I find parking and cut the engine. The apartment building is nice—nicer than I expected. Clean lines, modern architecture, palm trees lining the sidewalk. Very LA.
Very not Honeyridge Falls.
“You ready?” she asks.
No. I’m not ready for any of this.
“Let’s go.”
Her apartment issmall but bright. Big windows, white walls, books everywhere—stacked on shelves, piled on the coffee table, shoved in corners. Coffee cups on the counter. A laptop buried under notebooks. It smells like her—warm and sweet with something underneath that makes me pace restlessly, makes my skin feel too tight.
“Sorry about the mess,” she says, though it’s not really messy. Just lived-in. “I didn’t exactly plan this move.”
“It’s fine.”
A sound from the bedroom makes me turn. A large orange tabby appears in the doorway, assessing me with suspicious green eyes.
“That’s Mr. Darcy,” Cara says. “Don’t take it personally if he ignores you. He hates everyone.”
The cat stares at me for a long moment. Then he walks directly to my feet and starts rubbing against my legs, purring loud enough to hear across the room.
Cara’s mouth falls open. “What the hell?”
I crouch down and scratch behind his ears. He leans into it, purring louder.
“He doesn’t do that,” Cara says. “He’s never done that. He hid under the bed for three weeks when I first got him.”
“Maybe he has good taste.”
She laughs, surprised, and I realize I’m almost smiling.
Mr. Darcy follows me around for the rest of the afternoon. Every time I move to a new room, he’s right there, winding between my ankles, jumping onto whatever surface brings him closest to me. When I sit down to tape a box, he climbs into my lap and refuses to move.
“This is unprecedented,” Cara says, watching us with a look I can’t quite read. “You’ve broken my cat.”
“He’s not broken. He just knows quality when he sees it.”
“Oh my god.” She throws a roll of tape at me. “You’re impossible.”
But she’s smiling. And I’m smiling. And for a moment, I forget to be afraid.
The apartment comes apart fasterthan I expected.
Cara is efficient—she’s clearly been thinking about this for a while. She knows exactly what she wants to keep and what can go. The furniture stays. Most of the books come with us. Clothes, photos, a few boxes of things that matter.
I find myself studying the space as we work. Looking for clues, I guess. Evidence of the life she built without me.
There are photos on the wall—her at book signings, her with people I don’t recognize, her alone on a beach somewhere that isn’t Montana. She looks happy in most of them. Successful. Put together.
But there are no photos with anyone close. No pack. No alphas. Just her, always her, surrounded by strangers and smiling like it doesn’t hurt.
“That was my first signing,” she says, catching me looking. “Fifty people showed up. I cried in the bathroom for twenty minutes beforehand.”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
“I’m a good actress.” She pulls a book off the shelf, considers it, adds it to the ‘keep’ pile. “You have to be, in that world. Everyone wants the confident author who has her life together. Not the mess who still dreams about home.”
I don’t know what to say to that. So I don’t say anything. Just tape another box and pretend my chest doesn’t ache.
