He gave her a stiff nod, then shut the door. She heard his footsteps down the hall as he walked away.
Edie lay back down on the bed again, grabbing a pillow and hugging it. On the nearby table, her phone buzzed with an incoming text.
She ignored it and closed her eyes, willing herself to fall asleep.
Didn’t work.
***
Magnus was ready to kill someone, starting with his brother, Levi. No, he decided, Bianca would go first.
Both of them were completely useless when it came to finding Edie. All Bianca did was sob and ask what it meant for her, and Magnus wanted to wring her pretty neck. She wasn’t concerned about her sister as much as she was concerned about herself, and that just increased his rage. Levi was also equally useless. It seemed that the fair Bianca had dumped him and now he was inconsolable.
Misery loved company, but this was ridiculous.
In the meantime, he’d texted Edie a ridiculous number of times, called her just as many, but she wasn’t answering. Bianca wasn’t answering his calls, either, so he’d taken to driving around the city, in the hopes that he’d catch a glimpse of a woman with a unique gait and two short brown braids that she wore tucked behind each ear. When it got dark, he decided to give up and headed back to his new place, just in case she changed her mind and came home.
He considered it “their” home, even if she wouldn’t live there. He’d bought it thinking of her, and he saw her in every room, every piece of new furniture picked out with the thought of pleasing Edie. Now all of that might be for nothing, and the thought made him feel hollow inside. No, fuck that. He wasn’t going to allow that to happen. Magnus was a doer. It was Levi who was the emotional one, the dreamer. Magnus got shit done. If getting Edie back was something that needed to happen, well, he’d get that shit done, too.
He was just pulling up to his new Park Slope place when his phone dinged with an incoming text. Nearly jumping the curb in his haste to answer, Magnus parked the car and flicked his phone on.
Hunter. Damn it. His momentary disappointment gave way to relief when he read the text. Edie is here, with Gretchen. She has her cats with her and will be our guest for a few days as she settles in.
Thank god. Magnus tilted his head back with relief, eyes closed. As long as she was safe and with friends, that was all that mattered. He immediately dialed Hunter. “She’s there? She’s safe?” he asked the moment the phone picked up on the other end.
“Yes and yes,” Hunter said.
“Thank you,” Magnus breathed. “Thank you for being there for her.” He felt so fucking guilty that he was part of this nonsense. That he’d allowed himself to get swept up in Levi’s stupid games. Edie was right; it was an awful thing to do. He just hadn’t given any thought to how Edie would feel about being manipulated because he hadn’t cared as long as he’d gotten what he wanted out of things.
And the moment that had changed, he was trapped. He could have left things as they were, gone on with his new life with Edie, had her move in with him, and hope she never found out the truth. But then wouldn’t he have been just as bad as Bianca? He suspected that the secrecy hurt much worse than the betrayal.
And that was why he’d had to tell her the truth, even if the timing was shit. Because everything needed to be out on the table.
“I’m afraid you can’t see her,” Hunter said.
“What?”
“Gretchen won’t allow it. Not while Edie’s this emotional. She needs time to adjust to everything she’s been told recently.”
“Fuck that—”
“I just wanted to let you know as a friend.” Hunter’s voice was completely emotionless, as if they were discussing business. “My security staff has been apprised of the situation and both you and Levi are forbidden from the grounds until further notice.”
“Some friend—”
“I am your friend,” Hunter stated. “That hasn’t changed. But Edie is Gretchen’s friend and she is in greater need of a friend and a stable environment at the moment, would you not agree?”
His jaw set. “She’d want to see me.”
“I’ll let her decide that for herself.”
“She won’t answer my calls.”
“Gretchen told me she has gone to bed for the night.”
Magnus wanted to bite out that Gretchen could fucking go wake her up, but he knew the fastest way to get Hunter pissed was to disparage his fiancée. And he understood that. Hunter was utterly protective of Gretchen like Magnus was of Edie. Except they weren’t letting him protect his woman. He couldn’t get to her.
He gritted his teeth, frustrated. “I’ll be there in the morning. Tell Edie.”
***
Edie picked at her oatmeal, her appetite non-existent. It wasn’t that the food was awful—Gretchen was a terrific cook and this was one of the recipes from the cookbook she was putting together. It was that her stomach felt as unhappy and depressed as the rest of her. It was torture trying to get anything down, even though she knew she should eat. It was just . . . difficult. Eating felt like one of those functions you did when life moved at its regular pace, and for Edie, life had pretty much ground to an abrupt halt.
So she sipped her coffee and moved her spoon through her oatmeal, and tried to feign interest in the conversation Hunter and Gretchen were having over breakfast. Even though the huge manor had a dozen dining rooms, the happy couple liked to eat breakfast in their favorite kitchen. There was a cozy wood-block table directly across from a wall of windows, and the three of them sat and ate breakfast as a heavy rain pattered on the window. It seemed that Hunter had recently acquired a castle in the UK that had been put up for sale, and Gretchen wanted to keep it and restore it, whereas Hunter wanted to flip it and sell it to a friend who’d been looking at unique residences. They laughingly bickered over prices and contractors and Edie stared at her plate, wishing she could retreat to her room without upsetting her hosts. Instead, she glanced out the window in the tiny kitchen at the miserable weather.