“Archie—” I started.
But then he stepped back, like he’d caught himself slipping. “Sorry. That came out weird.”
It hadn’t. Not at all. What it had done was come outreal.
Right now, I didn’t know what to do with real.
“I’m here, babe,” he said finally, his dark eyes fixed on mine. “For anything. Tell me you know that.”
My mouth opened, then closed once. I dipped my gaze to his lips once before snapping them back up to his eyes. “I know, Archie.” The words came out husky. “I do know.”
“Good,” he murmured, then walked away before I could say anything else.
The ground seemed to constantly shift and shake before threatening to fall away from beneath me. Coop texted to say he was grabbing a ride with Jake, so I didn’t have to wait for him. The drive was almost peaceful.
Maybe that should have been a warning sign. The quiet before the storm.
When I got home, I didn’t even register that something was wrong at first. Except, the apartment door was unlocked.
Voices echoed inside—men’s voices, unfamiliar and loud—and the scrape of something heavy being dragged across the floor set my nerves on edge. I stepped in and froze.
Cardboard boxes. Tape guns. My dresser half-emptied. My clothes folded with clinical indifference and stacked like I was already gone.
A man glanced up from my room, clipboard tucked under his arm. “You Frankie?” he asked.
My mouth opened. Nothing came out.
“We’re almost done,” he said, like that was supposed to mean something. “Just packing your stuff.”
My stuff.
“They already picked up the cats, and their stuff,” the man continued. The words landed wrong—sharp and personal and final. Like ownership had already changed hands and no one had bothered to tell me.
I stood there, backpack still on my shoulder, heart pounding, watching strangers dismantle my life one box at a time.
Whatever fragile sense of control I’d been clinging to snapped. The universe hadn’t just body-slammed me. Nope, it took a few steps further by deciding to pack me up and ship me out.
Chapter
Seventeen
FRANKIE
Ifroze in the doorway, my backpack still slung over one shoulder. Cardboard stacked in uneven towers, tape guns clicking, the scrape of furniture being dragged across the floor—it all pressed in on me. My cats. Tabby. Tiddles. Tory. Gone.
No.
“Wait, what do you mean you’re almost done?” It was like I was on information overload and nothing would process as that one nugget suddenly clogged up my gears to be regurgitated.
The man closest to me looked up from his clipboard. “Almost done, as we should be fully loaded in the next hour. We had a late start or we would have already finished.”
Already finished? Bafflement surrounded me as another man strode around me with a huge box that had the word books scrawled on the side of it.
I opened my mouth as I pressed against the hallway wall and then straightened. “Whereare my cats? Who sent you? What’s going on?” My hands shook as I gestured to the half-empty dresser and the piles of boxes that were even now being carted away. “You’re taking—my bed, my desk, my stuff—is all of it?” What fucking nightmare had I woken up in? And I couldn’treally deal with any of that because… “Where are my cats? Tell me!”
He blinked at me slowly, one corner of his mouth hitching up in that smile you give a crazy person. Apparently, my panic was inconvenient. “Now, honey, just take it easy.” That slow, Texas drawl scraped over my last nerve. “Nothing to get too excited about.”
Nothing. To. Get. Too. Excited. About.
