“Yeah, and I’m the ‘nice twin.’” She scoffs.
I level a glare at her, and she mock shudders. “Oh, so scared. Seriously, though. What happened? You started crying on Thanksgiving when everyone else went to bed and haven’t said much about it. This isn’t like you, Cora.”
Sighing, I tell her the condensed version of their conversation. Her expression is thunderous. “Those motherfuckers,” she seethes. “No one asked Atlas to be a daddy first of all. Second, fuck those fuckers.” Her words elicit what feels like the first genuine smile I’ve had since I left Emma’s.
“It just hurts, Mar. I thought we had something special. We just seemed to fit together. Me, him, and Noah. He acted like he wanted to be around us all the time, so we just kinda went with it,” I explain.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Cora. He’s a dick; all of them are.” Shaking her head, she pulls me closer. “What did he say when you confronted him? Ya know what, it doesn’t matter. They’re all banned from the shop when it re-opens. For life.”
“I didn’t stick around,” I admit. “It’s probably cowardly, but ithurt hearing them talk about us like that. Also, don’t do that; it’s not worth it.”
“Nope. Banned. For. Life.” She punctuates every word.
Shaking my head, I know there’s no deterring her once she’s set. “I’ll have to go home tomorrow. Noah has school on Monday, but I’ll stop by the hardware store on the way home. He kind of has a key to my place.”
“Why does he have a key?”
“Never gave it back.” I shrug, ignoring her facial expression. “He’s had it since I got sick.”
“Um, Cora, that’s a bit weird.”
“I know, but it’s fine. New locks tomorrow.”
“Cora!” Noah hollers my name. Heading into the room, I scope out the mess they’ve made together.
“What’s up?”
“Can we take these to Atlas?” he asks, pointing to a few cinnamon rolls sitting in a container.
“Atlas doesn’t deserve your cinnamon rolls, kiddo,” Mara jokes. “Besides, I thought I was your favorite, so I’m claiming these.” She snatches the container and walks away, picking one up and taking a bite as she exits the kitchen. “Thanks, buddy!” she hollers over her shoulder, ignoring Noah’s yell of protest.Thank God for Mara.
Chapter Forty-Five
Atlas
“What do you mean,she quit?” I shout at Rhett.
“Don’t fucking yell at me. She fucking quit. What’d you think would happen?”
Telling myself not to hit him, I walk toward the office. Her personnel file is somewhere in there. I’m sure there’s a phone number or something that I can use. She probably has one of the twins as her emergency contact. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.
I’ve spent the last three days at her house. She hasn’t been home at all, not even to pick up clothes or check on things. She’s so bent on avoiding me, Cora won’t even go to her home, and it kills me. I put a motion camera on her porch, so I’ll know the minute she arrives and then I’m going over there. In the meantime, I need to find her file. I would have gone into the shop, but after the first night she didn’t return, I went to the coffee store her friends own and saw a sign saying they’d be closed for the week.
I’ve never felt so helpless. Even during the hell I lived in foster care, it never made me feel like this. Seth is sporting a black eye, and every time I see him, I want to darken the other one.
We’re brothers, but I refuse to apologize when he cost me Corawith his bullshit. Today is actually the first day I’ve talked to Rhett or any of them, and it’s only because I heard them talking about how she quit.
Instead of tearing about the shop like I want to, I yank open the desk drawers, looking for the paper files we keep just in case. Finding hers, I breathe out a sigh of relief, but it’s short-lived because the only address and phone number on here is hers.Son of a bitch!
Shoving the papers off the desk, I stand and weigh my options. She has to go home at some point. Noah is probably going back to school, and he will need his stuff. I saw his backpack in his room at the house. I’m too far gone to care that I’ve just been camping out at her place, waiting for her to come back. I stopped by the library, and she wasn’t there either.Where’d you go, pretty girl?
When I get her back, and I will get her back, I’m going to punish her. She will learn she can’t walk away from me, from us. Noah, her, and I are a family, and as soon as I find her, I’ll prove to her just how much of adaddyI am.
Ignoring the looks of the guys, I head out the back door and to my car. Pulling out my phone, I look down at the screen and scroll through some of the pictures of her—ones I took with her and she didn’t realize.
I’m so caught up staring at a photo of her I took while she was sleeping next to me that I don’t see the person standing by my car right away. Seeing a young woman standing next to it would normally make me excited, but when I see it’s Bri, I want to scream. I’m not in the mood to deal with her shit.
“Get off my car,” I growl. I want her nowhere near me or the shop. I may be pissed at the guys, but she’s poisonous. “You need to stay away from here, and Kash. Leave, or I’m calling the cops.”
