I frowned at my phone as the line rang once again, and she refused to fucking answer it. I’d been trying to reach Laura for days and I still wasn’t getting an answer. There were times when her phone would be off and the call would go straight to voicemail. Then there were times when my call got cut off or was just left to ring out.

“What the fuck is going on?” I asked aloud, feeling irritation creep up on me.

I didn’t want to be irritated with Laura. She might have a good reason for ignoring me. She had promised me she wouldn’t run, and I’d told her I trusted her. The problem was, now I felt as if the words had fallen on deaf ears because she’d done a disappearing act.

Fuck!

I couldn’t deal with this. I’d had enough drama with my family, I didn’t need it with my love life too.

A light ding made me look up, and I remembered I was in the elevator. The doors had just opened to the office floor, and I stepped out, headed for the office. I gave the secretary a distracted nod of acknowledgment and let myself in. Trent looked up from his desk.

“You could knock, you know,” he said, though he didn’t look angry.

It wasn’t like I’d ever knocked, and even if he told me to start doing it, I wouldn’t get used to it. I was used to walking into this office, no matter who sat behind the desk.

“Sorry,” I said distractedly, putting my phone and both my hands in my pants pockets. I shook my head at the idea of apologizing, I never did that.

Trent’s eyebrows jumped up. “Wow, did you apologize to me? Mason, that’s not like you.”

He wasn’t playing, and I wasn’t in the fucking mood. A genuine note of worry entered his tone, and I was surprised to hear it. Trent and I weren’t exactly close after all, no matter how friendly we acted with each other.

“Just…” I hesitated before deciding it would be better not to tell him just yet. Fuck, I hated the way I was talking like some kinda wimp or something as if I wasn’t sure of myself and I didn’t know if there was a problem. I still hadn't decided how I was going to break the news to my family. I was still planning the proposal, and I was thinking of telling them after that.

Of course, I needed to speak to Laura before any of that could happen.

“Just… what?”

I sighed. “Nothing important. I just don’t feel like work today.”

“Is it woman trouble?” he asked, and I stopped in my tracks wondering whether to tell him the truth, but I felt the need to talk to someone and that someone just happened to be him.

“Yeah, how did you guess?”

He shrugged, leaning back in his seat and crossing his arms. “You could say I’m in a similar predicament, though I don’t know what exactly your problem is.”

He was being smug about it, which put me off telling him the whole story. I’m dating one of the maids from the hotel. We’ve been dating for weeks already, and I think I’m in love with her. But right now, she’s avoiding me, and I haven’t got a clue why. Shit, back in the day it would have been the other way around. I would have given out my number after being too drunk and tried to let the girl down gently, but there was never a gentle way to break someone’s heart, was there?

Maybe this was fucking karma?

All the times that I’d treated women badly and now there was this one woman. Someone who had plucked at my heart and now I was so fucking lost, and I felt the need to talk to someone about it. But I wasn’t about to pour my heart out to Trent. I wasn’t that fucking desperate.

“What’s your problem? You’re never interested in anything that’s bothering me and now you want to act as if you’re my best friend,” I blurted, wanting to make sure that before I told him anything else, I was doing it with a clear conscious.

He sighed, and before I could say stop words were pouring out of his mouth. “Well, I wanted to ask her to move in with me, but she’s still pretty reluctant. But then she asked for my help for a place to stay; only she wants to stay there with a friend of hers who’s ill. I’m helping them out with the rent for a month, it might be longer than that but we’ll see later. I don’t mind any of that, but my problem is she doesn’t have time to even pick up my calls, and I don’t want to bother either of them by calling…”

A frown grew on his face as he stared off into space.

“Anyway, that’s how it is. I can only be patient and wait for her to reach out to me because she’s busy with her friend right now.”

I hummed, wondering if this could be the reason Laura wasn’t responding to me. Maybe she had something else keeping her distracted?

“I’m not sure if that could be it, but she’s not picking up my calls…” I said with a hint of a whine that I didn’t like at all.

“It could be anything. Just don’t jump to any conclusions before you talk to her, or you might be wrong and end up regretting it.” He sounded like he was talking from experience.

“Fine,” I muttered. “I’ll take your advice. But…”

“I’ll assume you came here to ask for time off,” he said, cutting me off. “Usually, I wouldn’t. And you shouldn’t be asking either, but we can't have you distracted or that could just cause a disaster later. You can go, and I’ll pick up the slack for you, as long as you know you’ll be making up the work later.”

