I don’t know who he’s trying to convince, but he sure as hell isn’t convincing me.
Calling Torin was a good decision. The best I could have made.
I wasn’t thinking straight before. Just reacting. It’s a wonder I didn’t run under the wheels of a car, bolting into the road without looking. Now I’ve stopped sprinting up and down the road like a madman. Which means I can think.
So think, Archer. Fuckingthink. Where could she have gone?
I turn in a slow circle, taking in exactly where I am.
Downtown. The shit end of downtown, where I never believed I’d ever find Juniper, but there’s nowhere else in the city I thought to look for her. I’ve wandered every street I could. Torin and Callum have covered areas I haven’t. We have lookedeverywhere.
This part of town was pure desperation. Now that I’m using my brain, it makes perfect sense she would come here. We would never have thought to look for her here, and she would know that we had tried to see her in the hospital.
“Archer?” Torin says.
I shake my head. He must have been talking all this time, and I wasn’t listening.
“Juniper must have gotten off a bus,” I say. “It was pulling away when I was walking out of a coffee shop. She was struggling with a bag. They could have been groceries.” I spot a dented can of soup and a small jar of grape jelly on the ground. “She had groceries she dropped when she ran. That means she must live around here. Maybe?—”
“She had a maid’s uniform,” Torin interrupts. “What kind?”
I describe it: pale blue with a white collar and short sleeves.
He curses. “I don’t recognize it. But that’s something, right?”
Itissomething.
I try not to think about how our scent match spends her days cleaning hotel rooms.
Because of us.
Wedid this to her.
She should be relaxing in a nest. Comfortable. Content.Happy.
And we have her cleaning fuckingtoilets!
If I were a better man, I’d take the fact that she saw me and ran away as a sign to stay the fuck away. I’d give her the space she seems to want from me.
If she weren’t my scent match, maybe I’d get in my car, pretend I hadn’t seen her, and let her live the new life she’s created for herself.
But she’s mine.
So I hang up the phone, and as I wait for Torin to grab Callum, I start looking for her. I’m not fueled by the coffee I dropped on the other side of the road. I’m fueled by hope.
Hope we haven’t fucked up so utterly that there’s no coming back from it.
Hope that maybe, just maybe, we can find some way to convince her that we had reasons for believing she was the enemy. Good reasons.
She just has to hear them.
And maybe she can forgive the unforgivable.
Chapter 22
June
Irun all the way home.
