Chapter 37

The One Where Love Is The Ultimate Weakness

NATE

Waking up, I’m startled by the sound of my phone ringing. I glance at it, not recognizing the number and so I choose to ignore it.

I barely roll over to go back to sleep when the doorbell rings three times rather quickly. In a half-asleep stupor, I stand and step into a pair of sweats to scurry down the hallway.

When I glance through the peephole, I don’t immediately recognize who it is but then the doorbell rings another three times. I take a second peek, and it finally occurs to me that it’s Langley—the dude that put a fucking potato sack over my head and drove me to meet Ezra.

Shit.

My stomach suddenly twists and I know this isn’t going to be good.

Dare I say, my spidey senses are tingling and they’re never wrong.

Taking a controlled breath, I undo the deadbolt and open the door and with a, “What the fuck do you want?”

“Get dressed. We’re going to Ezra’s office.”

“Why?” I snap, irritated by the fact that both my deep sleep has been ruined and I’m having to deal with this prick as well as Ezra again. A chill runs down my spine, a reminder of who Ezra is and what he did to me last time.

“Just get fuckin’ dressed,” he barks while giving me an angry glare. I know better than to fuck with him and so, with an annoyed sigh, I saunter away from him and down the hall to get my clothing.

It only takes a matter of a few minutes stumbling about in the darkness of my bedroom—in my half asleep state, not even thinking about turning the light on—but when I walk back to Langley, it’s plainly obvious that he’s not pleased with the amount of time it took me to get ready. Grabbing a house key, I ignore him, stepping outside and locking up the house to reluctantly follow him to his car parked in my driveway.

As we begin the journey, I ask, “Why does Ezra want to see me?” I glance through the window, watching as little to no cars or people pass us by. I check my phone, noting that it’s half past six in the morning—just around the time traffic would begin to pick up with people heading off to work or school.

Langley doesn’t answer me, he just stews in silence, driving along the road in a hurry.

“Why did he have to see me this early in the morning?”

No answer.

“You’re not gonna’ answer anything I ask, are you?”

“No,” he replies, surprising me that he even responded to that.

The ride is pretty long and filled with quiet. Langley never speaks again, he never touches the radio or even clears his throat and I sit in complete silence, staring out the window, worrying and obsessing about the reason why Ezra wants to see me.

I knew the journey would be fairly long, seeing as how I’d driven out this way once before to meet up with Langley. Even after he’d blindfolded me and put me in his car, it was still a fifteen-minute ride, at least. Although, he could’ve driven me in pointless circles in an attempt to throw me off the path to Ezra’s place and I wouldn’t have known.

It’s about thirty-five minutes into the trip when it finally occurs to me that we’re near where I met Langley that last time. I notice the place where I parked my car to meet him, I recognize the tree-lined street and I’m familiar with the weird statue near where I was standing waiting.

That’s when I finally come to the realization that Langley hasn’t blindfolded me this time. In fact, he doesn’t seem at all concerned as he drives closer and closer to Ezra’s that I know this area and my memory is good enough that I’ve already memorized the path.

And for whatever reason, that doesn’t sit well with me. It makes my flight response tingle wildly.

Because why wouldn’t they want to make sure I don’t know the route? Probably since they don’t expect me to ever need to know it. They don’t think I’ll be alive to remember it.

The thought makes my throat instantly go dry and my stomach feel as if it’s about to empty its contents. My chest heaves slightly while I try to keep my feelings undercover, not wanting Langley to see that he’s gotten to me without doing much.

I think of my sisters, my parents, and I think of Arielle.

Langley pulls the car up to a building in the most normal looking of places—there are stores on either side of it and the front of this one appears to be some sort of business itself. But as Langley pulls around the backside of the structure, I notice that the store is merely a front for Ezra’s shit on the back of the massive building.

Swallowing hard, I observe as we pull into a dedicated parking stall and Langley has me walk to the backdoor as if everything is completely normal. By now, it’s been at least fifty minutes or more since he first picked me up and the sun has brightened up outside considerably.

The moment I step inside, I’m greeted with two rather large men. Langley willingly hands his pistol over to them—that happened to be tucked into the waistband of his jeans the entire time—and then he walks through a metal detector.

“Step forward,” the one guy says to me, and I suddenly feel like I’m being interrogated at an airport or something else fucked up. I do as he asks, holding out my arms when he demands I do so. He pats me down, removing my cell phone from my pocket as he does so.

I guess I pissed Ezra off last time with that and I’ve likely lost my privileges.

He also finds my cigarettes in my pocket along with my lighter, but he allows me to keep those, and my house key. I step through the metal detector without setting it off. They then urge me into a full body scan of sorts, questioning me if I’m hiding anything under my shirt.

“I have my fuckin’ nipple pierced,” I snap, irritated with both of their stupid fucking faces. I don’t want to be here, yet here I am, being treated like some sort of petty criminal by a bunch of actual hard-core criminals.

They eye me up skeptically, and so I step around the monitor, lifting my shirt to show them the barbell freshly pierced into my body. “Happy now?”

This is fucking ridiculous, but I guess Ezra feels all of this shit is required because he’s a guy with a lot of enemies. He has to be sure that no one is trying to sneak in weapons that they can use to kill him.

“He’s clear,” the one man says and Langley uses a hand to wave me towards him.

I try to walk to my phone—since it’s just sitting there on the table—but the men stop me. “You’ll get it when you leave,” he informs me, causing worry to fill my veins again.