Secrets We Hunt (One Night #2)(17)

I reach their door and start banging on it loud enough to wake the dead.

“Fucking what!” Jack yells from the other side before a loud thump echoes through the door.

“Jesus Christ, what is going on?” Owen asks, opening his door with a half-naked Pyro stumbling out after him. Jack opens his door, and we both look at Owen and Pyro standing there together.

“Okay, there are going to be questions about that later,” Jack says before turning his attention back to me. Owen laughs before Jack’s anger gets thrown in my face. “Why the fuck are you banging on my door at the ass crack of night?”

“The saying is ass crack of dawn, and Zo? is gone,” I tell him, my attention swiveling from the two freshly fucked men in the doorway behind me back to Jack. “She left. I need to know where she’s staying.”

Quinlan comes into view, rubbing her eyes and wrapping a robe tightly around herself. She peeks through the door and takes in Owen and Pyro with a surprised smile before looking at me.

“Where is Zo? staying on the island, Quinlan?” I ask her, trying to plead to her with my eyes. “I know you know.”

“Wes,” she starts. “If she took off…”

“No,” I interrupt her. “She did this before, and she doesn’t get to do it again. Running away like a damn thief in the night.”

“Wes,” she says, shooing Jack back into their room and giving the other boys a look to leave us alone as well. Owen’s door shuts behind me, and she closes her door, leaving us alone in the hallway.

“Quinlan?” I ask.

“Ever since I’ve known Zo?, she’s been closed off. She never dated and always had one foot out the door. I knew when I met her that she’d be the absolute worst roommate ever because there was no way she’d be staying in one place long enough to hold a lease.” She smiles. “But that leaks into her personal life, too. Her walls are built so fucking tall, no one can get in. If she left, it’s because she wanted to. She knows she can’t give you whatever it is you want.”

I rake my hands through my hair and pace around the hall a couple of times.

“Quinlan,” I tell her, coming back and taking her hands in mine. “I need to know where she’s staying.”

She sighs and turns around, walking back into her room and closing the door behind her. I stare at the closed door for a moment, wondering how the hell I am going to find her without knowing where she’s staying. Can I go out there and walk the streets until I find her? Can I go sit at the airport, searching for her until she leaves for Morocco?

“Fuck,” I swear under my breath.

“If you make me regret this,” Quin says, opening her door and handing me a piece of paper. “I will tell Jack you’re never allowed back in his club, capisce?”

“That’s Italian,” I tell her, smiling and ripping the piece of paper from her fingers.

“Shut up,” she laughs. “That’s the hotel she’s staying at. Go get your girl.”

I lean in and give her a loud kiss on the cheek before running down the hallway and making my way off the yacht. I carefully walk down the dock and make my way up onto the stone streets. The island is quiet, and I realize getting a taxi is going to be impossible. Opening my phone, I type the name of the hotel into the search bar and cringe at how much this is going to cost me in data.

Making my way through the quiet town, my heart feels like it’s going to pound its way out of my chest. The thought of losing her again is sending me into an absolute spiral of anxiety. I’ve had a taste of her, and I’ve known since the first time I met her as a kid that we were always going to be together. Something in me recognized something in her, even at eight years old.

“Why are you running again?” I ask out loud to the empty streets. I thought we had gotten all the secrets out and she had realized I didn’t care, that I wouldn’t hold what happened against her. How could I? Not a single part of it was her fault.

I want to fucking kill my uncle for doing this to me, to us. He was the only person in my life that I could count on. I looked up to him like he was my damn father, and he goes and pulls a stunt like that?

Although, it really shouldn’t surprise me. If someone can kick you out of your life for no other reason other than not wanting the same things, they’re clearly a piece of shit. If I had known, I think to myself, beating myself up for not realizing there was something wrong. I should’ve done more, tried harder. I should’ve beat down her fucking door or chased her around the world.

Instead, I just let her walk out of my life like she was nothing. But that wasn’t true. I was just a teenage boy, putting all the blame on her for leaving me. I let her be the bad person in my mind for leaving me behind. I should’ve known there was more to it.

“I should’ve fucking known,” I say under my breath. My uncle truly was a worthless human.

It takes me a while to make my way to her hotel. It’s a little too easy to get lost among all the white walls lining the island’s streets. I turn a corner and come up on it, the sign illuminating the road in front of it. I’ve never had to hunt anyone in a different country; I’ve always stayed in my own state.

I’m not really sure how to hunt her down when all I know is her first and last name. I don’t know how to work the system here, especially considering it’s four in the morning and I’m just some white dude asking for the room number of a random girl.