Almost every relationship he’d ever known had been a performance of care that seized and broke the moment he stopped being useful, curdling into atrocity.
She saw his scars, even some of the less physical ones. But daylight changed things. Reality had teeth and they were slowly sinking in.
“Jack.” Ash’s voice cut through.
Jack turned back to the brothers, no longer able to focus on things that could easily be summarized in an email on Monday. “Thank you, gentlemen.”
Hunter frowned. “I think our comrade is still hunting.”
Ash chuckled. “As I was saying…”
The brunette Daisy had been talking to was heading for the doors.
Jack’s stomach dropped when he looked back and found the place they’d been standing empty. He scanned the hall.
Stragglers clustered near the entrance.
A few hunters nursed drinks by the fountain.
Staff cleared tables with quiet efficiency.
“Excuse me.” He stepped away from Ash mid-sentence. Didn’t explain. Didn’t apologize.
“The suite is yours as long as you need it,” Ash called after him.
Jack nodded without turning back. He moved through the emptying ballroom, his stride lengthening with each step. He rounded the base of the staircase and nearly collided with Vanessa.
“Jack.” She stood on the lower landing, her posture as composed as always. “Compliments on another fabulous Feast. From what I hear, it will be the highest-grossing yet.”
“Thank you. Have you seen Daisy?”
“Your sweet little fawn?” Her lips curved. “She told me to tell you she’d meet you in your suite.”
Relief surged through him so fast it bordered on vertigo. She stayed. She was waiting. She didn’t leave.
He moved past Vanessa toward the stairs, but her hand found his sleeve. Light. Deliberate.
“Jack.” Her voice lost its social warmth and settled into something maternal. Honest. “She’s a sweet one. Brave and strong-willed enough to actually challenge you.” She met his eyes with the steady certainty of a woman who’d spent decades reading men the way others read weather. “Be good to her.”
“Of course.” He casually pulled his arm out of reach. “Take care, Vanessa.”
He took the stairs two at a time.
The upper corridor stretched before him, silent and dim. He knew this lodge by heart from years of restless pacing while the hunts unfolded below.
He turned left where most would go right, cutting through the service passage behind the library, past the locked linen closets and the narrow stairwell the staff used to move unseen between floors. His footsteps struck bare stone, quick and purposeful, before the passage opened into the carpeted corridor leading to his suite.
The door was closed, but he’d given her the key. Punching in the code, the handle unlocked.
“Daisy?”
Silence.
The fire had burned to ash. The bed was unmade, sheets twisted, pillows bearing the impression of where she’d slept. The balcony doors stood open, curtains shifting in the early breeze. Golden light stretched across the floor in long, warm pools.
She wasn’t there.
“Daisy?”
