“Of course you trust him. If you didn’t, you would’ve fired him on the spot.”
He scrubbed his hands over his face. “It was personal, Your Highness. There’s a slight difference. I can trust him as a guard, but I’m not sure as a…friend.”
“I call bullshit again.” Christian leaned forward, readjusting the puppy. “If you can’t trust him as a friend, you can’t trust him as a guard. If you trust him as a guard, you trust him to watch your back. What else is going on?”
Images of their time together flitted through his head, but he shoved them aside. “There is too much going on. I didn’t need this on top of it.”
“Life will only ever throw at you what you can manage. I can’t remember who said something along those lines, but it’s always stuck with me. It might not feel that way—that you can manage—but you’ll always have help if you ask.”
Did he want to admit that he had no idea what he was doing or where he was going in life? Did he want to explain how messed up his life actually was? How, on his thirteenth birthday, he’d watched his father push his mother down the stairs and kill her because of a disagreement over how Brett would live his life? How, on the day after his fourteenth birthday, he snuck out of the house and left after finally telling his father he was gay and receiving a beating for it. How he had nothing but the clothes on his back when he walked the streets, trying to find shelter. He didn’t want to relive it, but it seemed he might have to. But it wouldn’t be to Christian—it would be to Felix.
Once he was back.
“I know I will. I think I’m just getting a little fed up with there always beingsomething. Why can’t we all have a breather for a bit?” He leaned back, his chair creaking.
Christian chuckled. “Because then life would be boring.”
“I’d take a bit of boring right now. Especially as it would allow me ten minutes to fix the fucking creak on this chair!”
Brett’s phone chimed, and he snorted. “See what I mean. No rest for the wicked.”
Christian rose, snuggling Onyx to his chest again. “I’ll leave you to it, but I’m here if you need me, Brett. Okay?”
“Thanks.”
The prince left the room, and Brett inhaled before unlocking his phone to check the message.
JASON: Felix is supposed to be coming over for a coffee. Can you send him over? I have to leave in twenty minutes, and he’s not replying to my messages, asshat that he is. Thanks.
Brett frowned and checked his watch. After their argument, he’d left the room at around nine-thirty. It was now nearly ten-thirty. He sent out a guard-wide message asking if anyone had seen Felix. Several replied to say they’d seen him leave Windsor at nine-forty, but no one had seen him since.
Grabbing his laptop, he set a trace up for Felix’s phone. Normally, he wouldn’t have gone straight to that, but when a friend said they couldn’t get hold of him, then there was more of a chance of it being something serious. Especially with everything that was hanging around them.
Nothing.
The last time it pinged a tower was at nine-forty-five, which had been on the road outside of Book Drunk. Then it had disappeared. That in itself was a red flag that something was wrong. Felix would never make his phone invisible voluntarily. Not without letting people know first, anyway.
Brett paused. Would he have done it because he wanted to hide from him? He couldn’t rule it out completely, but it didn’t ring true. It was not the type of thing Felix would’ve done. He rose and grabbed his phone, striding through the corridors towards the exit. He left Windsor on the same route Felix would’ve taken and crossed over the road to Book Drunk. He looked up and down the street, trying to see anything that could explain why Felix’s phone had just stopped working. There was nothing. He went inside and found Jason.
“Hey, where is he? Did he send you in his stead?”
“I can’t find him.”
Jason frowned. “What do you mean?”
“He left over an hour ago to meet you, but between crossing the road and here, he’s disappeared. I’m going to head to his home to see if he went back.”
“Why would he do that?”
Brett stared at the ground for a second. “Because we had a disagreement.”
“You argued?!”
He huffed. “It was personal, Jason, okay? Nothing to do with work.” Kind of. “Anyway, let me know if he gets in contact with you, please.”
“Will do.” Jason bit his lip. “Do you think he’s in trouble?”
“If he’s not, he will be when I find him.”