Basically, I was the filling in a family sandwich.
Buzzzz, buzzzzz, buzzzzzz.
Drew groaned and brought his hand up to his face, trying to cover his ear. Dude was the worst morning person ever.
Sliding from under him, I snagged the phone and moved to silence the alarm. Except… my alarm wasn’t going off. It wasn’t supposed to go off for another forty minutes.
The buzzing was from a missed text, a couple Google alerts, and a missed call.
What the hell is going on?
Yawning, I swiped the sleep out of my eyes so I could read the screen. Before I could even pull up the notifications, the screen lit up in my hand.
Gamble’s name flashed, and I sat up. Andi made a sound, so I quickly accepted the call to silence the ring.
Before answering, I got out of bed, nearly tripping over Ketchup’s dog bed and a random shoe.
Cursing, I made sure Andi was covered and then headed for the hall.
“Ron?” I whispered the second I cleared the door. I’d been working with Gamble so long at the NRR that somewhere along the way, I stopped referring to him by his last name. “Is everything okay?”
“You’re asking me?” he said, sounding more awake than Drew would ever be.
“Uh, yeah? You’re the one calling before eight a.m.,” I said, going downstairs. Goose bumps prickled my skin upon meeting the cold morning air, and I stopped to gaze out a window like I expected to see snow or something.
There was no snow, but the sky was overcast and gray. The leaves on the trees looked more golden than the day before, and a thick covering of fog made everything outside appear to be floating.
On my way to the kitchen, I flipped on the fireplace to help chase the early morning chill from the house and snagged a zip-up hoodie off the back of the sofa.
“What the hell is this, Mask?” Gamble demanded, which, by the way, was not an explanation.
“I’m afraid I don’t follow,” I replied, pushing one arm into the dark-colored sleeve.
“Well, that makes two of us then because I would have thought that if Drew was going to retire, he’d have the decency to call me before he made an announcement!”
My bare feet made a high-pitched squeaking sound when I halted. “What?”
“Look at your phone, Sleeping Beauty.”
I pulled down the device and swiped to read my notifications. The first one that caught my eye was an alert for an article that went live less than an hour ago.
The end of the road for an icon?
Confused, I swiped to another.
Drew Mask retirement shocker!
“What the fuck?” I spat.
Is Drew Mask putting the brakes on his career?
Pushing the phone to my ear, I said, “Listen, Gamble, I have no idea how the press got wind of this. He literally just talked about it with me last night.”
“So it’s true?”
“We’ve talked about it.” I hedged.
“You already said that.”
