Anti-Stepbrother(76)

“I’m just letting you know because I don’t want to have to report you and deal with all that paperwork. I have a final in two days. I’ll be pissed if you take away from my studying.”

“Well, okay then.” After grabbing my room key and phone, I shut the door behind me and headed down after her. “Note to self, the midnight desk clerk is kind of a bitch.”

When I got down there and saw her back behind the desk, she had her head buried in a psychopharmacology book. I changed my mind. Just the name of her class stressed me out.

No guy waited next to the desk, and I checked the other front lobby across from her desk. No one was there either, so I went downstairs.

Someone was studying a world map, but I didn’t see anyone else around the downstairs lobby that could be Caden. “Hello?”

I hadn’t checked the computer room. He could’ve been in there… But then the map guy turned around, and I recognized Diego.

I stopped short. “Hey.” Ice plunged into my veins.

The normally loud, happy, and vivacious Diego was not the guy in front of me. He had bags under his eyes and no spark in them either.

He rubbed his hands together. “Hey. Uh, I wasn’t sure if this was appropriate or not.”

“It’s fine.” I frowned. “What’s up?”

It was Caden. My heart raced. I knew it was Caden.

My voice dropped an octave. “Is he okay?”

“I think so, but I didn’t know who else to call.” He kept glancing away.

“It’s okay. Just tell me what it is.”

Please be okay. Please be okay.

“Caden was at the bar tonight when he got a call—”

“From who?”

He shook his head. “He didn’t say, but I know it’s about his brother.”

Marcus?

“Colton. He’s in the hospital.”

Oh. My frown deepened. Oh! “He’s at the hospital?”

“I know there’s another brother, but I don’t know his phone number. You’re the only person Caden’s brought to the bar, and I remembered that one girl said she was in the same dorm as you. She kept talking about you that night after you guys left, so the name was burned in my memory.” He grimaced, laughing softly. “I had the worst hangover the next morning with that girl’s voice on repeat—”

I’d stopped listening. I grabbed his arm, stopping him in mid-sentence. “Thank you, Diego.”

His hesitation slid away. His eyes warmed, and his hand covered mine. “I knew it was the right thing to come here. I told the girl your name. I didn’t know your last name, but she finally said she’d go see if you were even still awake. It took me ten minutes of arguing with her. I came down here because I didn’t want to risk getting thrown out.”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

My insides clenched. Caden was hurting.

I started for the stairs. “I need to go.”

And when I got outside, I remembered I didn’t have a car.

Diego had followed me out. “I can give you a ride.”

I didn’t feel relief, thankful, or even grateful. I should’ve felt all of those things, said something to indicate how much I appreciated that, but nothing else mattered in that moment. Caden mattered. That was it.

All my usual niceties left me. Even my weird quirks disappeared, and I only uttered, “Yes, please.”

I just had to get to him.





I was an idiot.

After circling around all over the hospital and finding nothing, I was given directions to a second waiting lounge. That’s where Caden was, and once I saw him standing in the hallway, with his head down and his phone pressed against his ear, I knew how utterly and completely stupid I had been. He’d called a few times during the week, and I’d always made up an excuse. I was a dumbass. It’d been almost a week since I last saw him—a week too long. An invisible weight pressed down on my chest, and I had to stop to swallow a lump in my throat.

I went to him.

His back was turned to me, and he nodded his head as he spoke. “Yeah. I know. Yeah. Okay.” He paused. “If Marcus could come, that’d be good. He’s going to be moved there tomorrow morning.” Then he turned. He saw me, and he went still. “Uh, yeah. A seventy-two-hour hold… Mom, I gotta go. I’ll call you back.”

My hand ached from wanting to touch him.

He hung up, and his eyebrows lifted in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

“Diego came to my dorm. He said you got a call about your brother, that you were here.”

He cocked his head to look behind me.

“He’s not with me. He just gave me a ride here.”

“Oh.” His Adam’s apple moved up and down as he swallowed, then a hardness came over him. “You should go.” He started past me.