Page 52 of Scout

And now?

Now, we have to figure out how to get him back.

20

Xavier

It’s been three days.Three fucking days since Scout slipped out like a ghost in the middle of the morning and took half my sanity with him.

I can’t get the sound of his voice out of my head. That stupid soft laugh. The way he used to stretch, arms over his head, shirt riding up. The way he looked at us—as if we were more than a job, even if he never said it.

I’ve texted. Called. DM’d. Emailed. All of it.

Nothing.

Not a single word.

I even tried sending a bouquet to his apartment. The doorman brought it right back down.

Today, I’m sitting across the street from his building in my car, full-on lunatic mode. Coffee in one hand, phone in the other, staring at the front entrance—waiting for it to magically open and reveal him standing there.

Nothing.

No Scout. No movement. The doorman won’t let me up, even after another two hundred dollar tip. Just “Mr. Scout is home and safe.” No more details. No messages passed along.

I stay until my next shift, then head in tired and totally unfit to be saving lives. But I go anyway, because routine is the only thing keeping me from unraveling.

Kendrix finds me at the nurses’ station, leaning over a chart I’m not even reading.

“You’re early,” he says.

“Didn’t sleep.”

“Me either.”

We don’t say Scout’s name. But he’s there, in the air between us, in the way our voices drop and our shoulders slump like we’re trying to carry grief we don’t understand.

After the shift, Kendrix tosses a key onto the table in the break room.

“You’re staying with me,” he says.

I glance at it, then at him. “You sure?”

“Yeah. We need to figure this out. Together. If we want to fix this… fixuswith him… we can’t do it separately.”

He’s right.

Scout wasn’t just a fling. He wasn’t just a fantasy or a one-time escape. He was real. And we let him slip through our fingers.

I nod slowly, pressing the key into my palm. “Okay. We start now.”

Kendrix nods back, tight and resolute. “We find him. We make this right. Whatever it takes.”

I swirlthe liquid in my glass, watching the ice melt. “He’s still not answering,” I say out loud, sitting on Kendrix’s couch where I’ve been ever since I arrived with my suitcase in tow. I came straight over after my shift.

Kendrix nods. His thumb taps against his knee, twitchy and restless. “I know.”

“I can’t stop thinking about him.” The words are quiet. “It’s stupid. It’s been—what, weeks since we met him? But—” I shake my head, breath catching. “He mattered. He matters.”