Page 23 of Pieces of You

I nodded once. “Absolutely, he will.” I kissed him on the forehead. “I love you. So much.”

“I love you too. Lemme concentrate now. Sir.”

I smiled. “You got it, baby.”

CHAPTER 6

Tate Madden

Iclutched the wheel and landed my forehead on it.

Sixteen fucking days.

For sixteen days, Shay had been held captive—or had he? What if he’d been murdered? What if he was lying in a goddamn ditch somewhere and…

I swallowed against the nausea.

Deep breaths.

Sixteen days.

In a realistic best-case scenario, he’d be alive but…injured? Terrified? Dehydrated? Malnourished? I didn’t know. I didn’t fucking know what was realistic about this bullshit. I couldn’t visualize anything. I couldn’t imagine shit.

A breath gusted out of me, and I leaned back in my seat.

The heat had seeped into the car to the point where I was sweating, and it was time to head inside. I only had two hours here today. I thought I could tidy up, maybe prepare some snacks, and make sure the dishes were done. Fingers crossed I could get an update too. Yesterday, Archie had called me, nervous. He was almost certain that Master Greer would be off soon. Greer and his brother, in fact.

They’d called in reinforcements from the grandparents so that all four of them, Greer, Sloan, Archie, and Corey, could be here.

Before I left the car, I sent a message to Lee.

I think we need Chinese tonight when I get home.

Something about today put me on edge, so he’d offered to take the girls to an indoor trampoline park. Jack and Franklin were there with Lily too.

I just couldn’t. I had the worst feeling.

I blew out another heavy breath and dragged myself out of the car.

There were few vehicles in the carport, and only two parked in front of the house.

When Reese came home, he was gonna shut that down quick. No parking allowed on the front lawn. He’d bitched about it in the past.

KC’s SUV stood there now, alongside the Finlay van. That thing legit seated ten people. The whole family. They usually only used it when they were all going someplace, but I did recall something about their soccer-mom car being in the shop. Sloan was working on it. Corey’s bright-green Mini Cooper was parked in the carport—and it was always fun watching Greer fold himself into that little thing. I’d imagine he wasn’t using his work truck while he was on vacation.

Some vacation that turned out to be, if he was about to deploy like a soldier going off to war.

Not that I doubted his capabilities, but it had been a long, long time since he’d left the Marines.

I climbed up the porch steps and entered the house.

In the club area, I spied Santiago, Nathan, KC, and Nora. Everyone in there was always glued to a screen, whether it was a phone, laptop, or one of the TVs. More and more news had been pouring out lately too, so we never ran out of updates, even though each segment went on repeat until we were exhausted.

Everyone was exhausted—but we couldn’t stop. Members who had no connection to the Tenleys were wondering when we’d open up the house to kink again, and it pissed me off. I wasn’t as diplomatic about it as Mr. West and Lucian either. The two had waived the August membership fee.

I found Macklin and Master Greer in the kitchen, and I paused in the doorway, not wanting to interrupt whatever dispute they had going on.

“…don’t need to check the damn sandwich, Sir,” Macklin grated out.