Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 84

Chapter 79: Going To Seattle

Logan’s POV

The flight to Seattle left at six forty-five the next day.

I’d booked it at two AM, sitting at my desk with Cameron Preston’s number still on my phone screen and the echo of the line going dead still in my ears. He’d said he would talk to her. He hadn’t said when. He hadn’t said what came after. He’d given me nothing except that it wasn’t an absolute refusal on his end, which was more than what i expected but also very small for me to lead on.

I’d packed a bag anyway, not able to sit and wait any longer. I had arranged things with Mrs. Peterson, my mum showed up with her own bag and a casserole she’d made at some time around dawn, because Sherry expressed things through apology meals and snacks rather than having a heartfelt conversation. She looked at me with an expression that screamed she was sorry without saying it out loud and i had nodded my head and left before any of us would say something that would either rupture or repair what needed time to do it’s work.

Nick had been awake when I left. I doubt he had slept well the night before, but i did not point that out. He’d come downstairs in his school clothes, better than yesterday, the hives almost entirely gone, and his face was back to its normal color. He’d watched me put my bag by the door and said nothing for a moment, just watching as he took in everything.

As i turned to face him, he spoke,

“You’re going to find her?”

“I’m going to try.”

He’d crossed the kitchen and hugged me, briefly, tightly, allowing himself to be held just as tight as well. I knew without him saying it, that he was worried i would not come back, but he was trusting in me to come back and that was what i was going to do, i would come back with his mum found. Then he’d stepped back and looked at me with his eyes, just like Sedona and said, “Okay. Come back with her.”

I’d told him I would try. It was the most honest thing I could give him.

The plane lifted over Chicago in the gray early morning and I watched the city recede below the clouds and thought about what I was going to say to Cameron Preston if he called and found out that i had arrived without prior notice and i also thought about what i was going to say to Sedona if she let me near her.

I didn’t have answers to any of it. I had a bag in the overhead compartment and a photo of Sedona on my phone and a city to search. It would have to be enough for now.

Seattle was raining when I landed.

Of course it was. I had forgotten to grab an umbrella because checking the weather forecast was the last thing on my mind at this point and just decided to find a ride into the city.

I rented a car at the airport, plugged in the address of the hotel I’d booked, and then sat in the parking structure for a moment before starting the engine.

So I started with the other hospitals. It wasn’t entirely logical on my end. I knew where she was. But starting with the other hospitals gave me something to do that wasn’t waiting, and it gave me the experience of asking about her in different places that I’d practiced it enough that when the moment came -when I was standing outside St. Anthony’s and it was time-I would know what to say and how to say it.

That’s what I told myself. It was partly true.

Seattle General was first.

I arrived at eight-thirty in the morning, when the hospital was still resuming for the day, the night shifts were clocking out while the morning shifts were clocking in for the day. I waited in line at the information desk behind a woman with a crying toddler and an elderly man who needed directions to the cardiac wing, and when I reached the front I asked the clerk, as clearly and directly as I could, whether they had a patient named Sedona Hayes or Sedona Preston.

The clerk was young, efficient, and had clearly done this hundreds of times.

“I’m sorry, sir. Patient privacy regulations prevent us from confirming or denying whether any individual is a patient at this facility.”

“She’s my wife,” I said. “I’m trying to find her. I have the certificates to prove it. She’s ill and she-”