Once again, the story mentioned in this chapter is something of my invention, and any similarities to any other work is pure coincidence.

Thank you all so much for the reviews, the follows, and the favorites. It really brightens my day when I get an email of one of the three.

As usual, this chapter has not been proof read, so if you spot any cringe-worthy grammatical mistakes, please let me know so that I might fix it.

May 12, 2014 edit: Thanks to Meagan416 for pointing out a tiny little spell-check error on my part!

"Ow!" Sarah jumped a little when the pin poked into her side.

"So sorry, milady!" the young goblin who had accidentally stabbed Sarah exclaimed.

"Why are we doing this again? I thought that Jareth could just… poof up clothes whenever he felt like it."

"Milady, those clothes already existed. You cannot create something out from nothing."

"Jareth… already had dresses for me?"

"Yes, milady," the goblin seamstress agreed. "He just put them on you with his magic, that's all." The goblin went back to work, and the second seamstress came into the room with even more fabric.

"Not more dresses," Sarah complained loudly.

"His Majesty insisted, milady," the second goblin said as she dropped the fabric onto the bed. Sarah heaved a sigh and looked over to the stained glass window. It had been depicting a rainy garden ever since she'd woken up that morning. It didn't seem overly angry— just depressed. Sarah wondered if she might have gone too far in picking the flowers for Jareth.

But, he has to know how I feel, Sarah reminded herself again. It's not fair for him to think that he's actually got some sort of a chance with me, when he's quite honestly… Sarah trailed off, even in her own thoughts. She didn't even want to even think about thinking about that thought.

"Ow!" She jumped again as the seamstress accidentally poked her with a pin again.

After another hour of torture by the means of the seamstresses, Sarah wandered to the library to see about finishing the trashy novel that she'd picked up. In the mornings, after breakfast, Jareth went off and did whatever needed to be done in order to keep his Kingdom running smoothly. But then, after lunch, they'd go outside, sit under the large shade tree, and Sarah read to him.

They'd finished the book yesterday, and, despite herself, Sarah was actually sort of looking forward to what Jareth might suggest to read next.

After Jareth had given her the flowers that all but declared his love for her the night before, she hadn't seen him. He normally came to wake her up for breakfast, but this morning, it had been a goblin. And he hadn't been down at breakfast, either.

As the afternoon wore on, and Jareth didn't appear to escort her to lunch, Sarah began to worry. What if he was really depressed about her rejection? She didn't think that the Goblin King would harm himself, because he always seemed to put his kingdom before himself.

Sarah eventually went down to lunch on her own, and quickly ate a sandwich before she went back to the library. But she found it exceptionally difficult to focus on the intense romance of the characters in the novel.

With the book in hand, Sarah left the library and then stopped the first goblin that she came across. "Excuse me, do you know where Jareth is?"

"His Majesty has been very busy all night and all day today," the goblin said with a nod of his head. "To not be disturbed unless its a dire emergency. Like entire kitchen on fire." With another nod of his head, the goblin scampered off.

Sarah heaved a deep sigh and turned to the first door closest to her— the castle moved the hallway around her so that the door opened up to her bedroom. Sarah walked over to the window and hopped up onto the narrow ledge— there was just enough space for her to sit comfortably if she pressed up against the glass.

With her face against the dark patterned glass, it was much easier to tell what the weather was like outside, although it was starkly contrasted with the sunny day outside. She absently rubbed her thumb along the corner of the pages of the book several times before she opened it to where she'd last left off. But then she flipped back several pages and started to read from a part of the book that she actually remembered.

After a while, when the natural light from the room started to become dim, but the candles had yet to spring to life, Sarah looked out the window to gage how late that it was, and was a little startled to see that the rainy stained glass picture had been replaced by a calm, starry night.

Sarah thought that the stained glass window reflected more upon Jareth's mood than some desire, because if it were up to Sarah what the window showed, it would show her family, or maybe a unicorn or a dragon. When Jareth had filled her room with purple hyacinths, even the window had been filled with a glass representation of the flower. But Sarah had never seen this image before.

She hopped down from the windowsill, put the lavender rose back in to mark her place, and carefully set the book down on her night stand before she walked to the door. She paused for a moment, her hand inches from the doorknob, before she touched the cool, metal surface and opened the door.

