Page 70 of Flirting With Forever

“It is. I knew she’d leave. She said from the beginning that it was a temporary thing, right? I knew better than to let myself think otherwise.”

“Doesn’t mean you didn’t,” Alec said.

The words hit so hard they sucked the breath out of his lungs, and he surged to his feet once more. “I can’t sit here all day. If you have to shut the building down, do it. I don’t care.”

“Gage, come on,” Cole said.

“Sit down,” Alec ordered.

“We’re down a person again,” he said. “There’s work to be done.”

“It can wait,” Alec said in his well-known dad voice they’d all heard over the years since the eldest brother had raised them. “Now sit down.”

Cole gave Gage another gentle shove toward the stool he’d vacated. Gage slumped on top of it and braced his elbows on the counter, hands linked in front of him.

“Start at the beginning,” Alec ordered.

“I don’t know what to tell you. She’s gone.”

“Did you two have a fight?” Cole asked.

Gage stared at his knuckles.

“That would be a yes,” Alec said after a moment of silence.

“We didn’t,” he said with a shake of his head. “At least, not the way you mean.”

“Yeah, that’s clear as mud,” Cole said. “Either spit it out, or we’ll drag it out of you somehow.”

The door opened, and Dawson stepped in, looking more than a little frazzled.

“What are you doing here?” Alec asked. “Shouldn’t you be at work?”

“Looking for Gage. I went to his house first.”

Gage sat up. “Why?”

“I was…asked to make sure you stayed in town.”

The stool toppled when he stood so fast it went flying. “By whom? If her brother said?—”

“Not her brother,” Dawson said. “It was Sloane.”

“You talked to Sloane?” Gage asked, pulse racing despite his surprise. “You saw her? When? Where is she?”

“According to her, on her way back to Chicago,” Dawson informed them.

Gage grabbed his keys. “I’m going after her.”

“No, you’re not,” all three of his brothers said in unison.

“She could be in trouble.” He fisted his hand over the keys so hard they bit into his palm. “What if the text she sent me was really from her brother? What if?—”

“I saw her in person, Gage,” Dawson said. “I talked to her. She was alone—and she made it very clear that you needed to stay here. She said she had something she needed to handle in Chicago, and she had to do it on her own.”

He tried to process that, but the surge of anger and protectiveness he felt made it difficult. “That’s it? Did she say anything else? Why did she come to you? Why not tell me herself?”

Dawson’s expression turned into a twisted grimace. “You’ll have to ask her that when she gets back.”