Page 134 of Wicked Little Darling

I needed to protect him from all that. I needed to find a way to help him out of it.

I wasn’t sure I’d ever wanted so desperately to expose Everett for the fraud he was before this moment. It was fine if he was just hurting me, I was used to that. Had dealt with it my entire life.

But if Reese was being hurt because of Everett, that was unacceptable.

That vicious little tiger had imprinted himself on my heart, dug his claws into my soul, and I wasn’t going to let anyone hurt him. Not my family, not me, not himself.

I’d protect him at any cost.

The hall was quiet when I got to our floor, and my pulse raced with anticipation at seeing Reese again after being gone for so many days.

I wanted to touch him. Hold him. Wanted his hands on me, to smell his soft floral scent, to kiss his pouting lips.

I just wanted to be with him.

Was he sleeping? It was midnight, so he might be. How had he slept without me? Did he have nightmares? Was he sleepwalking?

I’d been so worried that something bad would happen to him without me there to stop him from leaving, and not being able to get in touch with him had only augmented all that worry.

I opened the door and shut it quickly so the light from the hall wouldn’t wake him if he was sleeping.

I quietly took off my boots and used the dim light of my night light to find my way to my bed. I glanced at Reese’s side, but couldn’t see much except for the faint lump under his covers.

There was a huge part of me that wanted to just jump on him and wrap myself around him, to pepper his angry face with kisses and hear him grumble at me, but I didn’t want to freak him out if he was asleep.

I went over to him, just to check, to see if he was okay. I needed to see him with my own eyes. My foot bumped into something on the ground, and I heard it shoot across the floor with a scraping sound.

“Shit,” I whispered. What the hell was that? I stepped on something that made a loud crunching sound, and I could feel whatever it was breaking into little pieces under my foot.

I knew Reese wasn’t as neat as I was, but normally there weren’t things just scattered across the floor like this.

My shin bumped into Reese’s bed, and I reached down to feel for him. My hands found the sheet, the pillow, soft comforter bunched near the window…but nothing else.

No Reese.

I patted the bed as fear began to slither down my spine, slowly at first, and then more frantically when I couldn’t feel anything in the bed.

“Reese?” I called.

Was he inmybed?

I quickly went to my bed, but I already knew it would be empty. I flipped on the overhead light and my mouth fell open.

The room was a fuckingmess. Shit was everywhere; books strewn across the floor, lying open or facedown, pages crumpled. Clothes spilled out of drawers and lay in lumps on the floor, on the bed, on the desks. Paper had been ripped to shreds, scattered all over the room.

“What the fuck…?”

A sinking dread poured through me, a horrible prickle of fear scraping down my spine.

Was he…had he…

My eyes flew to the bathroom door, and I ran over to it, shoving it open.

It was empty, but the bathroom was a fucking mess, too. The drawers were open and everything in them littered the floor or the counter or the tub.

Hair was everywhere.

A hair trimmer sat on the counter, still plugged into the wall, and there were strands of brown hair in the teeth.