My eyebrows climb up my forehead, “What if she had been taken against her will, shouldn’t the room be left the way it was?” The anger that I thought was satiated after I slit Miller’s throat is creeping back up my spine.
Both nurses watch me pace, but they don’t answer my question. I stop and turn to the smaller nurse who said she checked on her last, “Did she say anything that might lead you to believe that she would leave?”
Her eyes scan the floor as she thinks back and she shakes her head, “The only thing she asked was if the person who brought her to the hospital was here and she asked if the baby is okay.” Her gaze comes back to me, “When I told her that noone had been here all day, she got upset, but she was quiet about it.”
Me. She was asking if I was still here.
My chest squeezes as I realize she thinks I dumped her here and left. Her brother has done such a good job of making her feel like she is nothing that she assumed I was getting rid of her.
Fuck!
The simmering anger is starting to boil over, “Did you tell her what I told the other nurse to tell her? That I would be back?”
“I’m sorry sir, I didn’t know you said that, the message wasn’t passed to me.” The small nurse is shrinking away from me, and I know it’s because I am being an ass, but I don’t care.
“What kind of hospital is this?” I look between the two nurses in front of me, but the other nurse squares her shoulders and steps between me and the smaller nurse.
“Nurse Stubbs did everything she was supposed to do, she is not at fault because the patient’s family left and didn’t come back the entire day.”
The jab fucking stings and I lift my finger to say something, but Jax slaps my hand down.
“Okay, time to go.” Jax steps between me and the two nurses, pushing me toward the elevators.
I let him guide me because I know that arguing with the nurses isn’t going to get me anywhere, but holy fuck, where is Sloane? Did she walk out of here on her own?
How the fuck did she manage that with a fractured leg? I forgot to ask if she had been given crutches or anything like that.
Once the elevator doors are closed, I clench my fists to stop myself from hitting something. Anything. “Why would she walk out of here, Jax? It doesn’t make sense. She was toobeat up to be on her own.” My chest is so tight that it feels like I can’t get enough oxygen, I close my eyes and lean against the wall behind me, letting my head tip back.
“We’re going to find out what’s going on, maybe she was scared because she didn’t know that no one would be coming to take her again. But getting arrested in the hospital will only add more to our list of things to do.” He’s leaning against the wall as well, but unlike me, his hands are loosely hanging in his pockets and his body is relaxed.
I rub my palms over my face and take a deep breath before I cup the back of my neck with one hand. My anxiety is going through the roof as I think about her out there by herself, beat up and pregnant.
“Hey.” Jax says and I look up at him, “We’re going to find her, she’s going to be okay.”
“But what if someone got to her after she walked out of here and now she’s lost to me?” I express my fears and my voice cracks.
Jax smiles and tilts his head to the side, “If I didn’t know any better, I would say that you are in love with this woman.”
My thoughts go back to sharing a bed with her every night for the past two weeks, I don’t think I could sleep without her now if I tried. Knowing she is next to me calms something in me that is usually controlled by the adrenaline from a job.
Touching her, smelling her, and just knowing she is there has kept me satisfied at home. I realize that for the first time in years, I haven’t been counting the minutes until the next job. I’ve been happy and calm because of her.
As the doors open, my thoughts of her soften the anger on my face and I look at Jax, “I do. If not wanting to spend a day without her means I love her, then yes, I love her.”
Jax’s phone buzzes and he reads the text as we walk across the huge hospital lobby, “Spits says that she waited inthe shadows for a while until all the nurses were gone from the desk and went to the elevators on her own. She was using crutches.”
“Fuck.”
“I’m telling you, man, she got spooked because she doesn’t know the danger to her has been eliminated.”
“Have you heard from Callum? Have they got her brother?”
He shakes his head, “Not yet.”
We walk the rest of the way to the car in silence.
Marley, Kinley, and my father meet us in the entryway as soon as Jax and I walk through the door, they are looking around me and Jax to search for Sloane. I glance at the top of the stairs and Lainey Rai is sitting on the top step, leaning on a banister spindle.
