22. Chapter 22

Chapter 22

Cassie

I n my humble opinion, hysterics would have been appropriate.

And I wanted to be hysterical. I wanted to yell—to scream—to cry out in the act of a woman scorned because it felt as though he were forcibly taken from me. As if he were ripped from my hands. It was an asinine notion, and I knew that it was unreasonable…but it was James. Through anything chaotic that had happened as of late, there was no question as to whether he would inevitably run to my side because he was my constant. And not knowing where he was—realizing that he was not, in fact, on his way to bound right through the front door and yank me into his arms—had left my chest slashed open. With my heart somehow still beating despite being exposed to the elements, each passing second was sheer agony .

I couldn't fall into hysterics, though. Not when it seemed like he was just out of my reach.

Zoey had rushed to 3C to pound on Luke and Claire's door. According to her, she had given them no hint as to why they were needed with us in 2B, but with the perpetually alarmed expression she was wearing and the cryptic call she had earlier with Claire, I was certain that they had managed to connect a few dots. They arrived with her, looking expectant and carrying themselves carefully—similarly to one preparing for an upcoming storm to meet them head-on.

Though I hadn't gone into the background detail that I had with Zoey regarding my relationship with James because it now felt… pointless, I had explained our concern away quickly.

Luke was quiet—absorbing it all as if the information had stripped his lungs of air. His jaw eventually went slack, and he whispered a sharp, "God fucking dammit," before spinning one-hundred and eighty degrees from where he stood and walking wherever his feet would take him within the kitchen.

While Claire had also looked to us, aghast, she still managed to narrow her eyes and question details with a lightly asked, "How…" or "Why…" but Zoey was there, rapidly butting into the conversation with quiet hisses of her name accompanied with a curt shake of her head. Claire's inquisition ceased rather quickly, then. Whether she put two and two together regarding my relationship with Jay or not, I wasn't sure. All I knew was that after she had clearly assessed Luke's well-being and determined that he thoroughly needed to be left to his own thoughts and rapid footwork, she had eyed me up and down. Obviously recognizing my panic regarding the situation at hand, she coaxed me into sitting with her on the couch.

I had obliged, if only for a moment, and she had sat with me while comfortingly stroking a hand up and down my back. She spoke nervous reassurances that she was sure James was fine to the entire room. Luke vehemently disagreed, and Zoey remained silent as she returned to her spot at the kitchen table to open the laptop. I could only manage to rest for so long, and it wasn't that I didn't welcome her comfort—I did, truly, and she had given me a tight-lipped smile that had shown she knew my appreciation without having to speak it—it was simply that I was far more than restless. Far more than anxious. Far more than panicked, believe it or not. My heart had ceased its pounding, and I had grown accustomed to the horrid sensation of dread that was steadily poisoning me. It wasn't long until I stood and mimicked Luke. With shaking fingers and paces that stomped back and forth along the coffee table by the couch, I just…started to walk.

Claire remained on the couch with her spine straight and her eyes wide as she rapidly offered explanations as to where James could be. I consistently batted them away with various reasonings, and Luke would respond with a grunt and an agreeing stab of his index finger in my direction. In the short minutes that had passed, my line of sight was not on either of them, though. Nor was it on Zoey, who was still squinting at the computer screen as if it would provide us with more information. All I could see was the clock beyond the table at which Zoey sat.

It was approaching eleven o'clock now, and the only thing repeating in my mind was that it had been three hours since I spoke with James last.

He had been missing for three hours.

"Okay…one more time, Cas?" Luke spoke while still maintaining his quick strides.

He looked so very like his brother in this moment with his alarmed, light eyes darting around the room—the same grey as James' and tinged with a familiar anxiety. His hair entirely free of its usual product and hanging loose down to his cheekbones. A smattering of stubble that he had yet to shave. The thought made a metaphorical knife lodge in my gut and stay there .

I looked to the ceiling as I replied to him, "He left for work. I called him while he drove. He was totally fine." I rubbed at my eyes, for they had begun to burn again. I noted that my face had consistently remained damp, though I had little headspace to give a damn. "He said he'd let me know when he got to work—he didn't. I texted him. The messages I've gotten from him in the meantime are clearly not him. His location's turned off, his car's on the side of the fucking highway, and he's not at work." I hesitated for a moment, let my hands fall away from my face, and murmured to myself more than anyone else, "He's just…gone."

Luke exhaled heavily, halting his steps, and I followed suit as our eyes locked.

