50 Shades of Drake 3 and 4

Chapter Eighty-Eight

    "MedStar Washington Hospital Center," Destiny read off while looking at her cell phone.

    Brian punched the location into the navigation system, then sat back and waited for the location to load. He was dressed relatively casually, in a white button-down shirt and jeans. He seemed in an upbeat mood, cracking jokes and expressing sentiments that he hoped Aubrey was in good health, but he also tapped his fingers on the surface of everything his fingers came into contact with. When he wasn't doing that, he was biting his nails or shaking his leg. He seemed on edge.

    "Travel time estimation, twelve minutes," the female robotic voice announced through the car's speakers.

    Destiny glanced at Brian. "Seriously? He's only twelve minutes away from us right now?"

    He silently pulled the car out of its parking spot and drove through the dark, concrete parking garage that belonged to the hotel.

    He looks like he has a lot on his mind, she thought, turning her head to look out of the window. Then again, so do I. Because any minute now, I could be face-to-face with Aubrey again. Emotions starts to rise up within her: nervousness, excitement, love, guilt, fear. More than anything, she wanted to see that he was alive, well, and in no immediate danger. But once I see that he's alive and well, I don't know how I'm going to feel. I know for sure I'm going to feel guilty for getting involved with Brian. Will my feelings for Aubrey be lukewarm because I now have feelings for Brian, or will my feelings be just as strong as they were before Aubrey and I were separated? She chewed on her bottom lip while staring out of the window at old, familiar haunts. There were coffee shops where she used to hang out with friends after class, shopping centers that she used to frequent. It was crazy, how a place that she'd spent four years in could feel so incredibly unfamiliar. It wasn't that long ago that she used to live here; her time spent in Toronto was only just over three months. With everything that had happened, it felt like much longer. It felt like she'd been away for D.C. for nearly a year, between her training with Aubrey and the scary drama with Palmer.

    "A penny for your thoughts," Brian said.

    She brought a hand up to her forehead at the sound of his voice. "I'm just thinking about how I haven't even lived in Toronto long, but already so much has happened. And I was thinking about how this city feels so different to me. So unfamiliar. Like I'm looking at it through different eyes. I mentioned it yesterday, but today...I don't know, it's just unreal."

    "You have been through a lot," he said as he drove. "All of us have. If our suspicions are correct and Aubrey has been held hostage by Palmer for weeks, he has both you and I beat as far as comparing what we've all been through. But a lot of events were crammed into a pretty short period of time. As far as the city feeling different, now it's not just a city that you've lived in and attended school in. Now it's a city where Aubrey was likely held prisoner by an evil man. It's to be expected, that it feels different to you."

    "Yeah," she said, her eyes sliding over to the car's navigation screen. Six minute ETA to their destination. Her hands became clammy. She closed them and opened them, and ultimately wound up rolling down her window.

    Brian gave her a concerned look. "Are you okay? Are you hot? I can turn on the A/C."

    "No, I'm fine, just..." My palms are sweaty, because I feel like Aubrey is going to take one look at me and know that I slept with you. "I'm just nervous."

    "Understandable," he said, his voice quiet.

    She couldn't imagine what was going on through his head. Her concerns were centered around being judged by Aubrey, but Brian's concerns were probably centered around the fact that a woman he loved - another woman he loved - was only minutes away from running into Aubrey's arms. "Where's the music? Can you put on something? A radio station? Anything?"

    He laughed and while steering with his left, ran the fingers of his right hand over the radio controls that were embedded into the center of the steering wheel. "What are you in the mood to hear? Hip hop? Rock?"

    "Literally anything," she said, running a hand through hair she'd decided to wear curly today. Aubrey liked her hair curly, and he liked it when she wore dresses or skirts. In addition to wearing her hair curly, she'd dressed in a peach-colored sundress that complemented her golden brown skin tone. It was also a dress that was garnering a lot of side glances from Brian, but she tried her best to ignore those.

    "We have time to listen to, maybe, one song," he said, still laughing.

    Fine by her. She needed some kind of noise to distract her from the questions running through her head on an endless worry reel. What if Aubrey wasn't at the hospital? What if he'd already checked out? What if he was severely hurt? He hadn't looked hurt in the photo she'd seen, but what if he was? Where was Palmer? Was out on the loose, or was he in the same hospital? Could Palmer have hurt Aubrey in any way between when the photo was sent and this morning? What would Aubrey's reaction be when he saw her? What would her reaction be when she saw him? There was still the issue of the fact that he'd had a vasectomy, and hadn't been up front with her about it...was that something she could get over? Could she really sacrifice her desire to have children, a family, to be with him?

    Brian put on a moody jazz station.

    She eyed him. "Really?"

    He laughed. "What? It fits the mood."

    As she listened to the melancholy notes pouring from the artist's saxophone, she had to admit that Brian was one hundred percent correct.