I snorted. “Why do you make it sound like homework?”

Still, I sent him a grateful smile as I left the office. I knew he wasn’t kidding, and later I’d be annoyed with myself for it, but the most important thing was to find Laura. I’d been to her apartment already, and she hadn't been there both times I stopped by, so I went back to my room to call the cleaning department and ask about her.

“Hello, Margaret?” I spoke before she could say anything. “I’d like you to look into one of the maids for me. Laura? Is she around? Could you ask her to come to my room, please?”

I was being a little bold. I didn’t even make the pretense that I was calling her up to come clean, and the other end of the call was silent for a long minute. But then I cleared my throat, and she seemed to come back to herself.

“Uh, Laura. I know her. I’m afraid she’s not in today. She hasn’t been in for some time, and I had someone else assigned to your room already.”

I frowned, suddenly feeling worried. It was one thing for her not to be in her apartment or picking up her calls. I’d told myself she was either just not there when I went—though one time I’d waited in front of her door for an hour, and another time I went earlier than she usually left, in case I was just missing her—or she was staying with a friend. But if she wasn’t coming into work, then I didn’t even have a way to check in on her to see how she was doing.

“Why hasn’t she been coming into work?” I asked.

She hesitated, but in the end, told me what I needed to know.

“The last time I spoke to her, she asked to take some time off. She didn’t give me a straight reason why just said it was for health reasons. I didn’t pry into what it was though, and I don’t have anything more to tell you on the matter.”

Health reasons… no way.

“Thank you for the information,” I said distractedly, then set the phone down.

Slowly, I walked over to the couch and sat down in a daze. There was this uncomfortable feeling in my stomach like I’d just been gutted.

Health reasons… I knew, though she hadn't said it outright, that she’d had cancer before. With the little info I knew about cancer patients, I knew it was a possibility for them to relapse. If she had gone off the grid and even taken time out of work… Had it come back?

“Don’t think that way,” I muttered to myself, trying to push back the worry and fear wanting to overtake me. “It could be something else.”

I didn’t believe that though, and as I pulled my phone from my pocket to dial my sister, my hands trembled so much it took me a few tries before I managed. I held the phone up, the sound of my heart beating so loudly in my ears making me wonder if I would even hear her.

She answered on the second ring and I felt as if my heart skipped a fucking beat. Shit, I really was being a bit too sensitive these days. I’d gone from being angry all the time to a lovesick teenager and I thought about the saying, ‘Love makes you do crazy things’ and I started to believe it was true.

“What’s up, Mason?” she chirped. “Do you want me to give you more pointers about your girlfriend?”

That had me squeezing my eyes shut. That pretty much meant she didn’t know anything about Laura, right? But I decided to ask anyway.

“You said the two of you were friends,” I mumbled, my voice sounding very far away. “Emily, have you heard from Laura? She isn’t picking up any of my calls. She’s not home and I just heard she took time off work for health reasons. If you know anything, please, I need to talk to her.”

My heart beat anxiously as I waited for her answer, even though I already guessed what it would be and that I would be disappointed.

After a long moment of silence, she answered, and I felt strangely relieved.

“I… don’t know. I’m sorry, Mason. I told you, I don’t speak to her as often as I speak to Jessi. She’s always busy, so I try not to bother her too often.”

I sighed and leaned back, tilting my head against the back of the couch as I let my eyes slide closed. Fuck. If even Emily had no idea, then how could I find her?

“If she is sick and ignoring you right now, you know you can't use that as an excuse to leave her, right?”

“I don’t need you to tell me that,” I retorted.

“I think you do,” she said. “If she’s pushing you away right now, it’s not because she doesn’t want to see you. If it’s so important that she had to take time off work, she’s probably scared right now, and she’s only doing this to protect you. So don’t abandon her, okay?”

I winced, squeezing my eyes closed and felt like something pierced my chest. I’d meant it when I said I didn’t need her to tell me. I wasn’t about to just leave Laura. The only way that would happen is if she told me to my face she wanted me gone, and she hadn't done that yet.

“I don’t plan on it,” I promised. “So don’t worry about that.”

“Keep waiting, and you’ll hear from her at some point,” she said. “This is going to be the decider of your relationship, to see just how serious you are. If she is sick, do you think you can love her, and be there for her for what she needs? This is probably the thought going through her mind, and why she’s avoiding you. Can you be her caretaker, her friend, and her lover at a time like this?”