He and I always had an interesting relationship. Naturally, I had spent time with Claire and Zoey over the past few months—an occasional dinner here or there was altogether nice, and I found that I fit right in. Luke, though…he had more or less lingered in the background of my life. We had shared many conversations to the point that I felt like I knew him—his likes and dislikes, how he would react when placed in certain situations, and so on—but we weren't tied at the hip by any means. That aside, he looked at me now as if he could see right through me. As if, without a single question about my closeness with James, he fully understood, well, everything.

I didn't know why. Perhaps it was a Turner thing, but I didn't mind that in the least.

I could go on about how I did mind—well, truly hated is a better term—that it seemed as though my and James' privacy bubble had been forcefully popped. That it wasn't by the inquisitive nature of our friends nor the concern that James had over my brother's reaction, both of which I had happily anticipated at this point. But no… the horror that we knew had been hiding in the background had done it for us. And despite the fact that I truthfully had no idea if Claire or Luke really knew about us, it still felt like our bubble was no longer because there was no room to speak of it. Our collective anxiety rendered the mention of it moot.

And none of that mattered. I quickly buried the split-second of a thought that was spurred by Luke's familiar grey eyes because he looked to be priming himself to speak again.

"There's got to be some…some sort of trail," Luke said with what seemed like an attempt at conviction. "Something we can give the cops to find him without—without outing all the other shit—and you're saying Colton called you right after? Is no one else thinking that's really fuckin' coincidental?"

Claire griped, "Luke."

"Nuh uh." He waggled a finger in her direction. "You're a forgiving person, Claire— I get it. And I love that about you. I do. But—"

"But Colt was a manipulative shithead at the tail-end of me dating him?" she finished for him with an eyebrow cocked up high. Luke sighed as he looked to her, and she continued, "Yeah. He was. He did whatever he had to do to make more and more money—"

Luke cut in, "At the expense of those he claimed that he cared for."

"Out of necessity—and don't give me that look where ya scrunch up your nose like what I'm saying is insane." Luke's expression immediately shifted, and Claire stated, "I'm not defending him or saying he's a goddamn angel in disguise, but he's never intentionally hurt anyone."

Without looking away from the laptop, Zoey noted, "He blackmailed you, sweetie—that's a certain level of hurt."

"Okay, yes, he blackmailed me to force me to help him because of what he was tangled up in, I'm aware— we all lived it. That doesn't mean he'd have a hand in James disappearing," Claire retorted.

"I'm with you, I'm with you," Zoey replied with a wave of her hand. "Just sayin'."

"And I'm saying," Claire insisted, "I'm just as leery as you guys, but…look, he's done shitty things to save his own ass, but even you guys know that would be a huge stretch. I'm—I'm still leery…and I don't get it. But it's a stretch."

Zoey nodded.

I said, "Listen, I don't know the guy, but he did steal literal evidence for us." Luke clenched his jaw, and I added, "Ran from the cops. Brought said evidence back. I'm not sayin' he's an angel either 'cause I don't know him from Adam, but—"

As if we had willed him into existence, the front door opened, and Colton arrived.

Everyone glanced his way, and he peered around the room. Hair dark as onyx, parted down the middle and hanging loose around his face; stubble that had grown to the point that it was just noticeable from a distance; a hooded sweatshirt that matched the color of his hair and had a small emblem of a skull on the left side of his chest—he looked similar enough to how he had at each one of our meetings. What was different about him now was how he was holding himself.

Colton seemed to be a confident individual when I had seen him previously. Every time I had witnessed him stride through a door, he was doing so boldly—with purpose and perhaps charisma. Now as he stood, though, his gaze turned more and more concerned as it dragged over us all. Locking eyes with Claire first, a crease formed between his brows. Luke was next in his line of sight, and his Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. Then, his lips pursed together as he took in Zoey, who was still squinting behind her glasses at the computer screen. Finally, me—his shoulders sagged in a rough exhale, and his icy eyes went soft as they bounced across my face.

He shut the door behind him, quietly commenting on our appearances with a grimly muttered, "Yeah…that's about right." I assumed that it was because we had so recently spoken that there were no general pleasantries—only rapid strides as he pointedly powerwalked his way to Zoey. Seemingly in the same thought process as we were in attempting to find the impossible connection between 2D, missing dancers, and James' disappearance, he asked her, "You find anything on that computer yet?"

She exhaled loudly, glancing his way while he grabbed the other chair that was situated at the dining table. He dragged it to her left and sank onto it.

