want now, Amy?” Chase asked absently as he glanced down at his phone and felt his stomach drop when he didn’t see a response.
Shit!
Too fucking desperate to play any games, he sent Sloane’s brothers a group text begging them to tell him where their sister was, hoping that one of them took pity on him before it was too late even as he ran the possibilities through his head. She could be at her parents’ house, with one of her brothers, or at one of the thousands of fucking hotels in this state or at the fucking airport. If he couldn’t find her, then he’d wait there, hoping that groveling would be enough to stop her from leaving and if it wasn’t…
He would–
“I moved my office last year,” Amy said lamely, gesturing to the building across the street and since he didn’t fucking care, he ignored her as he called Sloane.
“Come on, baby, pick up,” Chase said, rubbing the back of his neck as he tried not to lose his fucking mind while the phone continued ringing.
When it went to voicemail, he bit out a curse, hung up and found himself staring at Amy in disbelief when something she’d said caught his attention. Telling himself that he’d misunderstood her, he asked, “What did you just say?”
“I said that I missed you, Chase,” Amy said, giving him a hopeful smile.
“You missed me?” he repeatedly hollowly.
“Yes,” Amy whispered as her bottom lip trembled and she gave him that look that had broken him too many times over the years.
“Unfucking believable,” Chase said, shaking his head in disgust as he looked back down at his phone and called Sloane again, telling himself that it wasn’t too late to fix this.
“Are you mad at me?” Amy mumbled prettily, worrying her bottom lip in a well-practiced move that used to leave him feeling like he was an asshole.
Now, it just pissed him off.
“You’re fucking unbelievable,” he said, shaking his head in disgust.
“I panicked, Chase. I’m sorry, but I was so scared.”
“You were scared? I was fucking terrified!”
“I-I didn’t know what to do,” Amy said around a broken sob as she wrapped her slender arms around herself.
“You knew enough to fuck my best friend,” he snapped at her, shaking his head in disgust because he couldn’t believe that she was trying to waste his time with this bullshit.
“It was a mistake!”
“No, coming here was a mistake,” Chase said, returning his attention to his phone.
“Please, Chase! I love you!”
“I don’t love you,” he said, trying to figure out what he should do next.
“You don’t mean that! We’ve been together since we were children, Chase,” Amy said around a sob.
“And that didn’t stop you from marrying another man,” he pointed out as he sent Sloane’s mom a text message, hoping that she took pity on him and told him where he could find her.
“It was a mistake, Chase. I was so scared and I needed you, but you weren’t there and…and Thomas was. He was there for me and I was so lonely and–”
“And he can fucking have you because I already have what I want,” Chase said, sighing in relief when his phone chimed, letting him know that he had a message. When he read it, he realized that it might already be too late.
Chapter 41
Orlando International Airport
For a moment, all Sloane could do was sit there, staring down at her phone as she tried to make sense out of what just happened only to drop her head back against the bathroom wall with a sigh.
They’d fired her.
She came to the airport with absolutely no idea what she was going to do next, just hoping that the agency would be able to give her something short-term so that she could get through this without losing her mind and…
Somehow, they already knew about Chase.
She’d barely managed to say her name when she was suddenly asked to hold while they got a manager. Apparently, she’d violated too many rules for them to ignore that they hadn’t known where to start. They hadn’t been happy to find out that she’d decided to stay with Chase when she’d taken a leave of absence, but that apparently paled in comparison to the fact that she’d been sleeping with him for the past five months. They hadn’t given her a chance to explain, not that she could, Sloane admitted as she sat there, staring down at her phone while she tried to figure out what she was going to do now.