For one full extra minute, I stare at the door waiting for her to walk through with her bright, optimistic smile and that secret look in her eye. The one she only gives me. It says she’s counting the hours until she can be in my arms. Until she can be underneath me. Or kneeling in front of me, as she did earlier today, her innocent mouth sucking my cock so eagerly and reacting as if my come was nectar from the Gods. It was so mind-blowing, I got hard again immediately afterward and stayed stiff as nails until now.
Until now when she fails to walk out the door.
Finally, the entrance swings open, but someone I don’t recognize walks out—a waitress, according to her attire—gasping when she sees my expression, which is growing more and more panicked by the second. “Where is my fiancée?” I growl.
I don’t have to explain further. Everyone in this casino knows Sissy. There is only one employee who incited a riot by wearing a short skirt—and she’s mine.
The waitress glances back at the door, then at me. “I don’t know. I didn’t see her in there.”
“Is anyone else in there?”
“No, the shift change just ended. The night crew is out on the floor—”
I don’t wait for her to finish that sentence. I lunge through the door into the locker room, storming toward the final row where Sissy told me her locker is located. It’s closed. She’s not there. She’s not anywhere. I can smell her scent in the fucking air, but she is not in front of me and I’m—
There is an envelope sticking out of the bottom of her locker.
My stomach gurgles ominously as I stoop down to pick it up, opening the sealed tab with a stab and rip of my finger. Her engagement ring slides out into my hand and the world stops existing around me. In a blinding flash, I’m in a cold, desolate place and ice has replaced my blood. My heart is in my mouth when I begin to read the letter, but it drops into my stomach almost immediately, then ceases to beat altogether.
Dear Locke,
I made a mistake leaving home.
The engagement is off.
Please don’t come after me.
Sissy
I stumble sideways and slam into the row of lockers, sliding down to the floor with the piece of paper clutched in my fist. She left me. She left me. Why?
How can I ask why?
I’m sixteen years her senior. She’s exquisite—and let’s face it, I’m heavy and hairy and grumpy. I tried to tell her in the beginning that she was too far out of my league, didn’t I? She must have finally realized it herself. Either that or…or she never got over the hurt I caused her by praying for God to forgive me for touching her. As if she was a sin.
Has she been hiding more pain from me than I realized?
I bash the back of my head against the locker once, twice, agony erupting inside of my chest. I read the letter once more time, searching for some hidden clue as to what I did to lose her, but there is nothing. There’s nothing. I tilt my head back and roar at the ceiling, scalding hot moisture rushing in behind my eyes.
Her voice comes back to me, dreamlike and echoing from yesterday. When we were standing on the balcony of the restaurant where I proposed to her.
I wish we had a thousand years to spend together.
She said those words to me with stars in her eyes—and I believed her.
Several seconds tick by, my heart slowly reviving itself.
I believed Sissy, because…she was telling the truth. She loves me. She is happy with me. How many times has she told me that?
How quickly I doubted her. How quickly I doubted myself.
Once again, I look down at the letter and notice the hasty scrawl where normally her handwriting is careful and feminine. Neat. The sheet of notebook paper has been ripped out without finesse. It’s unlike her in every way.
And she wouldn’t do this to me. She wouldn’t send me to hell by walking away, leaving me nothing but three measly lines. Which means…
Someone else made her write them.
Rage bubbles up inside of me and consumes every limb, every inch of my brain. I’m seeing bright red as I gain my footing and jog from the locker room, already whipping my phone out of my suit jacket pocket to call security. Ten minutes later, when the footage is pulled up, I come very close to destroying the room full of monitors. My bellow of denial nearly shatters them, the rage climbing to an almost unmanageable height. But I rope it in and I’m moving. I’m ordering the security cam operator to call the police and give them the license plate number of the car that abducted my fiancé. I’m running for the parking garage and peeling out in my own vehicle, a pulse beating like a drum in my head.