"No, otherwise you'd be sure as hell that we wouldn't be sitting here on our asses. "

"Don't think any of us are sitting on our asses. Time is of the essence here," he grumbled nodding his head in gesture to the screen. "Text messages?"

"Mhm."

"That's it?"

"Mhm."

Colton muttered, "Not that much, is there?"

"No," Zoey returned with a sardonic chuckle. "Doesn't help that most of these numbers aren't even labeled as a full contact name. I mean… this one? Unlabeled, but clearly his landlord," she clicked the trackpad purposefully, mentioning Mister Milkovich without speaking his name. "Asking for rent, barely any responses back. This one?" Click. "Nothing telling, just someone named R being pissy with him and, again, not many responses back." Click. "This one just says different variations of call me over and over—"

"Have ya tried Googling them?"

She had begun to rapidly tap on the keyboard mid-way through Colton's sentence.

"Already on it."

Without a pause between us all and with a hefty cock of his head, Luke spoke up:

"Why are you so goddamn eager to find this guy?"

Eyes still on the laptop, Colton murmured, "We've been over this, I think."

"Right…the vigilante shit," Luke returned.

"Mhm." He pointed at the screen. "You're doing that one first?"

Zoey hummed in acknowledgment.

"Just seems like a far cry from what you were doing in North Carolina," Luke noted.

"Time passes," Colton said offhandedly. "Shit happens and makes you think. It ain't that deep."

"Shit happens," Luke said under his breath. "Right."

"What…what kind of shit?"

Claire had spoken it, and when I followed Luke's shocked glance to her, I found that she was looking to Colton with a morbid curiosity. Her blue eyes showed a quiet nervousness unlike what I had seen in them previously—one that was expectant—and when Colton met her gaze, he sighed loudly.

It appeared entirely genuine when he replied, "I don't exactly want to get into that right now."

She immediately countered, "Why?"

His head bobbed backward in surprise at her quick insistence. "Because there are some things going on that are a bit more pressing than me chatting about what I've done in the last year? "

I saw the muscles work in her jaw. "Colton."

He whined, "Why does this have to be a thing?"

It was then that I was tempted to interject. To needlessly remind the room that we have no idea where James is, what we can tell authorities, and where we go from here. That we needed to focus. However, Claire had already begun to speak along a similar line of thought…and her point was astute.

"Because someone that's a part of our family is missing!" she hissed, and his mouth snapped shut. My exposed heart painfully lurched, the air in the room turned tense with her verbal acknowledgment of it, and I was fairly certain that I saw Claire's nostrils flare as she pressed on, "I want to trust you, Colt. We all need to trust you. Do you have any idea how fucking backwards that feels? The fact that I want and need to trust you in this situation? It's…it's asinine." She laughed bitterly to herself. "That's exactly what it is—it's fucking asinine. Did you know that I still walk with a goddamn limp?"

I hadn't fully noticed that. Sure, over dinners that I had attended, Zoey would occasionally mutter to Claire, ‘How's the leg?' It was a private question—I always knew it was—and that was why I had never butted in or asked about it further. I had only witnessed Claire's ever-consistent shrug of a shoulder and Zoey's quick nod in response. And furthermore, if Luke were sat next to her and they were primed to move, he would always be ready at a moment's notice to spring up and assist her as she stood. With his hand extended and a gracious look in her eyes, he would smile as he pulled her to her feet.

It wasn't until now that the reason for instances like those clicked in my mind, and I realized that it was abundantly true. Claire always favored her right side over her left.

Colton miserably groaned, "From Travis?"

"Yes, from fucking Travis!" Claire yelled.

I didn't know who Travis was—naturally, I didn't, as I assumed this conversation was regarding Claire's history, in which I only knew the bare minimum. I did, however, recall that upon Colton's arrival in Salem, Luke had mentioned that Claire had been stabbed in the past. I now figured that it was in her left leg and that this Travis had done the damage. I didn't ask, of course…and I didn't question the quick deviation of topic, for I knew she was rapidly circling back.

Colton had closed his eyes while Claire's voice rose in her angry reply, as if he anticipated it—absorbing the impact rather than deflecting it—and when he opened them, he appeared to be waiting for her to continue .

"My point," Claire lowered her decibel, but her scathing tone remained, "is that I've been telling everyone that you wouldn't blindly fuck us all over for no reason, and the more I say it, the more it feels like I'm trying to convince myself of that."

