“Creed—“I’m physically vibrating with anger, ready to fucking wreak havoc on the world once again when a slap lands on my cheek. I turn wild eyes to my best friend, who is now standing, his face inches from mine.
He sees the crazy; I know he does, but instead of flinching away from the violence radiating off of me, Asher grabs each side of my face, and presses his forehead roughly into mine.
Less than a whisper apart, his eyes never waver when he speaks. “You can be pissed. You can fucking rage.” His hands shift to grip the hair at the nape of my neck and gives a firm tug and a shake. “Be angry, Creed. But do it in a way that’s helpful to finding them. I’m fucking angry, too,” he grits out through a clenched jaw. “I’m so fucking mad at myself for failing her time and time again. But we can’t lose our heads when she and Riley need us both to be focused in order to bring them home.”
He presses a rough kiss to my forehead before leveling me with a glare. “We can punish ourselves later, but right now,you have. To keep it. Together.” He punctuates his words to drive home the severity of the situation.
He’s right. I’ve destroyed this room countless times now in the two weeks we’ve been stuck here in St. Louis, but it didn’t bring Collins and Riley back to me. It didn’t help me feel any better. I nod against Asher, and he takes a breath before releasing me and stepping back. He kneels and holds out the shorts once more. I step into them, and he helps me pull them up over my ass without even removing the towel. Once they’re in place, he pulls the towel from my waist and tosses it onto the bed behind him.
“I’ll grab a shirt for you to put on after we head to your dad’s room to get you cleaned up. I’ll get someone to clean this shit up.Again.”He pins me with a less-than-impressed stare, and I just shrug. As annoyed as he is with me, I see the torment in his eyes that reflects my own. I lost my partners, but he lost hisbaby sister. For years, Asher battled with the guilt that devoured him for abandoning Collins. He had no idea the shit she went through, and it would absolutely wreck him if she were to ever share those details with him. He knows some of what went on, based on the information given to him for security’s sake, but he doesn’t know justhowbad she had it when he was absent from her life as he tried to piece his own back together.
Tightening my grip on the fabric wrapped around my fist, I follow Asher out of my room and down the hall. We stop in front of a door and Asher knocks. It swings open almost immediately, and it’s like an older version of myself stands before us.
I haven’t seen my dad in years, but in true fatherly fashion, he scans me from head to toe for injury, pausing on the shit show that is my right hand.
“Goddamn it, Credence St. James, what did you do this time?” he says with an exasperated sigh. I’m twenty-nine years old, but using my full name that I fucking loathe, makes me feel like I’m eight again, getting berated for breaking my arm after climbing a tree that he told me not to climb. I just shrug and he huffs. “Get your ass in here.” He steps aside, allowing Asher and me to enter the room.
“Asher,” my dad greets, pulling my best friend in for a hug.
Ash claps him on the back twice before releasing him and nodding, a small smile tugging at his mouth. “Garrick.”
Chapter 5
Creed
“ASHER’S LITTLE SISTER.”
My larger-than-life father turns to me and gives me a look that used to have me shrinking in my seat when I was a kid, but now I just mimic the look on his face right back at him, which he does not appreciate.
“What did you do, Son?” he repeats a little softer this time, but still I don’t answer. I’m not entirely certain how to explain just how broken and lost I feel without Riley and Collins. How exactly does one describe their sanity snapping in two, only to leave them laughing on the bathroom floor after shattering a mirror because their own reflection was taunting them? How do I tell my dad that I’m a fucking failure because I couldn’t do what he’s been doing for most of my life?Keep those that I love safe.
Garrick St. James, in my eyes, has always been one of the best human beings to grace this planet. When my mom died when I was little, he stepped up and raised me the best he could. He was gone a lot, but he always made sure I was well fed, and he spent every minute that he was home with me. He never remarried either. He told me that mom was the only woman he’d ever given his heart to, and that it’d remain with her until they found their way back to one another in the afterlife. So he’d always remained focused on me or his job.
I always thought he was the world’s busiest taxi driver, but several years ago, I’d learned that it was just a cover.
While occasionally transporting people as a normal taxi driver, his main job was helping to transport women, children, and occasionally men from toxic situations, helping to create new identities so they could start their lives anew.
I understand why he kept this secret from me, but honestly, finding out the truth of it only made me love him more. I’d never met a more selfless man than my father…until Riley came along.
My chest damn near caves in at the thought of my boy and the way he was dragged away. The trail of blood that led to the pool of it where he’d been shot on our tour bus still haunts me. Asher hasn’t let me go back there since that day two weeks ago, even though it’s been scrubbed clean.
Dad releases a hefty sigh when he sees I won’t answer him and turns to Ash, raising a dark brow at him. “He destroyed his room again, I take it?”
“Just the bathroom mirror this time.”
I want to mumble how he’s afucking traitorunder my breath, but I refrain. Asher takes a seat on the sofa and checks his phone while dad guides me over to one of the chairs at the kitchenette and shoves me into it.
“Let me see,” he beckons, pulling his chair directly in front of mine and holding out his hand.
I place mine into his and watch silently as he carefully unwraps the towel from my knuckles. It’s hard to pay attention or even register the pain of him prodding my hand when my thoughts are constantly plagued withwhat-ifsand worst-case scenarios. Iwantto believe that they’re both alive, and I’m clinging to as much hope as I can, but the scene that motherfucker painted for me on the bus is making it really fucking difficult.
No. Stop it.
They. Are. Alive.
They’re fucking alive.
They have to be alive because I. Fucking. Need. Them.
