Page 21 of Never Forget

My pulse is hammering so hard I can feel it in my teeth.

I shouldn’t have left him.

The thought slams into me with enough force to make my stomach lurch with nausea.

I shouldn’t have left him.

I didn’t want to leave him.

Less than an hour ago, I was staring down at the top of his head, watching his eyelashes flutter against his cheeks as he slept with his head on my chest. He’d fallen asleep halfway through the terrible action movie I’d chosen for us to watch.

I wanted to stay. God, I wanted to stay so fucking bad. The weight of him against me was like a balm, soothing the chaotic day we’d had. It would have been so easy to wrap my arm around him and burrow down into the sheets and sleep for just a few hours. To sneak out when the sun came up, or even better, to wake up with him again. To be there when he opened his eyes.

Instead, I’d slipped out of the room like a guilty teenager sneaking out after curfew and went back to my own room.

Because those are the rules.

Because every time I push too much, Naz pulls away. And because I am trying—really trying—not to overstep.

Now I’m kicking myself for leaving him in the first place. Or that I went to the hotel gym instead of staying in my room and going to bed. My room is only three doors down from his. Three fucking doors. But no, I just had to burn off the restless energy buzzing under my skin because I’d gotten more out of tonight than ever before. The excitement of making the barest progress with Naz, of getting real time with him the way I did tonight, made it impossible to stay still.

And now the entire hotel is being evacuated, and I have no idea where Naz is. The crowd is thinning, employees and firemen are ushering the last of the guests through the doors. Still, there’s no sign of our group. No sign of him.

Ignoring shouts of protest behind me, I head back into the stairwell to go find them. I get half a flight up the stairs before I stop and think.

Panicking isn’t going to help anything. I need to slow down. Think. Breathe.

Cory wouldn’t have left him behind. No one on the security team would have, much less the other guys in the band. They would have made sure he got out.

If I were up there and in charge, I probably wouldn’t have led everyone through the same doors the entire hotel was rushing through. It’s unlikely they evacuated through the main lobby. It’s too exposed, too crowded.

It’s more likely they would have taken the back stairwells and service routes and gone down to the basement exit.

I pivot and take off running, taking the steps two and three at a time. The alarms and lights are overwhelming in the concrete stairwell, the sound reverberating off the walls.

By the time I reach the basement level, my ears are ringing.

There’s a hotel security guard waving me toward a corridor near the loading docks. “Outside!” he shouts.

No shit.

The metal exit door bursts open beneath my shoulder, the tepid night air a cool slap against my flushed face.

Police lights paint the loading docks in flashing red and blue. Hotel security and emergency personnel are everywhere. Finally, behind the bustle of people, police cars, and emergency vehicles, I see black SUVs idling at the back of the lot. There’s a small group of familiar faces, but I don’t take a breath until I see him.

Naz is maybe twenty yards away. Alive and well. Angry and pushing Eric. I can’t hear him from where I am, but it’s clear he’s fighting against the group that has circled around him.

“Fuck. There he is,” Jesse says, pointing to me when he sees me jogging across the pavement to get to them.

Naz swings his head around and sees me. His shoulders drop and the tension drains from his face. His eyes lock on mine, then travel down my body as if assessing me. I do the same to him, finally taking a breath.

“Let’s get moving!” Cory shouts, and the world around me rushes back in. The lights, the sounds, all the chaos around us sharpens and reminds me that we need to get out of here.

Naz’s eyes narrow before he looks away, muttering, “You’re a shitty shadow.”

His mask is firmly in place when he straightens his shoulders and climbs into one of the vehicles behind Jesse and Luc. Cory gets behind the wheel, Tad sliding into the passenger seat. Eric, Blake, Ari, and Will get into the second vehicle. I don’t hesitate to climb in after Naz, taking a seat in the third row next to him.

Once I’m buckled in, I extend my hand into the seat between us, grazing my pinky along the side of Naz’s balled-up fist. His hand relaxes, and our fingers lock.