The room beyond was not a room in the castle that Sarah had seen before. It was decorated in with dark wood and red and white fabric, like the decor in the rest of the castle, but it was probably at least twice as big as her room was. Sarah's first impression was that it looked like the library, only in miniature, but there was a roaring fire in a massive fireplace, and a writing desk that was piled with papers against one wall.

As Sarah looked around the room, her eyes eventually landed on the fluffy, spikey hair of the Goblin King, who was fast asleep at his desk, and was using a stack of correspondence as a pillow. Sarah gave a sound that was half sigh, half chuckle, and walked over to the desk.

"Jareth," she said softly, her fingers hovering over his shoulder. "Jareth," she said again, a bit louder, and gently touched his shoulder.

"I thought that I specifically threatened to bog anybody…" Jareth started as he jerked awake. Sarah took a cautious step back, and clutched her hand to her chest, as if she'd been burned. "Sarah," Jareth said carefully.

"Sorry. You were asleep," she said. Jareth cleared his throat and started to reorganize the papers that he'd been sleeping on.

"How did you get in here?"

"I was worried about you," Sarah said. "I opened my bedroom door and stepped right in here."

"Of course you did," Jareth said sourly.

"If you want, I'll leave," she said. She motioned over her shoulder towards the door, and took a careful step backwards.

"No, you don't have to go," Jareth insisted. Sarah stilled again, and her hands went limp at her sides. "What time is it?" Before Sarah could answer, a clock appeared before Jareth before it vanished just as quickly as it had appeared. "Have you eaten yet?" Sarah shook her head. Jareth stood and came around his desk. "I worked through lunch, and I apologize for that."

"It looks like you've got a lot of work, and I think that it's more important that you keep your kingdom in good order," Sarah said as they left the room and headed downstairs to the formal dining room. Sarah was a little surprised that Jareth didn't put her into a dress, nor did he change his own clothes. "What? No wardrobe changes?" Sarah asked as they sat down at the table.

"I'm afraid that my exhaustion is due to over-working my magic, precious," Jareth explained.

"Is everything alright?" Sarah asked with a frown.

"The situation was taken care of, so you don't need to worry about it," Jareth said evenly. Sarah tried for several minutes to get the information about what had happened to cause Jareth to use that much magic to make him so completely exhausted, but gave up after several minutes of non-verbal sounds from the Goblin King.

After they had eaten their meal, Jareth lead Sarah back to the library. She had had little reason to go into the library after dark, and found that the soft, flickering lights of the candles made for an exceptionally soothing, almost romantic atmosphere. "Sit down, and I'll find something for us to read. That is, of course, assuming that you feel as if we have sufficiently mourned the ending of 'The Cave Behind the Waterfall'?"

"I told you that we would be finished mourning it by lunch today," Sarah said with a roll of her eyes. But she moved past Jareth and took a seat on one of the sofas by the fire place. After a moment, Jareth pulled a book off the shelf and joined Sarah on the sofa. "'The Mud Children'," Sarah read off the front cover before she opened the book and flipped to the first page.

Her gentle voice filled the room, the only other sound was the occasional pop and hiss of the fire that roared in the fireplace. After the first couple of pages, Jareth lay his head down on Sarah's lap, and she absently ran her fingers through his soft hair.

"'…and the heavy rains that continued to wash away our village, year after year. But still, we would continue-'"

"Sarah, can I ask you a question?" Jareth interrupted her.

"Um, I guess so, yeah."

"Your parents… why do they not live in the same house as before?" Jareth asked. Sarah looked down at the Goblin King with a rather surprised look on her face.

"Well, we moved," Sarah said simply.

"The house where your family currently lives is not of the same social economical standards as your previous house was. What happened?"

"Dad… um… My dad lost his job," Sarah said hesitantly.

"Your father must have made a lot of money to affect your entire family that much."

"Yeah. He was a lawyer. Worked a lot of high-profile cases."

"And it was one of these cases that caused him to lose his job?"

"Yeah. This guy had viciously murdered his wife, their two children, and then the family that lived next door to him after the neighbors saw him burying his family in the back yard. My dad didn't want to do the case, because any idiot with eyes could see that the guy was guilty, even though he kept pleading that he'd been set up. But my father did the case, went through the trial. Low and behold, the jury found the guy guilty. The guy was sentenced to death, but before he could fry… Oh, um… we put people to death by electrocution."

"Yes, I'm aware. But continue."