"Blindly fuck you over?" he returned with a narrowed glare. "First off, I've never done anything blind in my entire life, and I," Colton whispered, "busted into the place next door for you guys—"

"Because you needed something in return," Luke grumbled.

"The fuck is going to make this better for you?" Colton snapped at them both. "You want me to get on my fucking knees? Beg? Plead for forgiveness? Hell, I was ready to do that a year ago when I tried to show up after everything went down with Travis." He threw his head back, speaking to the ceiling, "Swear to God, I would have dropped to the floor and scraped. My. Shit. Up. Apologizing for that shitshow, but I don't think you want it."

"I don't want it," Claire retorted. "I don't need it! I just need to know why!"

"Why?"

"Yes, Colt," she reiterated. "Why? Why are you doing this? Why are you helping? Why are you so hellbent over this?"

It seemed that the weight of the conversation had finally cracked something within him because at the moment of her repeated why, his shoulders straightened, and the light that was always present in his gaze flared. Not with what seemed to be his usual mocking sarcasm, but with hurt—with anger that flooded his face as if a constantly worn mask had been rapidly dropped.

Colton screamed back, "Because I've BEEN HERE BEFORE!" We all flinched at the volume of it. His jaw flexed, and he collected himself for exactly one inhale. Upon his exhale, he said, "You need to know details? Fine. I met a girl."

He spoke it quickly, but despite that, it was anything but lacking emotion. On the contrary, the words seemed as though they were forced from him. As if demanding that they leave his mouth coated his tongue in acid, and caused him physical harm.

Luke had tilted his head even further to the side in curiosity.

Even Zoey looked up from the laptop to evaluate his expression, which had turned downright gaunt.

"Oh?" Claire returned with raised eyebrows.

Colton went on, "She was wrapped up deep with the wrong people, tryin' to get out."

"So, like Claire," Luke questioned in a harsh tone .

"No," he replied, gritty. "Not like Claire."

Luke countered, "Oh, you didn't blackmail this girl, then?"

I could have sworn that I heard Claire swallow while Colton looked at him in horror.

"Do you think I didn't learn my lesson?" he asked in a murmur, not waiting for Luke to respond before saying, "I did. I did the second that shit started going downhill with Claire and Travis—"

Luke began to interrupt, "I'm sure—"

"I'm not done yet!" Colton snapped, and Luke let out a shaking breath as he crossed his arms. "I'm not gonna get into my fucking feelings," he touched his chest briefly, "but I can promise you that I did. And no—I didn't blackmail her. They took her." We all remained quiet while Colton's voice trembled, "Not because of me. Just the luck of the goddamn draw. But they took her. I looked for her for months…I wound up finding her in the obituaries. She's fucking dead."

The gravity—the finality of his last choked word was heavy to the point that it weighed down the room.

Claire's expression was pained as she consolingly spoke, "Colton, I—"

"Don't make me talk about her," he begged. "You wanna know why I'm hellbent? It's because of her. You wanna know why you can trust me and believe that I'm one million percent in with this? It's. Because. Of. Her. Please don't make me talk about Peyton."

Claire nodded, whispering, "Okay."

While Luke appeared to glance at him with a shocked, begrudging, silent apology, Colton looked down to his right, meeting Zoey's somber face, and he gestured to the screen once more:

"You, ah," he cleared his throat roughly, "you Google that last number? Any idea who it was?"

It was a rapid deviation back to the topic that I had been itching to return to, but couldn't because the need for trust in whatever we were continuing to do with Colton was paramount.

And I couldn't be sure if trust was present…but any hostility toward him had rapidly dissipated because it was abundantly clear that he was telling the truth. That his quick, previous explanation of his behavior being related to the work of a vigilante was true, despite the group's skepticism…but his determination to seek justice was not solely driven by his desire to turn his life around. I didn't really know Colton as a person, and though he was quickly side-stepping his emotional outburst because there was no more to be said, I could still see it in him— feel it in the room amongst us. There was no arguing it :

This woman's death had broken him, and he was doing it all for her.

Yes, his shift back to questioning Zoey about the phone numbers on the laptop was a sharp left turn—and we all went with it.

"Oh." Zoey shook her head as if to clear it, her glasses slid down her nose, she pushed them up with an index finger, and she responded to him, "Yeah, um—family member, I think," she replied quietly. "This website came up—rapid people search dot net? You can put in a phone number or someone's name, whatever credentials, right? Basically pulls up public records."

He nodded. "Does it seem accurate?"

