The silence sits heavy for a beat.
“I’m not even sure she’ll talk to me,” I admit.“Not after all this.Not after what I did.What I didn’t do.”
Kai turns toward me.
“Then you don’t ask.You show her.”
I look at him sideways.
“Beg if you have to,” he says.“You’re good at groveling.”
“Eat shit, asshole.”
“I’m just saying, bro, you don’t give up.Not on someone like that.You think you get many like her?”
“No,” I say quietly.“No, I don’t.”
The storm thickens as we cross the Hudson, ice bouncing off the windshield like hail.
Winter in New York is slushy and slick.When we hit Jersey, the shit gets thicker.
More snow than ice.Slower traffic.Closed roads.
Paying attention to the drivers is hard when my brain is thinking about one thing only, but since I want to get there alive, I do what I have to.
“Why don’t you just use the tracker on her boots?”
“She’s not wearing them.I-I took all her clothes out of her room when she first got there.I don’t know.I guess subconsciously, I was hoping to keep her there until I found my fucking balls to confront her.”
“Damn.That’s some fucked up shit,” Kai says, but he’s grinning.
“Shut up.”
Verona’s not far now.
My pulse is steady, too steady.
The kind of stillness before something breaks.
I’m holding onto hope by the thinnest thread—that she’s there, that she’s safe, that she hasn’t decided I’m too much.
That I haven’t already lost her.
Because if she’s not home, if Marco found her first, if anyone touched her again—I don’t give a fuck about consequences.
I’ll burn the whole fucking world down for you, Angel.
And then I’ll build her a new one from the ashes.
“You just drive, brother.Go on and get your girl,” Kai says, softer now.
I nod.
“Yeah.That’s the plan.If she’ll have me.”
Chapter25
Sabrina
