But I forced myself to turn around and walk out.
“Beau.”
Cade called my name.
I kept walking.
“Beau.”
That was my mother.
I kept walking. I went through the waiting room, through the double doors, and down the corridor under the fluorescent lights that made everyone look ill. My hands were shaking, and my breath wouldn't slow down.
I got to the elevator bank and leaned against the wall.
I tipped my head back and tried to get a breath all the way down. Someone had drawn a small smiley face on the wall near the corner. Probably some bored kid waiting for a parent to come back through a door.
Dad is going to die.
The thought arrived in my head fully formed in my own voice, and I couldn't get rid of it. I tried to put another thought on top of it. I tried to put the foundation on top of it—We have funded glioblastoma research. We have the names of the four best surgeons in the country in a folder in my office. I'll call them tonight or in the morning. I'll buy whatever needs buying—and the thought sat there underneath all of that and didn't move.
Dad was going to die.
I didn’t need to think about it.
I didn’t need to think about it for ten minutes. I needed somewhere in the city that wasn't this hallway, not the family room, not the ballroom, not the apartment my dad had been in two hours ago, joking with my mother about his shoe.
Sabrina.
The name dropped into my head the same as before, justSabrina,and the second I thought it, the panic loosened.
I'd hired her.
I'd hired her through the events team. The bar she worked at—the regular bar, the one I'd pulled her from for tonight—was in the file. I could find her.
I need to.
Maybe Sabrina was the only place in the city where the weight of this devastating news couldn’t quite reach me.
3.Sabrina
“Meow.”
I kept my eyes shut.
“Meow.”
I rolled onto my side. I pulled the comforter over my ear. I made a deal with myself, which was that if I just held very still and didn’t acknowledge anything, it would resolve itself, and the world would let me have five more minutes.
A paw landed on my forehead.
“Pickles. Pickles, baby, please. Five minutes. Five. I’ll give you anything.”
A wet nose was on my temple, very close to my eyelid.
“You’re a tyrant—a fascist. I’ll be writing a letter.”
He purred.
