Page 85 of Keep On Loving You
Charli smiled knowingly. “But what are you going to tell her?”
“I think Kat deserves to be the first person to hear that, don’t you?”
“Good answer.” She winked. “Have you heard from her this morning?”
Andy shook his head. “I lost my phone somewhere last night. Probably on the kitchen floor after…” He touched his jaw tentatively. “It doesn’t matter.” Only one thing mattered now. Kat. “I’ve gotta go.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Thankfully,it was early enough that the roads were mostly empty as Andy broke all kinds of laws as he raced from Charli and Symon’s house on the edge of town to the plaza parking lot.
He ran through the empty plaza and straight up the stairs to Kat’s apartment. He slipped his key in the lock and moved straight up to the bedroom.
“Kat?” He knocked softly on the door and pushed it open, not wanting to startle her. But as he stepped into the room, he realized there’d been no need to worry.
She wasn’t there.
“Kat?”
He went to the bathroom, but it too was empty. A quick search of the house revealed what he feared. She was gone.
Reflexively, he reached for his phone. But came up empty. “Dammit.” He had a few different choice words for Craig at the moment but he swallowed them back. Thefocus had to be on finding Kat. But where the hell would she go so early? It was only just past seven in the morning and unless she was?—
The hike.
He sprinted down the stairs and stopped short by the hall table. The pack was gone from where it had sat for the last few weeks. And the package Steven had given her to take was gone, too.
“Dammit, Kat.” Andy rubbed his hand through his hair and tugged at the roots. “Now? You choose to do this now?”
There couldn’t have been a worse time. Andy paced the hallway like a caged animal, trying to figure out what to do next. There was no way he could go to Switzerland now. Not with her up in the woods by herself.
Her family didn’t even know therewasa hike. Let alone where she’d be going. He had a very slight advantage in that he knew about it, but Kat hadn’t told him where she was going to go. And even if he did know, she was supposed to do it alone. He couldn’t charge through the woods and ruin it for her just because he wanted to talk to her. That wasn’t fair.
Still, he couldn’t sit around and do nothing.
At least if he knewwhereshe’d gone, that would be something. And it was only for one night. He’d be waiting for her when she came back.
There was only one person who might know something. And considering how he’d treated him the night before, Andy wasn’t looking forward to that particular conversation. Hopefully, Kane didn’t hold a grudge for grade-A assholes.
But first, he was going to need to get his phone back.
Kat had no concept of how long she’d been hiking, but with the heavy pack on her back, it felt as if she’d been walking all day. Out of the two options Kane had shown her for the trip, they both involved huge elevation gains, which was to be expected in the mountains, but one was slightly longer, and to her surprise, that was the hike she’d chosen because Kane said it had a small but beautiful glacier-fed lake at the end.
The idea of setting her tent up next to a lake felt right, and so she’d made the last-minute decision to hike to White Swan Lake despite a few extra kilometers needed to reach it.
She’d been so caught up in her thoughts and feelings from the night before, it had been easy to forget her fears of hiking alone in the woods. For the most part.
But several hours had passed, and the flood of emotions that had fueled her at the start of her walk had begun to wear off.
Now it was just her and the woods.
And all the creatures that might be hiding in the trees, ready to attack.
“Hello, Mr. Bear!” she called out the way her dad had taught her when she was a child.
Make noise on the trail, Kat. You never want to startle an animal.
She could hear his voice as if he were there with her. “Okay, Dad. I’m doing it. I’m here.” She sucked in a breathand kept walking. “I still don’t understand this one, but I guess that doesn’t matter at this point, does it?”