"Before he could fry, the guy said that my dad intentionally threw his case because he'd accepted a very large bribe."

"And did he? Accept a bribe, I mean?"

"No, of course not!" Sarah snapped. "Dad would never do something like that! But nobody believed anything that my dad had to say. But, the only reason why the guy said it in the first place was because he wanted to extend his death sentence… maybe get it overturned if enough people thought that something fishy had been going on during the trial. And it seemed silly that my dad would be convicted based soley upon the word of a man who had killed his family, and his neighbors, because my father was such a good lawyer. But the guy who owned the legal firm where my dad worked said that he couldn't have somebody who was on trial like that working for him, so he fired my dad. We thought that we'd be okay, because we had a lot of money saved up, but that ran out a lot faster than we'd anticipated, and we had to sell off a lot of our things, and then we eventually had to sell the house. I dropped out of school and moved back in with them to work, and to help Irene out with Toby."

Sarah paused and looked down at Jareth. "The night that my dad accidentally stumbled into your castle, he was coming back from talking with his former boss." Sarah let out a sarcastic laugh. "As it turns out, the people who were investigating the man's claims that my father took an extensive bribe were having a lot of trouble coming up with enough evidence to support his claims. But my dad's former boss told my dad that he still couldn't hire my dad back, because there wasn't evidence that my dad hadn't taken a bribe, either."

"It must have been exceptionally difficult for you to have adjust to such an abrupt change like that," Jareth said.

"I was the one who ended up working two jobs so that we could continue to live in a house. My step-mom, Irene, got a job, too, but she's never really been trained to do much of anything, and since I dropped out from school before I could finish, neither of us have really great jobs. My dad would sometimes do odd jobs for some of our elderly neighbors— things that they can't do as easily anymore."

"And yet, you gave up helping your family in order to save your father."

"Toby is five now," Sarah whispered. She stared absently into the fireplace. "It wouldn't be right for me to just let my father leave and let Toby grow up without a father. They will eventually realize that there was no bribe, and that my father is completely innocent, and he'll get his job back. And everything will go back to the way it was before. They don't need me there… I was just a burden on the family, because I had a lot of debt from school. And that was probably causing a lot of undue strain on all of us as well."

They were both silent for a long while. The fire crackled, and they heard a goblin giggling in the distance. Sarah absently ran her fingers through Jareth's hair. "Sarah, I wanted to apologize for the flowers I gave you yesterday. It probably wasn't the most intelligent message for me to give you. I've been watching you for a long time now… before you wished your brother away."

"I know," Sarah whispered. Her fingers stilled in his hair. "And I'm sorry, but I still can't see you as anything but the evil monster who kidnapped my baby brother, sent the cleaners after me, almost dropped me into the Bog of Eternal Stench, and drugged me."

"You know that both you and your brother were never in any real danger, right?"

"Well, I know it now!" Sarah hissed. "But it's still hard for me to change my opinion of what happened, no matter how nice you are to me. Not to mention the fact that you tricked my father here, in order to get at me." She picked up the book again with slightly shaking hands, flipped through the pages until she found where she'd left off, and continued to read. "'But still, we would continue to rebuild every time our village was destroyed. Even though it would make much more sense for us to move away, we remained.'"

"Today, instead of going out to read, I think that our time would be better spent if I taught you how to dance," Jareth said after they'd finished their lunch. "My mother will expect anybody that I bring to one of her balls to know at least that."

"No social etiquette?" Sarah asked in a teasing way.

"You are more well-behaved than most of my subjects, so we'll chalk that up as a win and focus on the dance." The table melted away, and they were left standing in the surprisingly large and airy breakfast room. Jareth walked up to Sarah, put one hand on her waist, grabbed her other hand, and he slowly started to teach her the basic foot movements. "Don't try to lead me, Sarah; I'm leading you."

"This seemed much easier when you drugged me," Sarah muttered under her breath.

"That wasn't real; just a dream that we both shared," Jareth said with a slight laugh. Sarah blushed and looked down, but Jareth cupped her chin with his hand and lifted her head. "Do not look at the ground, as it will only lead to toes being stepped on. The ground will always be there."

"Isn't there supposed to be music?" Sarah asked. Jareth released his hold on Sarah's face and gave a lazy wave of his hand; slow waltz music started to play, seemingly from nowhere.

