Page 57 of Breaking Blaze

“Man, I don’t know what you did, but you’d better fix this shit fast,” AJ’s voice cut through the fog sucking the life and energy from his body and mind.

Leaning back in his desk chair, Blaze glared up at AJ who was standing, arms crossed over his chest, glaring right back.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Blaze grumbled, his exhaustion making his voice deeper and more rumbling than usual.

It had been a week since he’d let Anna walk out of his office. Out of his life. And it had been five days since he’d spent nearly every last one of his free—and not so free—hours looking for her. It was like she’d fallen off the face of the earth. She hadn’t gone back to her apartment. Her car wasn’t parked in any of her usual spots. She’d called in to work at Happy Jack’s for unpaid time off—she was hiding from him. And he didn’t blame her one fucking bit.

It didn’t matter, though, because he would find her. No matter how long it took, he would find her, force her to listen to him, and then he’d kiss the hell out of her.

God, he missed her. So fucking much. It was like a part of him had been cut out and burned, because it had. His Anna. His heart and soul…was missing. And he couldn’t find her.

But he would. It was just a matter of time. And he was a patient man, especially when it came to getting something he really, truly wanted.

Anna would be his again.

“I’m talking about how Sally called me this morning asking me to buy some moving boxes on my way home from work and drop them at her place. When I asked her what she needed moving boxes for, she told me, straight up, she was helping Anna pack.”

Horror and panic sliced through him, his breath halting.

“What?” Was that his strangled voice booming through the room?

“Anna. Is. Moving. She’s got herself a new place to live—though Sally won’t say a damn thing about how or where. Seems like whatever you did to Anna was the last straw.”

Blaze nearly leapt over his desk in his rush to get to the door.

“She’s packing, that means she has to be at her apartment, right?”

“Yeah, I’d imagine so, but—”

Blaze cut him off by barreling past him and out the door to his truck. “I don’t have time, man. I need to get to Anna before I lose her forever,” he called over his shoulder to the stunned AJ still standing in the office doorway.

He started his truck and thrust it into reverse, his body shuddering from the surge of adrenaline pounding through it.

Can’t lose Anna.

She can’t leave me. I won’t let her. She’s everything. I can’t live without my Anna! Can’t lose her. Can’t lose her,the words blazed through him.

But hadn’t he already done that? Hadn’t he already broken her heart, ripping himself to pieces in the process? Hadn’t he already fed her the bullshit of “I can’t” when what he really meant was “I’m too fucking scared”?

In all his time in Jackson Key, he’d never made such good time to their apartment building before. Parking, he barely had his feet on the ground before he was sprinting through the lobby doors and toward the elevators.

“Blaze?” a familiar and annoying voice called to him, like nails on a chalkboard. “What’s your hurry?”

Blaze didn’t even bother to stop and answer Bitch Brigit’s question. She was nothing to him but a nuisance. He wouldn’t put it past her to have staged the shit that happened at the office. She probably heard Anna’s car, saw her through the window, and decided she’d stake her claim on him when Anna came through the door. Now, that he thought about it, he’d thought it was strange that she went from talking about him being her date to an office party to mashing her botoxed lips on his.

When Anna had appeared through the doorway, all other thoughts had fled his mind, and Brigit’s actions took last place on his priorities list. But now that he’d had time to think about it, he realized what Brigit had done.

And she just kept coming!

Hell, no! This stops now. It all stops now!

Stopping on a dime, Blaze pivoted on his heel to glare across the small lobby at Brigit who was, as expected, wearing an outfit that would have called to the old Blaze. The Blaze that was down for a quick fuck in a dark corner. Hell, that’s what he’d nearly done with her before Greg had caught them and sent them on their way to her apartment. Now, that was a memory he wanted to scrub from his brain, because that was the night every fucking thing changed for him. And not only for the better. He wasn’t that Blaze anymore, though. He was a different man, a man desperately trying to be good enough for the woman he loved. And cutting ties with his old life and his old fuck ups was just one step.

Brigit, glad she had his attention, sidled over to him and slid a hand over his chest.

“I’m glad I caught you—”

Blaze slapped her hand away, growling, his patience as slim as Brigit’s eyebrows.

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