Page 92 of Brace and Chase

“Then at who?” He still looks confused, and I swear I want to stay on topic, but then he takes his shirt off and I get to see him in all his naked glory and well... I get distracted. “Sweetheart,” he says loudly and I snap my eyes back up to his face.

“What?” It takes me a second to remember what he said. “Oh, I’m mad in general.”

“Why?” He finally gets under the covers and as always scoots to the middle and pulls me forcibly until we’re touching from head to toes.

“Because you don’t have a home,” I explain. “I’m mad that for whatever reason you think living in a hotel is something you deserve. Even if you did make it very homey with all the paintings and pictures. I didn’t know you liked art.”

“They were all my mother’s,” he whispers as his eyes close. The exhaustion of the day—physical and emotional—finally catching up to him. I got a second wind after seeing the suite, but now it’s hitting me again.

“I like them,” I tell him, and then it’s lights out.

I feellike I’ve been running all over the place and haven’t had a second to breathe the whole day when practice finally finishes at eleven and I can sit in front of my cubby. Nik is reading something on his phone, totally engrossed, and so I reach for my own.

That’s when I see about a million messages and another hundred missed calls from Beau.

“Fuck,” I snap. Fear grips my mind in an unbreakable vise as I hit the screen to call him back.

“Fucking finally, Charlie,” Beau snaps.

“What happened?” I demand. “Are you hurt? Where are you? I can?—”

“Finn never came to the room last night. I’m not hurt,” he snaps at me.

“What?” I shout. “We left him at your floor. It was the twelfth, right?” I’m standing, still in full gear, but my stupid panicked brain still thinks everything will get fixed if I stand. “I saw him walking down the hallway, and he wasn’t stumbling that bad.” I close my eyes, trying to recall every single detail of last night, but I was distracted by Nik pushing another button before the doors were even closed. If I’d only?—

“Oh,” Beau says, relieved. “Well then, he can’t be far.”

Why is he suddenly so calm?

“I’m gonna go walk the hallway, see if he fell asleep on the floor or something.

“What? Beau—” But the line is already dead.

I turn and see Nik looking at me with worried eyes.

“Finn’s missing,” I explain.

“How? We left him on his floor.” He says the exact same thing I just did.

“I don’t know, but we need to go.”

“Okay.”

He starts shedding his gear without hesitation, and I’m flooded with so muchemotionfor him in that moment that it freezes me for a few seconds. He’s fucking amazing.

But then I snap the fuck out of it.

At the house,I’m pacing up and down the foyer while Nik is on the phone with Sterling, asking for the resort manager’s number. Since his residency is there, he’s our best bet to get some people who are actually there to help.

I, on the other hand, have been trying to get Beau to call me back, but he doesn’t. It’s fucking infuriating and?—

My phone rings, and it’s Finn.

“Fi,” I answer, sounding so much like my father that it catches me off guard long enough for him to interrupt me.

“Before you give me a lecture just remember, you should’ve taken me all the way to our room, so this is kind of your fault, okay? Also, maybe skip the lecture and hear me out. Is there any way you can get us another ticket for the concert tonight?”

“Yeah, Sterling told me there’s a bunch available,” I answer without thinking, because he did. Well, Jules didwhen I asked before practice but he’s Sterling’s husband, so he knows.

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