Page 50 of The Intimacy of Skin

Callum shook his head, his light brown bangs whipping him in the face. “No, no, something is wrong with Tobi. Really wrong. He’s crying outside, and I don’t know what to do. I tried to help, I really did, but he won’t listen to me.”

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I took a deep breath, realizing this was what my brain was trying to warn me about.

“I got it.” Did I? “Get everyone ready to leave. Don’t worry about fully closing or cleaning; just make sure everything is turned off and all perishables are put away.

Don’t worry about doing it in an orderly fashion.

They just released an alert that we could get a shit ton of snow, and I need everyone to go home. ”

“We’re closing?”

“Yes, Callum. We’re closing. Get everyone on their way home and lock the doors. Can I trust you to do that?”

His face steeled at that, a sudden seriousness taking over his panicked face. “Yeah, I got you, boss. You get Tobi, I’ll take care of the store. ”

I nodded at him before grabbing my jacket and racing towards the back exit. A tickling, buzzing sensation began to crawl from my wrist to my inner arm, teasing me with the need to scratch. I was barely at the door before Callum called out behind me.

“Wait! Where are the keys?”

“There’s a spare in Brandt’s office. Take them to lock up and don’t fucking lose them! I’ll text you all when it’s time to reopen.”

“Got it! Stay safe, boss!”

Frost assaulted the skin on my face the moment I shoved the door open. I flinched, blinking and taking a step back. Soft, heartbroken cries caught my attention from the left, leading me straight to Tobias.

He looked… distraught. I hadn’t seen his face yet, but I didn’t have to.

He was curled in on himself against the brick wall, snow turning to liquid as it pummeled the fabric of his jacket.

I knelt beside him, ignoring the immediate pain from the cold ground.

Tobias’s shoulders were shaking wildly as he hiccuped with each sob.

“Tobias.” I placed a gentle hand on his arm, only for him to flinch in shock. “Hey, what’s going on? Where’s Crew?” I couldn’t see him anywhere.

Tobias unfurled his head from his makeshift cocoon, the dark brown of his eyes clouded with tears. The rims of them were red, beginning to swell. “He’s gone.”

I let it sink in for a moment, trying to process the words as if I’d never heard them before. “Gone?”

“Gone.” As he repeated himself, his voice cracked.

“What do you mean, Tobias? We’re closing the place down; there’s a huge snowstorm coming. Did he call an Uber?”

“No!”

I barely had time to move before Tobias practically threw himself forward, hunching over and clutching his stomach. I thought for a moment that he was going to be sick, only to be proven wrong when a large cry escaped him. Seeing him like this, unable to help, hurt something deep within me.

Tobias and I weren’t close. He was an employee, a talented one, but an employee. Still, he was young. Timid. Scared of his own shadow at times.

Realizing I needed to take control of the conversation, I scooted until I was directly in front of him. “Tell me what happened, Tobias. I need to know where Crew went and how.”

Big, sad brown eyes clung to mine, their pupils wavering under the illusion created by the water in them. I watched pain and grief flash over them, fighting together to force Tobias to shut down. “I told him, Chef.”

He’d called me that ever since the day I went over the different slicing techniques. It started to make me hopeful, hearing it. Knowing someone in the world other than Crew or Willow saw something in me.

“I told ’im how we knew each other. He didn’t believe me at first. I thought he wouldn’t at all. But then he realized. Remembered. I saw the light drain outta his eyes, Chef. I did that to ’im. I reminded him of the worst time of his life.” He began to sob again, losing his voice with the cries.

“Hey, hey, come on, Tobias. It’s okay.” My head was a mess. I burned with the need to scratch, to worry, to maul myself until everything became okay again. I didn’t know what happened that traumatized both men so deeply, but it had to be bad.

Bad enough to make Crew hurt himself, inside and out. Bad enough for Tobias to hate speaking to people, too terrified to even introduce himself to Crew at first.

Tobias looked back up at me, the tears streaming down his face, combined with the frigid snow that was battling us.

“He ran, Chef. Hightailed it outta here so fast, I barely screamed his name before he was outta sight. He’s on foot.

He’s got a jacket, but nothin’ else, I don’t think. You gotta find him.”

On foot? He just ran? Does he even know about the storm?

