Robbie ducked his head, shyness overcoming him. But when Priest ran his fingers down Robbie’s jaw, Robbie raised his head, and Priest saw his eyes shimmering, the happiness and acceptance there plain as the smile on his face.
“We’re going to work this out, Robert. The three of us. No matter how complicated. I don’t think any of us are tied to tradition. It’s just a matter of how.”
Robbie grinned. “See, there you go again. Tag-teaming me.”
Priest laughed and turned to Julien, whose face was still mainly covered in shaving cream. “I suppose we did, didn’t we?”
Julien leaned in and kissed Priest. “Oui. We’ve always made a good team, haven’t we?”
Priest didn’t care how much cream he got on his face then. He took Julien’s cheeks between his hands and pressed a harder kiss to his lips before answering, “Always…”
PRIEST SLAMMED HIS foot on the gas as the light turned green, flooring it up one of the back streets he’d taken to get where he was going faster.
The entire time he’d been in the car, he’d been trying Julien’s cell to no avail, and now that he was rounding the final corner to their condo, he could feel perspiration running down the middle of his back.
He needed to calm down. He needed to stop thinking about this weekend as though it would never happen again, and calm the fuck down. For all he knew, he could be overreacting. But something in his gut wouldn’t settle, and Priest knew it wouldn’t until he saw Julien with his own two eyes.
As he entered the lot, he wound his way down to their parking spots, and as he made his way to their designated area, that unsettled feeling turned to full-on nausea.
There, directly in front of him, was their Range Rover, but that wasn’t what was so alarming. No. What had the bile rising in his throat was on the ground just under it—a set of keys that had been dropped and forgotten.
Priest slammed on the brakes as he pulled into his spot, and when he climbed out of the car, the adrenaline coursing through him made his entire world tilt and shift as his eyes darted around the empty level, looking for signs of anyone else in the parking lot.
“Julien!” he shouted, and the name reverberated around the concrete columns and walls, but there was no response. No cars, no people, no responding shout for help—just dead silence. No one was there.
“Julien!” he called out again, and this time raced over to the SUV. As he neared the vehicle, all Priest could think was: Please don’t let me find him in the car hurt…or worse. But when he got to the driver’s door, he pushed the unlock button on his keychain to open it, and at the last second realized what he was about to do and instead moved to peer in the window as to not touch the car—no one was inside.
No Julien. No signs of a struggle. No nothing.
This can’t be happening, Priest thought, as he picked up Julien’s keys and spun away from the SUV, searching the empty concrete that stretched out in front of him. This can’t be fucking happening.
Digging into his pants pocket, Priest reached for his cell to check it again. When there was nothing there, not a missed call, no response from Julien in the group text, Priest shook his head and bolted toward the elevator.
Maybe he’s upstairs, like Lise said. Maybe he’s sick. But in the back of his mind, Priest knew the likelihood of that was slim.
He swiped his key fob over the panel, punched in their floor, and took what felt like a never-ending ride up to their level. Once he was there, he stepped out and raced to the end of the hall, and not two seconds later, he was inside.
“Julien? Are you in here?” But as Priest dashed through the foyer, past the living room, and into their bedroom, he already knew the answer—the condo was empty.
As he came back out to the living room, he ran a hand through his hair and tried to think, but it was close to impossible with the blood rushing around his head. Now that all of the logical explanations had been exhausted, that only left one thing—and that was unthinkable.
Priest looked at the TV remote sitting on the coffee table, and like a man about to reach for something that just might kill him, he slowly picked it up and wasn’t at all shocked to see his hand trembling.
He pressed the power button, and as the TV came to life, he began to flick through the news channels until—
There it was, his worst nightmare: Convicted felon Jimmy Donovan escapes Louisiana State Penitentiary.
After the headline, Priest zoned out, the unimaginable destroying all sense of his reality as everything inside him started to shut down. His legs began to shake, and as the realization that he had been right to fear the worst dawned, his stomach lurched and he hauled ass to the spare bathroom, his breakfast from that morning leaving him in a mass exodus.