Page 50 of The Billionaires' Gamble

What isn’t Alex telling me?

“I’m on my way back,” he says, that deep voice calm and soothing. Too bad it’s not working on me right now. I’m fucking vibrating.

What the hell happened out there? I still can’t wrap my head around it.Ordinarily, he wouldn’t get my hopes up? What does that even mean?

“My team is on it,” he continues, “but I want to know what you saw. Anything you heard.”

“I told the detective everything?—”

“I know,” he says gently. There’s a beat of silence. Then, “I’m kicking myself for leaving this morning.”

It’s a confession I never saw coming.

From the moment we met, Alexander Hunt has been disciplined, decisive, and stoic. To hear him second-guess himself takes some of the anger.

“Of course you had to go.” Not many CEOs would lose sleep over one of their employees taking a bullet, let alone get on a plane to go see how they’re doing. Alex is one in a million. Katherine knew that, somehow, even before they started seeing each other.

“Yeah, but maybe?—”

The indecision in his voice makes my chest ache, which is saying something considering I already feel weighed down like a car parked its front tire on my rib cage.

“Let’s not do this,” I say.

“This?”

“The ‘What if’ game. What if you hadn’t flown to Boston this morning? What if I hadn’t gone looking for Gabe?”

I don’t know which is worse. Watching the woman you love being shoved in a car while your bodyguard holds you back from chasing after her, or being a state away and unable to start the search. I can almost imagine him pacing up and down the aisle of his private jet like a caged tiger.

“What do you mean, looking for Gabe?” he asks.

I collapse onto one of the low sofas, dragging a hand down my face, and fill him in on everything he missed after he left. “I keep wondering what would have happened if I’d stayed with her.”

“You’d very likely be in an ambulance behind Roman.”

He sounds so certain. The only thing I’m sure about is there’s a giant hole where my heart used to be. The woman I’ve counted as my best friend for most of my life was forcefully taken from me, from us, and I’m sitting here doing nothing.

I hear him sigh. “I thought he was finally getting past all that shit with Henry.”

How do you get over gaslighting of that proportion? Especially when you’re young and impressionable.

“I know he was worried initially…” Alex says. “About Katherine, I mean. But he’s crazy about her. I’ve never seen him rearrange his life like this. He’s sleeping more than ever. It’s like she’s this magical calm pill. And that’s still not enough to trust her.”

He voices the same confusion and frustration that I feel. Deeper, really, because I’m just coming into this thing with Gabe. But he lived it. He was Gabe’s shoulder to cry on back when it all went down. Alex is the rock who’s supported the friendship for the decade and a half. Is he tired of that role? Frustrated?

Trauma rarely has a linear timeline, in my experience.

“How’s he doing?”

Those three little words are soft, cocooned with concern, and they reach down deep inside me, bathing me with warm fuzzies I should not be feeling right now. Not when our girl was just taken. But I can’t stop the feeling because it’s so fucking obvious how much Alex loves his best friend. He might not be in love with him, but the way he cares is legendary.

I close my eyes and steady my breathing. “Not great. It’s been one thing after another. He misses you.”

There’s another pause, and it’s easy to imagine him sitting on that plane, wrestling with himself.

“I’ll be home soon. Then we’re gonna go get our girl.”

I swallow the hope that surges inside me. It feels like, if I’m too sure, the universe will find a new way to fuck me over. Which is ridiculous. I know it. And yet, it doesn’t stop the caution sweeping through me.