Page 199 of Wreck Me

I felt sick to my stomach.

For so many reasons that it was impossible to cure it.

The most prominent one was that Bastian was missing.

It had been three hours since he was supposed to have been at King Manor.

Not only hadn’t he showed, but he’d failed to respond to any of our texts or calls.

The mansion was in a frenzy with Caspian and his people rushing around doing this and that to track him down, pulling out all the stops, drawing on the shit-ton of resources that Caspian had at his disposal, reaching out to his underground contacts, the whole deal.

“This is Jett,” I told Caleb as I paced the patio while he smoked up a storm.

When we’d realized something was off, Caspian had reeled off a list of possible offenders to his people and Jett had been among them. But with the rest of the list, consisting of people such as those who wanted a piece of Caspian and would use those he was close to for leverage, and those wanting a piece of the Thorn estate itself which Bastian was the official heir apparent to, it was a lot to work through.

“The timing… it has to be him.”

“It’s more complicated than that in our world,” Caleb told me between drags. “But I agree he’s at the top of the list.”

“What about Damien? We now know he was working with Jett. He might know something. Caspian didn’t get anything out of him, but if I go over there and—”

“No. You’re talking about going dark. Besides, Cas didn’t get anything because there was nothing to get. Damien was only involved in leaking that video and helping Jett to monitor you. It’s bad enough, yeah, and he’ll pay for it, but it’s not kidnapping level.”

“I wished we’d jumped to the kidnapping angle right away. Precious time was wasted thinking it was Bastian taking off on his own.”

“With the way he’s been lately, it was the obvious conclusion to jump to.”

“I know he hasn’t been himself, but he’s not—”

“He’s been using again, Skylar.”

I jolted. “Excuse me?”

“Bastian has been taking meds again.”

“What? No, he was in control and—”

“He hasn’t been in control since he met you. And now it’s gone so fucking far that he’s lost it altogether.”

His words were like a sucker punch.

“I shouldn’t have stayed away, I shouldn’t have taken time away from him, or the rest of you to—”

He was there in the next moment, laying a hand on my shoulder. “Shh, it’s okay. I’m not blaming you. You were processing what you needed to. I get it… better than the other two, okay? I do. After what you went through with Jett, the fact you were able to let us in is a major deal, but it’s not a done deal, there’s gonna be bumps along the way, being derailed. I get that. Cas can’t, he’s all about loyalty with no in between. And Bastian, well, he’s way too obsessive to see any of that, all he registers is you pulling away. It feeds into his intense abandonment issues with him losing his dad.” He stroked my hair. “Besides, Bastian finally opening up after so long was a good thing. He was feeling and actually living again, instead of existing. Just… all these complications… they brought forth all the bad attached to that too. And he hasn’t been handling it.”

I sank into him and he wrapped his arm around me, his other still holding his cigarette.

“Thank you,” I murmured.

We pulled back and he smiled. “You know, connecting with you helped me too. It showed me that I could actually get close to somebody and feel something for somebody deeply, outside of Cas. For the longest time, all I had was him. I thought he would be the only one who could ever love me, with all that darkness and twisted shit in me. But you proved that wrong.” He reached out and stroked my cheek. “You opened things up for me.”

“Caleb, I—”

“We’ve located his Lexus,” Caspian’s voice came as he suddenly burst out onto the patio.

We both spun toward him.

“Where?” I asked.

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