Page 80 of Bad & Bossy

“Together? Me too.”

“I was going to say hooking up but I guess that’s kinda the same thing.” He tilted his head to the side as he watched me, his ponytail of wiry brown hair swooping along with the movement. “You should go back downstairs. And get a new vest. You’ve got a tear at the shoulder.”

God, I was going to kill them both.

Defeated, angry, and hurt, I took the elevator back down before my next tour of the day. I’d barely had any time to spare in between them now—with the word getting out about the new flavors and us promoting testers on the tours—slots had filled up in record time. But my feelings were changing from worry to just being plain upset.

I nearly lost my mind trying to fish out the vibrating phone in my pocket.

The screen didn’t show me the name I wanted it to, though. Instead, it said Grayson, and although it wasn’t Cole, it was close enough.

“Please tell me you found him,” I said quietly, squeezing past another tour guide before slipping into the vest room.

“Nothing yet,” he sighed. “I did manage to get in contact with his parents, though. Hoped maybe they’d have some information but they didn’t.”

My eyes nearly bulged from my skull as I leaned against the wall, checking my watch to make sure I wasn’t late. “You talked to them? What did they say?”

I could hear the sound of a crash in the background, followed by a few loud giggles from his daughter and a frustrated grunt from Gray. “Penny… no, never mind, sweetheart. It’s fine,” he said, his attention elsewhere. I had five minutes. I needed him to hurry this up. “Nothing that I didn’t already know. They’re disgusting people, if you ask me. Couldn’t have cared less that their son was missing.”

“What do you mean by ‘nothing you didn’t already know?’”

“Just that they said he was probably off at a bar somewhere. Which, if they’d said that nine months ago, I wouldn’t have batted an eye. Not that I don’t care, it just wouldn’t surprise me.”

The taste of iron burst into my mouth. Must have bit through my lip. “Have you checked them?”

“What?”

“The bars, Gray,” I breathed. “His usual hang outs. Any others.”

“I have. Just in case,” he said. “Came up empty.”

I pulled a fresh vest from the cupboard, inspecting it to keep my hands busy so I wouldn’t go insane. “Do you think he’s drinking again?”

He hesitated before he spoke and my stomach fucking dropped. “No, Dana, I don’t. I know what he’s like when he’s drinking, and this isn’t it.”

I clutched the vest in my hand, crumpling the fabric. “I just don’t understand.” In truth, it felt more like he was covering for his friend, not wanting to worry me.

“This shit with his parents, it runs deep. I’m shocked it took him this long to go off the grid, to be honest,” he sighed. “Penny, please stop saying shit.”

I let him wrangle his daughter as I glanced at my watch again. Three minutes.

“I don’t know how much you know about it,” he continued, “but they practically abandoned him, leaving him with his aunt when he was thirteen. Dropped him off and never looked back.” My chest tightened. I knew he had issues with them, knew they were a painful thing for him to talk about, but I didn’t know that. “Couldn’t be bothered to actually parent him, wanted to spend their forties exploring the world. They didn’t visit, call, or even write. They just pretended he didn’t exist.”

“God,” I breathed. I didn’t know what to say, or think, or feel. All I wanted to do was find him and hug him, tell him he didn’t have to deal with this alone, and then go and beat his parents’ faces in for him.

No wonder he’d wrapped his hand around his father’s throat.

“He’s got a lot going on, Dana. With work and now this, he’s cracking under the stress.”

“Are there any signs exclusive to him when he’s drinking?” I asked as the clock ticked down to one minute. “So I know what to watch for.”

He took a deep breath, silence hanging heavy before he spoke again. Forty seconds. “Aggression. Quick temper. Irritable. You’ll be able to smell the booze on him, he’s not good at hiding that. For the most part, he looks and acts sober, unless he’s really wasted. Then he’s just unhinged.”

“And that’s not what he is right now?”

“This is different, Dana.”

“How?”

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