They kept going for several minutes in silence. "Yes, great," Jareth said, and the music picked up the pace.

"What sort of music will there be at your mother's ball?" Sarah asked.

"Knowing my mother's taste in music, probably not much different than this," Jareth said.

"Will I have to dance with anybody else?"

"Not unless you don't want to. Honestly, Sarah, it's not like anybody is going to force you to dance."

"You did," Sarah said with a scowl.

"You do not enjoy dancing with me, precious?" Jareth asked, his voice low. Sarah blushed and lowered her eyes to avoid looking into his mismatched eyes. Jareth abruptly released Sarah and took a step back from her. "I think that that is more than enough for one day. I have something to attend to, but hopefully, it will not take too long, so please, do not get too involved in something." Sarah gave him a look that was a little difficult for him to read. Was it disappointment? Or maybe frustration?

Jareth was a little hesitant to leave her when she was giving him that undecipherable look. But, he did teleport himself from the room, and then paced around his office for a few minutes. Maybe his plan was starting to work, after all. But, he knew that it was going to take a lot more than some flowers, books, and waltzing in order to win her over.

But, her main issue seemed to be her lack of trust in him. She'd told him so last night; she still saw him as the villain in her story, rather than the hero. And he certainly had not bought himself any favors in the way that he'd tricked her back into his castle. Jareth wondered if he should let her go home. Although it had nearly killed him the first time he had returned her home, nearly five years ago, he knew that she would be exceptionally grateful to return home.

And maybe, if he told her that she could come back, she would.

But, not right now. Not when he had his mother's ball to worry about.

Jareth sat down heavily in an armchair, and conjured a crystal to watch what Sarah was doing. She was sitting on the windowsill in her bedroom, her forehead pressed up against the stained glass. The window reflected his current mood— uncertain— by displaying the sun peaking out from behind dark clouds after a thundery storm. Jareth sometimes wished that his castle wasn't so in-tune with his moods, because Sarah would probably pick up on it eventually… if she hadn't already.

He sat and watched Sarah for several minutes— although she had a book (Jareth recognized it as another trashy novel), she held it loosely in her hands. She stared blankly out the window, and it made Jareth wonder what she was thinking about so intently. He knew several spells that would delve into her mind, but on the list of things that would not gain Sarah's trust, invading her mind with a spell seemed to rank pretty high.

He also knew that he didn't really have anything urgent to attend to at the moment. He could go to her and take her out side to the tree, and she would read to him. She would probably even let him lay his head on her lap like she had last night.

But he needed some distance from her at the moment. Even though he wanted nothing more than to go to her, he needed to try and keep his distance until she was more comfortable with him.

It hadn't been overly cloudy at all for most of the day, but the clouds seemed like they were gathering now for the intense purpose of raining on them during their daily reading.

If Sarah had noticed the drastic change in the weather, she didn't let it interrupt her reading. "'"But the only thing that we've got left now is just rubble," David said with a frown as he looked out over the ruins of what had once been our town. The place where-'" Sarah jumped as a massive crack of thunder ripped through the air. "Jeez, that scared me!"

Jareth looked up at Sarah from where he lay next to her. He gently pressed his fingers into her hip, and she jumped again at the contact. Jareth was certain that she would ask him to stop touching her, but she only pressed her lips into a thin line, and her eyes went back to the book.

There was another loud crack of thunder, before the skies opened up. Sarah let out a shriek of protest as the icy water dumped over her. Jareth transported both of them into the castle. His office was the first place that popped into his head, and a second later, they were sitting in front of the fire, dripping wet. Sarah's shriek quickly turned into laughter, and she tossed the book, which was dry thanks to a protection spell, onto the chair before she stood up. Jareth stood as well.

"That was exceptionally unexpected," Sarah said with a laugh as she wrung the water out from her t-shirt.

"If you'd been watching the sky, I don't think that it was really at all unexpected," Jareth said coolly. With a snap of his fingers, their drenched clothes were replaced with dry ones.

"Well, maybe not so much the rain," Sarah said as she lifted up the excessively long sleeve of the navy dress Jareth had put her in. "But more like how quickly that it came on. I think that I'm more used to a couple of drops and then it slowly starts to rain harder and harder." She picked up the book off the chair. "Well, at least the book's okay."

"It would be foolish to run a kingdom of goblins and not have some intensive protection spells on the books," Jareth said with a smirk.