"Well, I checked mine," Zoey remarked. "Has all the addresses I've lived at since I was eighteen, my full name, my age…all that."

"Jesus," Claire muttered. "It cannot be that easy to find out where people live."

Colton shrugged. "Public record—it's not like it's a secret."

Zoey typed once again, loudly tapping the last key, and told her, "Yours checks out, too."

Luke's eyes bugged as he looked Zoey's way. "Seriously? "

"I mean, it still shows 2A as our current address," she clarified. "Not like any of us signed papers when we started subletting to Jay, but…current public record. Yeah."

It was the first time I had spoken in a while when I ushered her, "Well, check more . Who knows who else 2D was talking to."

"Try the guy that was getting pissed at him," Colton suggested with another point of his finger to the screen.

"Yeah, yeah-yeah," Zoey mumbled, and a rapid mess of clicks later, she narrowed her eyes at the computer.

Her skepticism made my stomach roll, and I pressed, "What?"

My questioning came out in a croak, and Zoey's eyes snapped to mine.

"Nothing," she assured me, and then blinked several times before her well-manicured brows pinched together. "One second."

Colton began, "Google his na—"

Her typing had already commenced when she interjected, "That's what I'm doing."

We all looked at each other as the keyboard clacked, waiting for her requested second to end, and when her gaze widened substantially, Colton asked:

"Is that a fucking cop? "

"He was talking to a cop?" Luke asked. "Maybe…maybe he was onto him?"

"And texted him personally?" Claire announced. "No, that doesn't make sense at all."

"Well, maybe that's the guy we talk to? If these things are connected, then maybe he'll be able to figure it out without us going into detail."

"We can't talk to a cop that knew 2D personally." Claire's face twisted at Luke's notion. "If we do that, other shit could get found out, and we're all at a higher risk of getting thrown in prison—no way would that work in our favor."

"Well, what are we supposed to do?" I questioned the entire room disbelievingly. "Let Jay stay missing?"

Luke started to pace again. "Fuck— no, obviously not."

"Okay, we're not gonna just leave him missing. There's gotta be something here." Colton looked down at Zoey. "Go back to the text—what's up with you? What's wrong?"

Lost in the back and forth, none of us had witnessed her expression after she had mentioned the contact being a police officer. Her focus seemed disassociated into the space in front of her—neither on the computer nor anything around it, lost in thought—and she didn't respond to him .

"Zoey!" Claire called to her, and Zoey jerked back to reality.

"I recognize this guy," she admitted to us all.

I felt my eyebrows raise. "The cop?"

"Uh huh."

Claire confusingly asked, "From what? When?"

She breathlessly replied, "The break-in."

"The break-in?" Luke repeated her words. "Like—like from—"

"Peter," she clarified. "2D. Yes."

"Are you sure?" Claire asked. "Maybe he just looks familiar or something."

"No, no, no-no," Zoey stammered. "This is the guy. Randy Dowler. Officer Randy. I remember his name 'cause he was incompetent and drove Liam insane—every time we mentioned him, it was," she briefly imitated him with a deep voice, "‘Fucking Randy.'"

"He was incompetent?" Colton questioned.

"Incompetent or just didn't give a shit," she said. "Everything that I told him got me, ‘Oh, we can't be sure those are related,' or, ‘That's too little information to put out an all-points bulletin.' It was—it was pointless, honestly, and we were planning on talking with the police again, but…"

She didn't have to finish the sentence that she let run off. That was when chaos had erupted, and we all knew it.

"So…you're saying that this Randy came to your place after 2D busted in," Colton hesitantly reiterated her telling of it, and we all nodded. "Basically blew off your complaints about a stalker." More nodding. "And—wait, he refused to put out an APB?"

"Said we had too little of a description," she stated.

He scoffed. "Bullshit—I've seen those announcements on the news before. White male, approximately five-foot-ten, medium build, and wearing dark clothes isn't terribly descriptive, but they fuckin' list it anyway."

"Did you just…" Claire paused. "Did you just describe yourself?"

"They didn't include piercing eyes or devilishly handsome," Colton told her with a smirk, and she rolled her eyes in return, "but yes. Point is, I've even seen some of those listings say suspicious male or some other vague shit. The fact that this dude didn't put word out that you had someone violent on your tail sounds sketchy as shit…and now we find out that he knew the guy personally? Feels dirty."

