"Ellie," Linda called out as she caught up to me. Her dark curls bounced around her round face. We were far from the dinner buffet as I had run clear across the hotel, past the elevators and was near the open staircase that led down to the lobby when she grabbed a hold of my arm. "Damn, girlfriend," she groaned as she bent over to catch her breath. "Did you pick up running on your spare time?"

My chest heaved with ragged breaths. It was quite obvious that sprinting in heels was not my forte.

"What's wrong?" she asked when I didn't respond.

The problem was that I didn't really know how to answer. There was so much that was wrong all of a sudden. I took a deep breath and tried to calm down. But Linda wasn't known for her patience.

"What the hell happened?" She demanded, in her normal rushed way. "One second we were talking about the bar and going to get some dinner, and the next you took off like a bat out of hell. Are you gonna be sick?"

Her eyes narrowed, and she dropped my arm like she thought better of it. If I was going to be sick, it probably wasn't the smartest idea to hold on to me.

"No..."

But then if I was gonna be sick, I probably would've run to the bathroom instead of the staircase overlooking the lobby. Normal people didn't want an audience for that kind of thing.

But it wasn't the time to point that out.

Linda straightened up and put her hands on her rounded hips. "Then what are you doing?"

I sighed because I had absolutely no idea what to say or how to explain it. Or even if I wanted to explain it.

"I saw someone..."

Her perfectly arched eyebrow shot up and there was clear amusement to her tone when she asked, "can you elaborate on that? There are a lot of people here."

I stopped scanning the mostly empty lobby and met her crinkled brown eyes. "This guy..."

She started to laugh. "I never pictured you as a girl that would run after a guy, but okay. What about him?"

Normally I would've taken her comment as a compliment, but I was too overwhelmed to focus on anything other than trying to find Austin. Or William. Whatever...

I pushed the hair that had fallen out of the clip I used to hold it back behind my ears and met Linda's curious brown eyes.

"His name tag said William."

"Okay," she drawled. "I assume since you're sprinting all over this hotel that it's important to you to find this, William?"

"Yes," I agreed.

"Okay." She took a deep breath and straitened to her full height, which was still a couple of inches shorter than me, especially since I wore heels. "What does he look like?"

I knew exactly what he looked like. Or at least what he looked like ten years ago. I'd explored every inch of his flawless body including his kissable lips. I knew what they tasted like and I knew how he felt in my arms, the sounds he made and how he moved...yeah... I wasn't going to tell her that. And he had looked a little different. So I went with the basics, the way I'd described any attractive man. "Tall, nice athletic body, dark hair, blue shirt. He's hot as sin, but he looks smart, too."

Linda's expression turned dreamy.

"Mm, okay. Sounds nice. How did I miss that?"

It had been nice. Very nice in fact, ten years ago. Now, not so much.

"Do you think this William has a brother?" Linda asked. Her eyes were busy scanning the room like he would miraculously appear.

He does, indeed, have a younger brother...

"Oh, oh, oh." I waved my hand in the air as I realized Linda had seen him. "You saw him when we walked into the conference. He was in the back of the room with a group of people. You commented he looked good."

"Oh, yeah?" Her eyebrows drew together like she was trying to remember, but then she had pointed out quite a few nice looking men. Some more so than others.

"He has a really nice ass."

Linda snorted out a laugh. "Damn, Ellie. You're starting to sound like me. Are you sure you just had two beers in there?"

I sighed. I wasn't in the mood for jokes. "Linda," I started, "I'm serious. I need to find him."

She cocked her head and looked curiously at me. "I hear you, but why? What's so urgent about it?"

"I recognized him."

My answer didn't seem to impress her. "From where? You prior company?" She asked.

I shook my head. "No. I think I used to know him when I was younger."

I knew I used to know him, intimately... but this was all I was willing to admit out loud. The truth hurt too much, even now, ten years later.

I couldn't confess that I thought he'd been the love of my life, and that my hopes and dreams had circled around him. That all my plans for the future had been with him. That I had thought I'd marry him one day and we'd live happily ever after. Not when I must've been completely worthless to him... You didn't just up and leave people without a goodbye if you loved them. The way he did.

Like what we had wasn't important.

Like the plans we'd made together didn't mean anything.

He'd crushed them, just like he crushed me. Like it didn't matter.

Like I didn't matter...

"Dammit!" The shock of seeing him again was subsiding and being replaced with anger. I couldn't believe I lost him, again. There was so much I wanted to know. So many questions only he could answer.

"We'll find him," Linda encouraged, suddenly back on board.

"I hope so." Because he owed me the truth. And so help me god, if I saw him again, I was getting the answers even if I had to beat them out of him. Okay, maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration. I'd never be able to beat him up. He was way to good of a shape for that. Plus, he was into karate when we were in high school, so he'd know exactly how to defend himself. And I really never hit anyone. I didn't even know how to throw a correct punch.

I stomped my foot at the frustration, the way a spoiled toddler would do.

Linda's eyes widened for a second before they narrowed again. "If he's at this conference, he'll be here for the next two days," she drawled. "You'll see him again. There are a lot of people here, but there are only so many places to go."

"Good point." That made me feel better. I had two days. I'd get a chance to finally confront him.

"And if you don't, you can always talk to the people he was with. They'd probably know where he is."

I nodded again. She was right. I had to try to be more practical about this and come up with a plan. This was my chance to get the answers I deserved, and I had waited a long freaking time for them.

I took a deep breath, which relieved some of the tension that seeing Austin again had created.

"Let's go back and eat before all the food is gone," Linda suggested. "You'll think better with a full belly."

She sounded like my grandmother. She thought a good home cooked meal was the solution to everything.

"Okay," I agreed, because I was hungry. And there really wasn't much else for me to do, anyway. Austin was nowhere to be seen.

Not that it was very unusual for him to disappear. Fucker.

I was wrapped up in my head on the way back to the buffet, which Linda clearly noticed because she stayed unusually quiet.

I needed to be smart about this. We were at a three-day work conference for BioloGen and since he'd been in the same meeting as me; it meant he worked for the same company. Unless he was a consultant. There was always a chance of that. But even if that was the case, he'd be around for the next couple of days, and maybe even attending the same classes as me.

Granted, there were many people at the conference, a few hundred something, and even more people at the hotel, but still. He was somewhere in the hotel. All I had to do was to be patient, and once I found him, I'd confront him.

And this time, I wasn't going to give up so easily.