I pull my phone out to check the cameras on the off chance that she might still be awake. Instead, Livy’s name pops up on the screen, and my chest tightens instantly when I see there are two texts waiting for me. She sent them while I was driving.
Are you busy when you get back?
The words are simple, but something about them makes a slow, uneasy feeling settle in my chest.
I open the second message.
Never mind. I’m being silly. I just have a weird feeling.
That one came only a few minutes later, and I’m so annoyed that I made her second guess herself. The fact that she wanted me to come over is a huge deal. A knot tightens low in my chest as I swing off the bike and head inside. As I’m walking up the stairs, before I even reach my bedroom door, I’m already pulling up the surveillance app on my phone.
Livy’s room fills the screen almost immediately.
She’s in bed, and I feel my jeans tighten at the sight of her.
My songbird is curled slightly onto her side and only halfway beneath her fluffy pink comforter, one arm tucked beneath her pillow while her hair fans across the sheets around her. Thecamera catches the subtle shifts of her body every few seconds. It's the restless kind of movement that tells me she didn’t fall asleep easily and won’t be asleep for long. Her brow is faintly drawn even now, like whatever uneasy feeling she mentioned in her text never fully left her.
But she’s sleeping.
Fitfully, maybe, but sleeping nonetheless and that makes me happy
My shoulders loosen a little as I watch her breathe, the slow rise and fall of her chest calming something inside me that had already started spiraling after reading that message.
She’s safe.
That’s all that matters to me in this life.
The right thing to do would be to let my girl sleep. Waking her now would only startle her.
Still, the thought lingers.
She texted me. She wanted to know if I was busy. She wanted me to come over.
She. Wanted. Me.
I unlock my bedroom door and push it open, my attention still half on the small screen in my hand where Livy shifts again beneath the blankets.
It takes a second for my brain to register that something is wrong.
The soft hum of electronics that usually fills my room isn’t there, and the familiar glow from my desk doesn’t spill across the floor the way it normally does. My eyes adjust slowly to the darker space as I step inside, my gaze drifting automatically toward the desk where the surveillance screens should be. I flip on the main light and I’m pissed.
You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.
Both monitors are on the floor and are absolutely destroyed.
The screens are cracked straight through the center, spiderweb fractures stretching across the glass where someone clearly ripped them from the desk and threw them down hard enough to break them. Loose wires trail across the floor beside them, the plastic casings split where the impact must have hit.
Cold adrenaline floods through my system as every instinct I have snaps into place. I move through the room quickly, scanning every corner while my pulse starts hammering harder in my chest. The closet door is slightly open, the bathroom light still off, the space beneath the bed empty when I glance down.
Whoever broke in isn’t here anymore. As I straighten slowly, my gaze drifts back toward the desk. That’s when I notice the sticky note stuck to my desk.
It’s sitting right in the center of the wood surface, bright blue against the dark grain. I don’t have blue sticky notes, and I don’t know anyone who does.
The words are written across the paper in thick, uneven letters.
In lipstick.
Pink lipstick.
