Relentless (Renegades 4)

It was inevitable, though. She had to face it soon. Better to at least get an idea of what she’d be walking back into—if she could find her damn phone. “Where the hell did I leave that thing?”

She couldn’t even call him on Troy’s phone, because it had run out of battery two days ago, and he didn’t have a charger with him. They’d been truly disconnected from the world—which had been heavenly, but it couldn’t go on forever.

Her stomach cramped and rolled with a hellacious growl, so she gave up on it for now and tossed a strawberry into her mouth. She’d ask Troy to take her out later to pick up a new phone, or at least a charger for his. She had to ease herself back into the real world so she wasn’t blindsided when it hit her full force.

She pulled two wineglasses from a cabinet, then went in search of a corkscrew. Drawer after drawer after drawer. “Come on,” she muttered. “You’ve got wine. You’ve gotta have a—”

She tugged open the drawer at the far end of the island a little too hard, and all the contents came flying to the front. A flashlight, batteries, pens—

My phone?

She stared at it for a long moment, stunned, while a burgeoning sensation of dread balled up beneath her ribs. She couldn’t seem to reach for the device, yet she couldn’t take her eyes off it either. All she could do was stand there, frozen, while her mind scrambled to make sense of this.

But short of the phone accidentally getting swept into the drawer, she couldn’t.

She reached for it, and as soon as she picked it up, her stomach dropped. The phone was too light. She flipped it over and found exactly what she already knew she’d find—the battery cover missing. The battery gone.

She rummaged in the drawer and uncovered both her battery and the cover. Her phone had definitely not ended up here by mistake.

Troy.

Her eyes narrowed. She shook her head in confusion. Why?

“You promised me a week.”

Anger crawled across her shoulders.

She closed her eyes and clenched her teeth to tamp down the immediate resentment.

Don’t snap. Put this in perspective.

Opening her eyes, she let her vision blur over the counter. He loved her. They’d been apart seven years, and he wanted a week alone. That wasn’t too much to ask. Maybe the way he’d gone about it wasn’t so perfect, but she had to admit she never would have given in willingly to being cut off from the world. And she also had to admit the time away had both changed her perspective and been good for her—mind, body, and soul.

The rationalization shaved off the sharpest edge of her anger. Exhaling, she stretched her neck right, then left, and replaced the battery, then the back, and switched on her phone.

She leaned her hip against the counter and felt her whole world shift as she waited for her phone to power up.

Back to reality.

She closed her eyes, her stomach tight and a little topsy-turvy. Man, this was going to be a rough transition.

The ding of her phone drew her eyes open. But what greeted her made them fly wide: twenty-two missed calls? Eighteen new voice messages? Thirty-five new text messages?

“What…?” Panic and dread blended to push her to the edge of an anxiety attack. Her heart raced as she tapped into the missed phone calls and scrolled through, finding the majority from Chad. “What the hell…?”

Troy told her he’d called Chad. That he’d explained…

Her mind snapped back to the way he wielded power over a film set. To the way he’d made sure she would get the best plastic surgeon for her stitches. It wasn’t a stretch to imagine Troy spinning a tale to get her out of town.

She skimmED Chad’s texts, but the messages stole her breath. She couldn’t be reading that right: Offers from sponsors like Pepsi, Anheuser-Busch, and Bose had brought the big promotional guns AEG and Live Nation calling?

Holy shit.

Holy. Shit.

Her stomach floated into her chest. Her heart lifted to her throat. Giselle pressed a hand to her mouth to keep them both inside her body while she took little gasps for air. “Oh my God…”

She read the messages again, checking dates and times, hoping—praying—it wasn’t too late to get back to them. These offers could be tenuous. Sponsors could be sensitive. If they weren’t treated with the respect and deference they felt they deserved, they could easily turn their backs on an entertainer.