Page 28 of The Winslow Brothers

Fuck.

I stand up straight from the arm of the chair I’d found to lean on, and Remy looks back and forth between us with concern. It takes him exactly one fucking second to know something is up.

“What’s going on?” he asks. I’d like to be surprised that he’s picked up on our interaction quickly enough to ask such a question, but just with the way my mood’s tanked alone, the vibe has to be palpable.

Winnie looks to me and pulls her lips into her mouth with her teeth, and Remy stalks across the room toward her. He grabs her by the elbow—albeit gently since this is Remy and his precious baby sister Winnie we’re talking about—tugs her inside, and then closes the door behind her.

“Winnie. Tell me right now. What’s going on?”

“Okay,” Winnie says, smoothing her hands down the front of Remy’s tux lapels. “I don’t want you to worry, but we’re currently having a hard time finding Charlotte.”

“You can’t find Charlotte?” he asks, and she shakes her head.

“No one knows where she is.”

“What? The wedding is supposed to fucking start in less than thirty minutes!” Remy yells, bringing Jude and Flynn to high alert immediately. The three of us close in on his back in case we have to get his shit under control to keep him from hurting himself.

“See,” Winnie says, then raises her hands in the air. “Right there. That’s what Idon’twant you to do.”

“Winnie,” he growls.

“Okay, okay. She’s not currently in the venue, but Ivy and Harper both said she left them a note saying she would meet them in the bridal suite. We’ve all tried to call her, though, and none of us has been able to get a hold of her.”

“Someone get me my goddamn phone!” Remy shouts, and Flynn jumps to run over to Remy’s bag in the corner, riffling through it quickly, and then coming back with the requested device.

I’m pretty sure Remy’s already dialing before the fucking thing even hits his hand because he puts it to his ear almost immediately and waits, his face growing stormier and stormier with every unanswered ring on the other end.

When she obviously doesn’t pick up, he slams the phone back down into his hand and dials again, and Winnie steps to the side and pulls me close.

“I’m going back to the bridal suite,” she says on a whisper. “I didn’t think to look before, but I’m going to see if there’s anything in her bag that’ll help.”

I nod, and she takes off for the door in a hurry.

When Remy comes up empty again, a guttural yell leaving his lips as he takes the phone down from his ear and does it all over again, my mind races with a million wild possibilities.

Out of them all, I’m really fucking hoping that Winnie finds Charlotte herself in that goddamn bag of hers.

Remy

Everything that’s happened in the last week plays in my head over and over and over again. The psychic’s fucked-up prediction, Charlotte’s job offer, our fight about it last night—all of it feels intertwined with this moment in the most gut-churning, sickening way possible, and yet, thinking about the alternative feels infinitely worse.

What if Charlotte is hurt? Or someone took her? Or…fuck, I don’t know.

But it’s so unlike her to do something like this—to not even answer a fucking phone call—that I can’t make my mind think straight.

I pace the room, back and forth, back and forth, wearing into the hotel’s expensive carpet and fighting against the urge to get sick.

Jude, Flynn, and Ty are all here, somewhere. I can feel them, but I can’t see them or what they’re doing.

The truth is, I feel like I can’t see at all.

The phone rings once, twice, three, four times in my ear once again, and Charlotte’s voice mail picks up for the fifth time in a row. I haven’t bothered leaving her a message, but this time, I do, my desperation coming to a head.

“You’ve reached Charlotte Hollis, soon-to-be Winslow. Please leave your name and number and brief message after the beep, and I’ll get back to you.”

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Beep.

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