Page 22 of Knot Here for You

Asher leans back on the couch, his shoulders slumping. “She wouldn’t. Maybe she’s been in the city this whole time and we just… couldn’t fucking find her.”

“And she didn’t bother to find us,” Topher sounds like his heart is on the verge of breaking all over again. It makes my alpha crazy that my mate is hurting and I can’t actually do anything about it.

I shake my head. “No. I don’t believe that for a second. We have enough eyes and ears all over the city that someone would have told us if she came back. She must have just gotten in today.”

Almost like clockwork, my phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out and find a picture of Sylvie in a wine aisle at a grocery store. She looks… lost. Flustered. Sad beyond reason. A million different emotions are steeped into the slump of her shoulders, her pale cheeks, her watery eyes, and none of them are good.

My heart clenches. A second text comes through. This the girl you’re looking for?

I ignore them both, because I already know she’s here. But I don’t know why.

“It’s probably too much to hope that she’s here for us, huh?” Davis asks, helping himself to a drink as well. “Especially after she pretended not to know you.”

My jaw clenches at the memory. Fucking bullshit.

“Who was the guy she was with?” Ford asks the floor, like he can’t be bothered to bring his head up. He’s taken this the hardest, losing Vee. Topher’s my mate. Davis and Asher have each other, but for Ford it’s only ever been Sylvie. She’s his one and only, and losing her broke something so deep inside him I’m not sure it’ll ever heal.

Not without her.

It seemed like maybe he was on the verge of being better. Though I’m not sure I can really classify drinking himself into oblivion and fucking anything that moves as better… but ever since Vee’s grandmother died and she didn’t come for the funeral, that’s what he’s been doing. I haven’t said anything because at least he was doing something, which is a change from what he was doing before.

When I don’t answer right away, he slowly lifts his green eyes. “Who?”

Fuck. I really don’t want to tell him. Them.

I throw back the rest of my shot and don’t meet their eyes. “He said… He said she was his girl.”

“Bullshit,” my brother explodes, running his fingers through his curly brown hair and tugging. “No fucking way.”

“Warned me to stay away from her. Called her sweetheart and escorted her down the street. She looked at him like he hung the damn moon or something.”

Topher slumps further onto the couch. “I thought you were going to give us good news. But this is… this is so bad.”

I can’t stand by while my mate gets all desolate, so I pour one more shot, take it and then nudge him off the couch before taking his spot and pulling him onto my lap. A low purr rumbles out of me, and Topher relaxes against my chest. Nuzzling into my neck and taking deep inhales.

“I don’t think this is necessarily bad news,” Asher says, rubbing his fingers over his lips and staring off into the middle distance like he’s deep in thought.

“Not bad news?” Ford snarls, and I sit up a little straighter, preparing to intervene physically if necessary, but Asher doesn’t rise to the challenge, holding up a hand.

“No. Let’s look at the facts, shall we? We’ve been looking for Vee for years, with no luck. We have people in town keeping an eye out for her, and we’ve not had a single hit. From this, we can conclude that she hasn’t been here until today. Which leads me to believe the man she was with isn’t actually her boyfriend or whatever. This is Vee we’re talking about. She wouldn’t just hook up with a random guy the first time she meets him.”

“We don’t know her anymore,” Ford says darkly, sitting up and smoothing his blond hair into a man bun and securing it with the tie around his wrist. I note the way he winces just slightly, and wonder who he let beat the shit out of him this time.

“We know her well enough to know she wouldn’t do that. You remember how long it took for her to even kiss us?”

Davis tilts his head. “But how much of that was actually her and how much of that was her grandmother telling her not to give in too quickly? Or you know, her being a teenager. She’s an adult now and fucking hot.”

My stomach clenches. Fuck, it’s possible we don’t know her. We might not have known her even back then. She was always up front with us about her grandmother’s expectations of her. I’m fairly certain she never lied to us about how she felt.

But Ford is right. “We don’t know who she is anymore.”

Asher’s jaw ticks, and he meets my gaze defiantly. “I still say she doesn’t actually know the guy. It’s more likely she got the wild idea to get a tattoo right then, and it was her first time meeting him. He was probably doing that over protective alpha thing we all do with a pretty girl in distress.” He eyes me. “I’m guessing she was in distress at seeing you for the first time in eight years.”

I nod. “Damn near killed me to not scoop her up and carry her away to make her feel better.”

“You should have,” Davis says, knee bouncing in agitation. “Then she’d be here with us right now.”

I open my mouth to tell them I think they knew each other, but snap it closed. It’s not going to help anything.

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