Page 9 of Iced Up Love: Part Two
She blinks, startled. Good. I step back.
“I’m done here.”
Someone from staff starts to protest, but I’m already moving. I walk out before anyone can stop me, pulse hammering, hands flexing uselessly at my sides as I push into the quieter hallway beyond the event room.
“Jackson.”
I turn to see Zach is coming toward me, and even from the way he moves I can tell things haven’t improved. He looks more present than before, but only just. Like he’s forcing himself upright through sheer effort.
“They’ve got Elijah,” he says when he reaches me. “He’s still with security.”
My jaw tightens.
“What’s happening?”
Zach scrubs a hand over his face. “It’s a mess. The team’s talking about assault. Vegas is pushing for it. Security’s trying to keep him there until legal works out what they’re doing.”
A hot, vicious pulse of anger moves through me.
Of course they are. Of course this gets to become paperwork and protocols and damage control while Lia is missing.
“Christian said the plane will be here shortly,” I tell him. “He’s sorting what he can from his end.”
Zach nods once, hard.
“Good.”
I hold his gaze for a second, then glance toward the corridor that leads deeper into the restricted part of the arena.
“Come on,” I say. “Let’s go find him and sort this out.”
Because whatever happens next, whatever legal mess or security bullshit or fallout waits behind those doors, none of it changes the only thing that matters.
We need Elijah.
We need to get out of here.
And then we need to go get our girl.
three
Zach
The hallway outside the security room feels wrong.
Not empty, not quiet enough to draw attention, but stripped of the normal rhythm of the arena in a way that makes everything sit just slightly out of place, like we’ve stepped into something that doesn’t belong to the rest of the building.
I don’t move far from the glass. Close enough to see him when he passes. Not close enough for anyone to question it.
Elijah hasn’t stopped pacing.
Back and forth. Same length of the room. Same turn at the end. Same tightening through his shoulders every time he pivots, like the movement is the only thing keeping something contained.
He’s still in his gear. Still covered in blood.
It’s darker now, drying where it sits on his hands, across his jersey, along the side of his face where it must have caught during the fight, and the longer I look at it, the more it settles inas something real instead of something that happened too fast to process properly.
He doesn’t look at us.
