“Okay,” he muttered. “I can do dirty...every now and then. I love that you can convince—” He stopped, and his arms tightened around me. “I love you.”
My heart quickened, and I turned in his arms, looking up at him. “I love you too.”
Sebastian cuddled me against his chest as we kissed softly.
His phone rang, but he ignored it. Then mine rang, then his rang again, and text messages poured in.
Sebastian and I fumbled for our phones at the same time.
“Oh my god,” I exclaimed, reading the messages.
Sebastian looked up at me, his face taut and his eyes terrified. “Alfie is missing.”
44
Sebastian
Iran out of the office. “Alfie! Alfie!”
“Oh my god!” Amy cried, running out after me. She pushed one hand through her messy curls and used the other to text on her phone. “Where could he be?”
I was suddenly furious with Amy but mostly with myself. “I should never have been with you,” I snarled, turning on her.
She jerked back like I had slapped her.
“I should have stayed and watched my brother. God, this is all my fault.”
“Sebastian,” she said, reaching for me, but I turned and headed into the crowd.
At the bachelor-party-turned-festival, Hunter had all his younger brothers assembled.
“There you are,” he said. “Where were you?”
I ignored the question. “No word on Alfie?”
“My brother Remy is out driving around, looking for them. Alfie, Arlo, and Otto disappeared.”
“What if they were kidnapped?”
“We have the police looking for them,” Meg assured me.
“Can’t you track them?” I begged. “I thought you said you had trackers on their phones.”
“I asked Blade,” Hunter said, “and he ran a search, but he just called me and said there was no signal. So now he’s pulling the security camera footage from traffic cameras and neighboring buildings. We’ll find them. They can’t have gone far.”
Disaster scenarios played in my mind.
“Maybe my father took Alfie, or maybe the boys fell into a sinkhole or were eaten by a mountain lion,” I fretted.
“We don’t have sinkholes or mountain lions in Harrogate,” Meg said.
“Didn’t one take Mrs. Cranston’s turkey?” Hunter frowned.
“She claimed that at the town meeting,” Meg replied, “but I think her husband got tired of being attacked by the turkey whenever he went out to get the paper.”
I couldn’t believe they were joking around while Alfie was missing.
“I’m going to go look for them,” I said abruptly.