"Right," Sarah said slowly. Although most of the ones that worked directly for Jareth were normally okay, she'd seen the trails of destruction that some of them tended to leave behind.

"Would you care to continue reading now?" Jareth asked, and he gestured towards the sofa, which had replaced the two chairs in front of the fire.

"I don't know how people can stand to wear corsets," Sarah complained as she thumbed through the book to find where she'd left off. "I can barely breathe."

"I didn't put it on tightly at all," Jareth said. Sarah blushed and focused her attention on the book in her hands; she was silent for several minutes.

"It's too restricting, that's all," she finally whispered. With another snap of his fingers, Sarah was dressed in the lose t-shirt and shorts that she slept in.

"There are many appealing qualities of the dresses that the women here wear, but there are also many appealing qualities of the clothes that you wear, precious," Jareth said with a smirk. His eyes lazily roamed down Sarah's bare legs before he looked up again and met Sarah's scowling gaze.

"I think we're done here," Sarah said. She spun on her heel and marched out from the room. The laugh that followed her out from the room made her blood boil. How dare he, she fumed as she threw open the door to her room. She barely even noticed the orchids in the vase on her night stand and the sunny garden in the stained glass as she stormed to the wardrobe and started to dig through her clothes until she came up with a pair of sweatpants.

After she took a long, warm bath that took the chill that had crept into Sarah's bones after the rain storm, Sarah pulled on the sweatpants and her baggy t-shirt, and pulled out the "Language of Flowers" book to figure out what Jareth was trying to tell her now.

"Love and beauty," the entry read. Sarah's scowl only deepened.

"Just because you're pretty, too, doesn't stop you from being a massive JERK!" Sarah yelled at nothing in the hopes that the Goblin King was listening. She stormed around the room for a few minutes before she flopped face-first onto her bed; she grabbed one of the pillows and screamed into it while kicking at the mattress with her bare feet.

Several hours later, Sarah awoke in small increments, and stared at the window, which was barely lit from some unseen light from outside— the moon, maybe. Much like the day before, when she'd found Jareth asleep at his desk, the window was another depiction of nighttime, only now, it was a beautiful, moon-lit garden.

After several minutes, she rolled onto her other side, closed her eyes, and tried to get back to sleep.

Sarah rolled onto her back, and then rolled onto her right side again.

No good. She was completely wide awake.

She absently kicked the blankets off, slipped out of bed, and padded lightly over to the door. She paused for a moment, bit her lip, and thought that she wanted to go anywhere but to Jareth at the moment. She opened the door and was a little surprised to see the hallway; she'd gotten a little used to her room just taking her directly to where ever she wanted to go. Sarah walked across the hall and gently opened the door directly across from her room.

The room beyond was a small, dorm-style room, with four narrow beds pushed together, and a wash basin under a stained glass window that echoed the one in Sarah's own room. Four goblins lay in bed, but they jerked awake when Sarah opened the door.

"Milady?" the goblin in the bed closest to the door asked. Sarah realized that it was Muzga, the goblin who helped her take off her corsets after dinner.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to disturb you," Sarah whispered.

"Milady, is everything alright?" one of the other goblins asked.

"Yes. No. I don't know. Maybe. I couldn't sleep, that's all."

"Why don't you come in for a spell," one of the goblins said. Muzga patted the foot of her bed in an inviting manor; Sarah stepped into the room and perched on the edge of the goblin's bed.

"These are my roommates, Gorga, Myla, and Abis," Muzga introduced them.

"It's very nice to meet you," Sarah said with a small smile.

"As you, milady," the one named Myla said as she slipped out of bed. "I'll just pop down to the kitchen real quick to get some tea." She left the room.

"So, what troubles your mind, milady," Muzga asked Sarah.

"You mean aside from the fact that Jareth tricked me into coming here and continues to emotionally hold my father hostage in order to ensure my continued cooperation?" Sarah asked bitterly.

"I think that it's difficult for you to see past the things that His Majesty did to you five years ago," Abis said. She looked like the oldest out of the goblins present. "And you weren't there to witness what happened after you left."

"What do you mean?" Sarah asked.

"His Majesty completely fell apart," Abis said with a wistful sigh. "It was a difficult time for everybody in the kingdom. His Majesty was really depressed."