I could see my breath. It was coming out in harsh pants, mist coming from my mouth that was warmer than the air around us. The chill settled deep in my bones, threatening to extinguish the fire that kept me going inside.

Wanting to get Tobias out of the cold, I nodded once. “You need to go now. Find Callum inside and leave with the rest of them. They’re calling for a massive storm, up to twelve inches of snow.”

“What about Crew?” He sounded so broken, so worried. It broke my heart. Tore it in two.

“I’ll find him.”

And I meant that. With every fucking fiber of my being.

Snow covered every inch of the city. If I had to guess, I’d say we had already gotten about two inches in the hour we’d been out. More was coming in, falling hard and fast with no end in sight.

Thankfully, Willow’s friend had a truck that was more suitable for this kind of weather.

I had called her the moment I was in my car, driving like a maniac to their house in the hopes that Crew would be there.

Unfortunately, Willow was already home, and Crew hadn’t shown up.

She immediately gave me the address to her friend Carly’s house, who gave us the keys to her truck without question.

I was grateful Willow had a friend like that. Someone who would drop everything and give up their truck without wondering why. Samantha used to be like that for me. Now, I knew without question that person would be Crew.

Which was why Willow and I were driving around in heavy snow with limited visibility to try and find him.

We scoured the streets close to their house, finding nothing to suggest he’d been there.

We even went to the bars I knew he used to frequent when he’d go there to pick up clients on the regular.

We searched close to The Arch, hoping he’d gotten too cold and stopped somewhere. Whatever was still open, we went inside and asked the workers if they’d seen him. No one had. It was like Crew had made himself a ghost. Like he didn’t want to be found.

The weather alerts kept coming, getting worse with each one. Neither Willow nor I spoke much except for the odd directions to somewhere we thought he’d go. We were both scared.

Willow didn’t ask what happened when I told her Crew ran off.

“He does that sometimes. When he’s uncomfortable or feels a panic attack coming on.

He won’t ever admit he has panic attacks, and he won’t admit that he runs.

He’s an idiot like that,” she’d told me, only confirming what I knew about him.

The sun was starting to set. We were losing light and the snow was piling up. Simply said, it was beginning to feel like we were running out of time .

Willow sighed against the window, leaning her head against it. Her breath fogged it up, creating a damp mist that reflected the city lights. They were distorted and messy, exactly how I felt. “I don’t want to suggest this, Price. It’s the last thing I want to do. But what if he’s… working?”

My fingertips found my inner arm, digging into the flesh as I scratched across the top layer of skin. I didn’t want to think of it as a possibility. Crew said he made a promise and that he would keep it. He promised me he wouldn’t for at least the full six months.

But we were running out of ideas. “That, or he’s lying frozen in a ditch.”

“Shut the fuck up.” Willow reached across the center console to slap my arm hard.

“We got two options,” she growled, her accent slipping into full throttle.

“Either we start lookin’ at ditches and lookin’ for bodies on the streets, or we start looking where he’d be workin’.

I don’t want to believe it, but I also don’t wanna believe the worst-case scenario. ”

I squeezed my eyes shut. My arm burned from the constant friction of my nails. I placed both hands on the steering wheel, gripping it until the leather cracked beneath my palms.

What other options did we have? He wasn’t answering his phone, he didn’t have friends here he would’ve gone to see, and no family, either.

“Fine,” I conceded. “I know a couple of hotels or motels we can check.” And who knows, maybe he is there, but he isn’t working. Maybe he went there to cool off.

The windshield wipers struggled against the amount of snow. We had no choice but to drive slowly, inching down the streets cautiously. The temperature had plummeted, bringing us close to single digits.

Our first stop was Moe’s Ass Shack, as I so delicately called it.

The first time I spoke to Crew, he’d thought I was going to take him there.

The tired man at the front counter claimed he hadn’t seen him.

It cost me a hundred bucks cash to get any info at all from him since he “cared so much about privacy.”

I was sure he cared about narcs rather than privacy, but I digress.

Next, we tried the hotel on Cross Street. The woman at the counter was much more forthcoming with information, though it was disappointing. She hadn’t seen Crew either .

The snow was too much. It was past dark, and we were close to the only ones on the roads.

“Maybe we should stop. Go to my place to see if he’s gone home or something.”