Page 122 of Equilibrium
Gone.
No.
“What?” She wouldn’t. She fucking promised. “You’re lying.” I was on my feet now, passing the length of the hallway. “Get her on the phone.”
“I wish I were lying, but I’m not. She ran away, Storm. She knocked one of the prospects down, took my bike and ran away.”
No, no, no, fucking no. She promised me. She promised she wouldn’t run. She promised me she would stay. Everything was going well, and I told her we would talk. Why did she run away?
“I found something else on your bed,” he whispered, as if he was too afraid to speak about it. “There was a letter from her father to her. We have another spy in the club.”
Fuck. “I’ll be there in the next couple of hours.”
“No, you won’t, because you need to find her.”
“But she—”
“There’s a tracker on my bike. I am sending one of the prospects with the device to locate it. I don’t like that letter, Storm, and if that is the reason she ran away... Nikolai Aster is a wicked man, and I have a feeling that he won’t show her mercy after she ran from the Syndicate. You’re either in or you’re dead, and Ophelia is dead if he gets his hands on her.”
Creed continued talking about all the reasons why she could be in danger, but I wasn’t listening anymore. My mind focused on one word—dead, and I couldn’t breathe. The walls started closing in on me as all the words we shared went through my head. All the moments, the taste of her skin, the sound of her moans, of her voice, and I knew I couldn’t bear life without her in it.
“Storm? Are you still there?”
“Yeah.” I dragged a hand over my face. “I’m sending you our location.”
“We will get her back, Storm. It seems that she’s close to Las Vegas, but look…” He paused. “I am not sure if her father is the reason behind her departure. She was furious, dude. I have never seen her like that. I thought she would kill me for trying to stop her, and that definitely didn’t come from that letter.”
What the fuck happened to you, Ophelia?
I could hearbirds chirping outside, cars passing and a cacophony of voices from the construction site next to the warehouse, but I couldn’t quiet my mind. I fucked up, plain and simple. I shouldn’t have done this, shouldn’t have let my insecurities, my anger take over, because now I would never be able to go back to Storm.
But he betrayed you.
Did he? Did he really? It wouldn’t be the first time that I came to the conclusions, refusing to listen to reason. Was I wrong to run away? Was I wrong to enact my revenge in this way? I should have stayed and talked to him. I knew better than to act before thinking, and I did exactly that.
I even knew why. Because I was terrified.
It was easier believing that Storm was just like every other man in my life than to build something with him. I panicked, I ran, and I fucked up when I let Kieran and Cillian inside my body last night. I had to fix this, but I couldn’t come up with a suitable solution, and I couldn’t lie to Storm. I would have to tell him what happened here, but not before asking him about that call I overheard.
God, I hated feeling like this, not knowing what to do. I hated the fact that so many other people in my life betrayed me, that my first reaction was to run and destroy everything. I just threw away everything we started building together in the trash, and I had no one else to blame but myself.
Cillian laid sprawled beneath me, half of my body on top of his, with a blanket thrown on us. I tried turning my head to see if Kieran was anywhere to be seen, but I couldn’t see a trace of him.
I knew what I had to do, but dread spread through me, thinking about the betrayal Storm was about to feel. I did exactly the same thing Kieran did—I cheated. With that thought, my stomach recoiled, and I rolled myself off Cillian before I started heaving on all fours. Jesus-fucking-Christ, was I getting sick? This was the second time this had happened.
Before I could start overthinking and coming up with terminal diseases that could be destroying my body, Cillian rolled over on his side and pulled himself closer to me.
“Good morning, birdy,” he whispered against my hair. The fucker was awake the whole time.
“Get off of me, Cillian.”
“Hmmm.” He started grinding himself against my thigh. “That wasn’t what you said last night.”
“I said,” I gritted through my teeth, still trying to control the heaving, “get off of me.”
I pushed his chest and he rolled over, revealing a tight six-pack and the hard length between his legs. However, what pulled at my attention wasn’t his body, but the track marks that could be seen on his right arm.
Oh God. He didn’t.
