Page 24 of The Forever Rule

“He really does,” Flynn called out.

“Then go,” she whispered.

And then I pressed my lips to hers again before letting her walk away, presumably to go fix the blush of her face. But I thought she looked gorgeous.

“So, have you lost your mind?” Flynn asked as we stepped out of earshot.

“Stop it. I don’t want to hear it.”

Flynn clucked his tongue. “I think you’ve lost your mind.”

“I think you’re more like Dorian than we thought,” James whispered, and I flipped them both off, before straightening my jacket.

“Let’s go be Cages and do what we need to.”

“So that’s the girl from the chat?” James asked.

I nodded tightly. “We’re done here.”

“Oh, I think you’ve just begun,” Flynn said with a laugh.

I rolled my eyes at my two brothers, and moved toward the ballroom, knowing we had people to meet,and there was work to be done. My phone buzzed in my pocket however, and I couldn’t help but hope it was her.

However it wasn’t Blakely calling, it was my mother.

“Answer it, or we’re all going to have to deal with that,” Flynn said with a roll of his eyes.

I sighed but answered anyway. “Hello, Mother. You’re missing a great gala.”

“Aston. It’s your father.”

Ice slid up my spine, and I swallowed hard. I must have looked as if something was wrong, because both my brothers stopped teasing me, and stood still, staring at me.

“What’s wrong?”

“Your father is dead. And I need you here. Call the others. We need you.” She hung up without saying anything else, and I stared at my brothers knowing everything had changed.

Chapter Five

BLAKELY

He hadn’t called.

He should have called. But he hadn’t.

I waited by my phone for four days, waiting for a call. The weekend had passed, and then the holiday where there was no work, just me waiting by a phone as I sat at home alone.

But he hadn’t called.

I had picked up my phone countless times to call him, but he had said he would call me. And he was Aston Cage, man of business. I wasn’t going to be the one who called first. Right?

Phone in hand, I knew I just needed to put on my big-girl panties and do it. I looked up his texts, pressed his icon, and called.

It rang once and went straight to voicemail. I frowned but didn’t leave a message.

He had sent me straight to voicemail. Maybe he was in a meeting? Or maybe he just wasn’t calling.

I knew I needed to get to work, and I had to stop stressing over the fact that a man hadn’t called me after he had kissed the daylights out of me in the middle of a work function.

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