“Evie? Evie, where are you?”
Footsteps hurried into the kitchen.
“Evie? What the fuck!”
The smoke alarm went off. There was cursing, and slamming, and clattering. Fresh air rushed into the room and cooled the tears dripping down her cheeks.
She felt like she was floating.
Then there were words, clipped, panicked. A one-sided conversation.
Finally, she found herself enclosed in warm, secure arms.
Gabe.
Now there were other voices too. More people.
“I’ll kill that son of a bitch.” Shepherd’s lethal tones filtered through the fog protecting her mind.
“Evie, sweetheart, you’re in shock. Drink some of this sweet tea.” Her mother.
Her cold, shaking fingers were wrapped around a warm mug. “Come on, darling. This will make you feel better.”
Hands wrapped around hers, stopping her from spilling the hot drink, pressing it to her lips. The heat, the sweetness on her tongue, the sugar rush, brought Evie back to herself partially. She wished it didn’t because with it came the agony.
There was a haunting, howling sound, like an animal in pain; it was only when strong arms banded around her, Evie realized it was her.
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
GABE
When Gabe had come over for his usual Monday lunch, he’d known there was something wrong as soon as he’d opened the door, and it wasn’t because of the black smoke and the blaring alarm.
It was the silence underneath. The unnatural stillness that had made his chest constrict even before he'd registered the acrid smell of burned pastries or seen the haze filling the kitchen.
Evie was always moving, always humming, always creating something. The absence of that energy had been his first warning sign.
He'd found her on the floor, broken in a way he'd never seen before. Not even when Adrian had first left her, not even during those early days when she'd smiled too brightly and worked herself to exhaustion to avoid feeling anything at all. This was different. This was devastation in its purest form.
The letter had been lying beside her, crisp and official and utterly obscene.
Gabe had read it once, standing in that smoke-filled kitchen, and something cold and furious had crystallized in his chest. The kind of anger that didn't burn hot but instead settled into his bones like permafrost, immovable and absolute.
He'd made the calls. Shepherd and Asher first, then Evie's parents, his fingers steady even as his mind raced through scenarios and contingencies. The businessman in him had kicked in automatically, cataloguing resources, calculating responses, building strategies. But underneath that practiced calm, something else churned. Something that felt dangerously close to violence.
And fear.
Now, hours later, Gabe sat in one of the armchairs in Evie's living room while Shepherd paced like a caged predator and Evie's mother fussed over everyone. He guessed that was her way of coping.
Posy had kept Ollie after school, happy to watch over him and keep the boy away from this. To preserve his innocence just a little longer.
Gabe's jaw ached. He'd been clenching it for hours, ever since he'd scanned those poisonous words.
Morally questionable cohabitation. As if what they had - what they'd built together - could be reduced to something sordid by a man who'd abandoned his family the moment a younger woman had caught his eye.
Adrian Montgomery. The name tasted like ash in Gabe's mouth.