The more he spoke, the more I felt my brain buzz. I tried to absorb what he said, but it was as if the words were water, and I were hydrophobic. They were rolling off of me in beads—dripping on the floor and leaving me standing in a puddle that I wanted to drown into to silence the noise—to stop the gnawing pain of the unknown.

But then, something clicked.

I had no idea if the thought was insanity over the reality of someone I loved becoming intangible.

That could have been it. I was well aware that I was in love with James…and I didn't mind in the least that I had quickly toppled head over feet for him. Instead, I felt that, somehow, he had as well. That when we had finally thrown caution to the wind and succumbed to each other, we had both just…fallen…but the sensation of it wasn't akin to smashing into concrete. No, it was more like being laid to rest on a soft pillow. Being swathed in a warm blanket. Sinking into a deep sleep that's full of pleasant dreams and gently waking with the sunrise, rested and refreshed.

Yes, I loved him.

And my certainty of that was what made me wonder if what had clicked in my mind regarding his disappearance was unreasonable. Perhaps I was simply grasping at straws, frantically attempting to find an explanation— any explanation—whether it was insane to think it or not. I spoke it, anyway:

"Jay got pulled over earlier today. "

Colton's eyes brightened. "Oh…you did tell me that, didn't you?"

"Wait, wait," Luke held up a hand, "when did he get pulled over?"

"When we were talking on the phone this morning," I said. "He wasn't sure why…thought maybe he was speeding or something—"

"Jay, speeding," Luke sardonically grumbled as he walked back and forth. "Sure."

"But that was the last time I talked with him," I stated. "I—this is fucking crazy, but I feel like something happened with this cop."

Colton pointed at me enthusiastically. "I knew we were on the same page."

Without saying a word, Zoey seemed to entirely understand our viewpoint as she bobbed her head up and down vehemently.

Claire and Luke, however, were more hesitant.

"I—okay, no-no," Claire stammered, "Cassie, you're—you're trying to say that Jay's with this policeman?"

Luke added, "If he was arrested or something, it makes sense that his car's on the side of the road, but wouldn't his phone have been seized and stored? I don't think anyone would be able to message from it. "

"Not arrested," I clarified.

"Dirty cops," Colton nearly sang. "Dirty. Fucking. Cops."

"Taken— and I don't know if he—if he thinks that Jay knows something about all of this or about," I groaned quietly to myself, "about all the dancers that up and quit from Gas Lamp because he's close to me, or what."

Luke stopped pacing, then, and his wide eyes snapped to me. "Dancers were quitting like you did?"

I nodded, waving a hand at Colton. "He told me."

Colton noted, "Felt weird. Thought there could be a rumor floating around about the ones that went missing."

Claire asked me, "But… you didn't…" I shook my head, and she then directed to Colton, "And you didn't…"

"Telling people shit I know doesn't exactly work in my favor 'cause of reasons like this," he remarked. "Y'all were an exception. I'm normally Fort Knox."

"The why doesn't matter at this point," I said.

"What matters is that if Randy," Zoey pointed at the laptop, "is dirty and fucking took James for whatever reason , then we have no idea if we can trust the police at all at this point."

Claire whispered, "Fuck, you're right."

Luke's attention bounced between us all. "So…we can't talk to the authorities."

We all simultaneously replied, "No."

"Then where the hell is this Randy?" he sneered.

I locked eyes with Zoey. "Address."

"Uh huh, yup, figuring that out." She typed quickly, paused for a moment, and then stated, "Neighborhood about fifteen minutes from here."

Colton muttered, "Is this guy in the goddamn suburbs?"

"Wait," Claire interjected, "what are we planning on doing here?"

Before any of us could answer her—before we could even speak a plan into existence—the front door began to open. The hinges creaked, and we all looked to the noise as my brother's voice chastised:

"Zo'! I told you to keep the door lock—"

Liam saw me first, and his sentence cut off as he thoroughly evaluated my expression. There was no hiding it—the tenseness of my shoulders, the tear stains on my face, the burning in my eyes, the pounding of my bleeding heart—I was sure that it was all apparent to him. And the way that his body froze in the entryway was all the confirmation I needed…but naturally, there was more. The color was sucked from his face. His breathing looked like it increased in speed. His jaw was slack.

And then, he looked to Zoey.

"Hi," she whispered sympathetically .

"What—" It seemed that he finally registered Colton sitting next to her. "Oh, God, why are you here?" His dark eyes scanned the room, taking in everyone's presence, and they landed on me once more. "What—Jesus, Cas, what happened?!"