As if it was yesterday, Jareth's parting words to Sarah before she whispered that fateful phrase ran through her mind. "Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave." At the time, Sarah had believed that it was just some ploy to get her to give up Toby. But now… now after messages told through gloxinias, Sarah wasn't so sure.

"Well, maybe he wouldn't have been so depressed if he hadn't tried to kidnap my little brother," Sarah snapped. She frowned at the sharp look that the three goblins gave her. "Well, maybe he shouldn't have made it look like he was going to kidnap Toby," she said. "And maybe I might like him a little bit better if he didn't trick me into coming here and continue to emotionally blackmail me about it."

"I don't think that His Majesty necessarily sees it the way that you do," Gorga said softly. "He's Fae, and tricks are second nature to them." Sarah pressed her lips together but didn't say anything.

"Gorga's right," Muzga said. "But he should have thought about that before he went ahead with his plan to bring you back here."

"Wait, what do you mean, 'his plan'?" Sarah asked sharply.

"Well, he said that it was a bit of an accident that your father ended up here, but he rolled with it," Abis said.

"Arg! I knew it! That… that jerk!" Sarah hissed. She jumped to her feet and probably would have stormed from the room had Myla not come back into the room with a full tea tray. "But, if my father hadn't come here, then he probably would have found some other way to trick me into staying." She accepted the cup of tea from Myla, and wrapped her hands around the mug.

"His Majesty isn't all that bad," Abis said. "He really cares for you, and wants you to be happy."

"You'd think that he'd find some better way to please me rather than emotional blackmail and balls."

"Oh, I don't know about this ball," Myla said with a quiet laugh.

"What do you mean?" Muzga asked the other goblin sharply.

"I can't say for certain, because His Majesty's mother does not come here anymore, but if I had to bet, I'd say that His Majesty's mother is in cohorts with His Majesty with this entire thing," Myla said with a sly look.

"I don't… I don't understand," Sarah whispered.

"Myla's saying that she thinks that His Majesty's mother is in on His Majesty's plot to woo you," Abis said with a sigh and a roll of her eyes.

"Well, I don't know why Jareth couldn't just bring me flowers and chocolates and ask me to see a movie," Sarah grumbled under her breath. "All of this deception only makes me trust him less."

"What do you mean, milady? You wouldn't mind it if His Majesty formally asked to court you?" Gorga asked. Sarah was silent for a long time, and just stared absently into her tea.

"No, I guess not," Sarah said softly. "He's not completely unbearable when he's not trying to trick me." But then she thought of how he'd looked at her legs a few hours ago, and felt her blood start to boil again. "But, arg! He's just so completely frustrating sometimes! I just want to strangle him!"

"Hey, dude, I almost don't want to bring this up since you've been oddly silent about it this past week, but I have to know: what happened with the police report?"

Greg looked over to his roommate with confusion. "Police report?"

"Yeah. About Sarah."

"Why would I file a report with Sarah? It is in my opinion that I cannot get into a girl's pants if I file a report on her."

"Dude, are you serious?" Dustin said. Greg just looked at Dustin blankly for several minutes. "She's been missing for like… two weeks now." A look of complete understanding mixed with horror slowly replaced Greg's confused look.

"Oh my god. How in the world could I have forgotten about Sarah?!" he exclaimed as he jumped to his feet. He ran over to the window and peeked out at the house across the street. The house was completely dark and shut up, but only one of the cars was missing from the drive way. "How could you let me forget about Sarah?" Greg rounded on his roommate.

"I'm sorry, dude! I thought that it was more than a little creepy how you were obsessing over her when she clearly wanted nothing to do with you. I thought that maybe one of the reasons why she'd moved away was because of how overly attached you were to her!"

"Come on, dude, you can't be serious," Greg said as he puffed his chest up. "Girls dig this. And besides, there's no way that Sarah actually moved away. Something obviously happened to her. Something bad."

"But, why did you forget about her?"

"I…" Greg visibly deflated. "I guess that there was a lot on my mind. And it… I don't know. Last week, I was really worried about her, and then… for some reason, it just felt silly to keep asking questions and to think about her like that." He jumped over the couch, grabbed his car keys, and headed for the door. "I've got to go to the police station and see how the search is going for her!" The front door slammed a second later.

Dustin hung his head and sighed deeply. "That poor girl is probably in Manhattan right now, stress-free about never having to be bothered by Greg, and I opened my big mouth and ruined her peace."