Untamed (A Bad Boy Secret Baby Romance)(89)

“Relax,” he tells me. “It’s a custom chip, and will inject a virus into the computer. It will show your picture, but I don’t know for how long. One year, maybe. The security protocols are updated constantly.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” he tells me.

“And what if it doesn’t work? Do I get my money back?”

He laughs. “If you’re not jailed, I’ll happily return your money.”

Somehow, I doubt that. “Who will you give my passport to?” I ask him.

“To whoever buys it.”

“Will you do me a favor?”

He leans back, touches the tips of his fingers together. “I’ll consider it.”

“Give it to the first person looking for an American passport who walks in here.”

“Hoping to put your father on the wrong track?”

“Something like that,” I tell him. “Something like that.”

I leave the way I came in, down the elevator, down the escalators. I politely decline, for the second time, some of the same people who tried to sell me drugs on my way up.

Dad will be looking for me, and he will be able to get my passport records. He’ll know I came to Hong Kong, but hopefully somebody using my name to enter America will turn him back around.

Hopefully.

But I don’t dare hope too much.

I pass the cage houses, see a man curled up, knees pressed against his chest, sleeping. He must be in his sixties, and he’s thin as a rake.

The cages remind me of Duncan.

Have I left him trapped?





Chapter Thirty Three





Three fucking months… that’s how long she’s been gone.

Three long fucking months… it feels like three years, like a night that’s never ended. I keep walking toward the horizon, hoping that the moon will disappear behind me, and that the sun will rise up in front of me.

Only it hasn’t. Not yet.

She’s got my baby, she’s passed her first trimester, and she’s all alone.

That fucking thought kills me. She’s all alone!

I know she’s strong, and I know she can do this, but she doesn’t have to. I know what it’s like to feel alone, and I wouldn’t wish it on anybody, least of all her.

One way or another, I’m getting Dee back, making her mine again. One way or another. But in this time that I don’t have her, in this time that I can’t reach over and touch her, kiss her… it leaves me embittered.

Every single fucking day I wake up and reach over instinctively, expect to feel her warm body, expect to hear her steady breathing, expect to be able to roll over, kiss her neck and smell her hair, sometimes watch her for a while. Treasure her, wonder at the chain of events in our lives that brought us together, like some kind of cosmic magnetism… destiny?

Every single fucking day my hand hits cold sheets, and I get out of bed with a soured mood to start the day.

A day of searching for the mother of my child.

It’s been futile. All my leads are gone. There are no more breadcrumbs. Now… now I want to say that it’s only a matter of God damned time. I never doubt that I’m going to find her, but what I do worry about is how long it’ll take me to.

I’m faced with the idea of being unable to do something I want to do. It’s not an unfamiliar feeling, but I haven’t felt it in a while.

I am going to find her. I am going to get my family back.

But I can’t trust in anything other than my own agency. I can’t believe that our lives are drawn together the way our eyes are. If we really were like magnets, then what if, momentarily, we might have flipped over? How do I know that with each day I don’t get pushed farther apart from her?

How do I know I’m even looking in the right fucking place?

How do I know that if I ever find her, that should the stars align and I find a person who is trying to hide in a city I don’t know, trying to go unnoticed, that she’ll then even welcome me back into her life?

Fuck, I don’t even want to think about that. It’s a well of frustration inside me, never-ending, like it digs down right through the Earth and pops out the other side, spilling my soul into the dark emptiness of space.

It’s a black hole, sucking inward, right in my chest. I feel it in my chest. Usually all I feel in my chest is a good hit from my opponent, and the swell of happiness and anticipation whenever I saw or thought about Dee.

Nothing like this.

“Fuck,” I whisper, rubbing my forehead, pinching my brows together between my forefinger and thumb. I clench my fists, force myself to calm, actually have to use the fucking breathing techniques I use during fights to keep my head screwed on straight.

Dee needs me. I tell myself that every single day because it drives me, keeps me going. I need her, too, but the thought that she’s alone is what keeps shoveling coal into my furnace.