
I slumped as I reached the front door again.
“I’m an idiot,” I murmured to myself, taking my keys back to the hook and hanging them. There was nothing I could do there.
Me:Is everyone okay though? There was a fire?
What more could I do, but text the one person who would talk to me without judging me for my neediness?
Lissa:It was done deliberately for an emergency headcount, but I don’t know what the outcome is. I’m locked in with the other old ladies for safety, and updates are slow right now. That means something’s happening but I don’t know what yet. As far as I know, Torch is fine though. I saw him outside a little while ago from the window.
Not knowing was so hard. Not being able to just call him up and ask questions even harder. The trouble was though that we hadn’t really even had a chance to discuss what was happening with us, to define it. Was I his girlfriend? A fuck buddy? A passing fling? Someone to fuck a few times? It was really hard to know what boundaries existed between us, when I had no idea what was actually happening between us.
I definitely had strong feelings for him, and I was fooling myself if I didn’t think that started the first time I set eyes on him. I’d rebuffed his advances that first time around, and the second time, to see him coming into the hospital unconscious, suffering from a severe stab wound, and life-threatening blood loss, was such a shock to the system. I’d been so afraid I wouldn’t be able to save him. That I wouldn’t be able to see him or hear that snarky voice of his again.
