Page 73 of Pretend it’s Forever

Flynn already had his phone in his hand as he moved behind me, and I took in my surroundings. Nothing looked out of place, and yet, she wasn’t here. Her purse was still on the counter, and I could hear Hazel and Violet banging on their door.

I ran down the hallway, and my blood went cold.

“Help me move this,” I shouted though Flynn was already by my side. Somebody had positioned the breakfast bar in front of the girls’ door so it couldn’t open, and that meant something was wrong. Beyond wrong.

We shoved it out of the way, and then I forced open the door, terrified of what I would see.

Both girls slammed into my legs, and I bent down and picked them up. They were shaking, crying, and it looked like they had been trapped in here for most of the day.

“I wet my pants,” Violet sniffled as she clung to me.

“Where’s Mommy?” Hazel asked, and I turned to Flynn, whose face had gone pale.

“They’re on their way,” Flynn whispered, and then mouthed the words the cops.

With a hard swallow, I handed the girls over to Flynn. “I need to check,” I said, terrified of what I was going to see.

“Carson, don’t⁠—”

But I shook my head sharply and hoped to hell that Flynn understood.

Because I wasn’t about to let the girls go into the back of the house with me, nor did I want Flynn to see what might be in Sophia’s room.

Not his sister.

Not the woman that I loved.

Sophia.

As I moved into her bedroom, I walked past the bathroom. The sink faucet was running, and the makeup mirror that had been on the edge of the counter was shattered on the ground.

Someone had left the closet light on, and that’s when I realized that most of the clothes had been pulled down, with shoes and bags tossed around as if someone had tried to fight, or someone had been fucking angry.

But that’s not what had chilled me.

Because next to a fallen shoe, the same shoe that she had been wearing when we left, was a needle.

A used one.

And my world ended.

Chapter Seventeen

SOPHIA

I had been in and out of consciousness over the past however long hours, if it had even been hours and not minutes or days. I had only known I was even awake because my body ached. I was tied up, my arms in front of me, my bare feet bound. But Cale had put a blindfold over my eyes, and a gag in my mouth. I couldn’t scream, couldn’t see anything. I knew I was in a trunk because I couldn’t lift my body, and every time we hit a bump or a hard curve, I’d bang into the lid or the sides, and I knew I would be bruised and bloody.

If only I could remove my blindfold, maybe I could figure out how to use the latch to get out. Any car these days had an escape latch in case you were accidentally—not even purposely—put in a trunk.

And yet I couldn’t do any of it.

Were Hazel and Violet okay? They had to be. I couldn’t hear them, so they weren’t calling out for me, not in this car. But he wouldn’t have hurt them. He didn’t even like them. They were nothing to him but a way to get at me. And since he had me, there was no way he would hurt them. Right?

Bile filled my throat, and I swallowed it down. The last thing I needed to do was choke on my own vomit and brushed along my shoulder, and I flinched, pulling back from him.

“Fucking bitch. You think you can just get away die and not even be able to fight for myself.”

I was strong, a dancer, and yet where Cale had already broken my bones in the past, I could feel every bump and turn to the point that my entire body ached, thrumming on a stressful drum.