Faking with Benefits : A Friends to Lovers Romance(104)

Alarmed, I shut the lid of my laptop, but before I can go check on him, Zack barges into the lounge. He looks half-mad; his eyes are wide and red, and he’s still in last night’s suit.

“Zack.” I stand. “Are you okay?”

He ignores me, storming into the kitchen and yanking open the cupboard under the sink. He starts rooting around inside, pushing out armfuls of cleaning supplies. Bottles of dish soap and grease remover clatter to the kitchen tile, bouncing and rolling under the cupboards.

I follow him, alarmed. “Hey. Calm down. What is it?” I reach down to touch his shoulder, and he shoves me away.

“DON’T TOUCH ME!” He roars, standing and moving onto the next cupboard. He slams the door open so hard all the plates inside rattle. “GET THE HELL AWAY FROM ME!” He tugs out a pile of plates, dropping them onto the wooden counter. I hear the porcelain crack.

“Zack.” I grab him by the shoulders, spinning him to face me. “What’s happening? Are you looking for something?”

He looks down at me. He’s panting like a dog. His pupils are so dilated his eyes look black. “I can’t find her ring,” he forces out, his voice rough.

It takes a few seconds for that to sink in. “Emily’s ring?” I ask. “The one you wear around your neck? When did you last see it?”

He runs his hands through his hair. “I don’t know,” he snarls. “I don’t know. I had it at the wedding. But now it’s gone. I lost it.” He kicks the dishwasher, slamming his foot into the door with an awful clang. “I FECKIN’ LOST IT!”

Oh, Jesus. “Zack. Stop. We’ll find it.”

“What if we don’t?!” He kicks the dishwasher door again, denting the metal.

I grab him by the back of his jacket, pulling him away. “Stop that. Go sit in the lounge, and we’ll sort this out, okay?”

He makes a strangled noise, turning away from me and bracing himself against the counter. For a few seconds, he’s still, breathing hard. Then he grabs a mug from the draining board and throws it at the wall. It shatters into pieces.

I jump back from the shards. “Zack, for God’s sake—”

He buries his face in his hands and starts to cry. I freeze as I watch tears drip down between his fingers, landing on the counter. “I don’t have anything else from her,” he chokes out. “She’s never gonna give me anything else. If it’s gone, she’s gone, and I’ll never get any part of her back again.” He slumps against the counter, his breathing ragged. “She’s gone. I lost her. I lost her.”

My chest hurts as I look at him.

I’ve never seen this side of Zack. He always seems so carefree. It was obvious that the booze and the girls and the crazy nights out were a distraction from something, but I didn’t realise this was what he was running from. To my knowledge, Emily died twelve years ago. She’s been gone almost half his life.

Before I can work out what to say, the flat’s front door flies open. Josh strides in, his face like thunder. I barely have time to register what’s happening before he grabs Zack by the collar of his shirt and shoves him backward, slamming him up against the kitchen wall.

“What the Hell did you do?” He snarls.





SIXTY-SIX





LUKE





“Josh,” I say warningly, “now isn’t the time.”

He ignores me, getting in Zack’s face. “What. Did. You. Do,” he repeats, each word scarily precise. “I went to the brunch this morning. My brother said he saw you dragging her out into the gardens last night. He said she left crying.”

Zack doesn’t say anything, staring down at his best friend, breathing hard.

“She won’t answer my calls,” Josh snaps. “She won’t answer her front door. I spoke to the front desk, they said she didn’t come home last night.”

My stomach dips. I suppose it’s hardly surprising that Layla didn’t want to go back to her flat, with us living a few metres away across the hall. But where did she go? Is she safe? Did she just disappear in the middle of the night, wandering London in the dark in her tiny silk dress?

I close my eyes and force myself to breathe. Layla is smart. She won’t be walking the streets or taking the Tube. She’ll have booked a taxi and gone to a hotel, I’m sure. She’ll be fine.

I really, really hope she’s fine.

“Get off me,” Zack mutters, shoving Josh away. His red eyes are hard. “I just told her the truth. That we weren’t going to do this anymore. That all of this teaching BS is done.”

“Actually, he did a bit more than that,” I add. Josh turns to me, and I recount the events of last night as quickly as I can. When I tell him about Zack sleeping with her in the gardens, he closes his eyes. When I get to my conversation with Layla in the hotel room, he looks like he’s about to have a hernia.

“You idiots,” he hisses, dropping heavily onto the sofa and running his hands over his face. “What the Hell is wrong with you?”

“Obviously, we went about it wrong,” I say. “But I think it was for the best. She said that she was falling for us. It would be cruel to keep playing this stupid game, knowing that she’s developed feelings.”