Light up the Night (Firehouse Three #2)(44)

Damn, had he heard that right? The smile started deep within his chest, and spread out and up until his whole body felt wreathed in the expression. Girlfriend. Everly was admitting, out loud, to whoever had answered the phone, that they were together.

Now if that wasn’t a girl jumping into the damn deep end, he didn’t know what the f*ck was.



Her eyes were burning like a tire fire, but she couldn’t blink to save her life.

“What did you say?” Belinda’s knuckles cracked as she squeezed the phone tighter in her hand.

The voice from across the miles sounded smug, vain, and obnoxious. “This is his, erm, girlfriend. Can I take a message for him?”

“No.” Belinda said it flatly, and killed the call the instant the syllable had left her lips.

She rocketed off the couch in the apartment they’d shared, pacing up and down in front of the marble-tiled hearth.

Girlfriend. GIRLfriend. Gi-RL-friend. No matter how she said that hateful word in her head, the meaning didn’t change.

Drake wasn’t just going through some kind of weird phase, sowing his oats or whatever the f*ck you called it. He was moving on. Had moved on. With some hussy bitch from Texas who probably had three buck teeth and a family tree that looked like a yardstick.

Her scream of sheer frustration rattled the original Brendan Monroe print that hung by the patio doors.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. None of this shit was supposed to happen. Belinda put her hands on both sides of her head and stared straight ahead.

The place they had lived stared back at her, empty, empty, empty. Just like her hopes and dreams for the future.

Hollow. No life. Going nowhere fast.

“What the f*ck am I supposed to do now?”

She’d meant to scream the words, but the whisper that escaped her lips gave her no satisfaction.

The doorbell rung then, and she walked toward the entry without really tracking.

Leaning toward the peephole, she frowned.

“Daddy?” She opened the door and was greeted by her father with an armload of flattened cardboard.

“Got something for you,” he said as he pushed past her into the foyer. Setting his burden down on the white Berber carpeting, he brushed his hands off on the navy blue slacks he wore.

“What’s this?” She nudged the pile with her toe, wrinkling her nose at the smudge of dust left on the tip of her white sneaker.

“Boxes.”

“No, shit,” she drawled, crossing her arms and lowering her brows. “Why did you bring them here?”

“It’s time, baby.” The look in Chief Pearce’s eyes was sympathetic, but with a definite hard edge that Belinda had only seen once or twice in her entire life.

Her stomach flipped, and cold sweat popped out all over her body. She backed away, shaking her head.

“What—what do you mean? Time for what?”

“I’ve already talked to the landlord,” he said, bending down and picking up the top piece of cardboard. Deftly, he assembled it.

Not just a box. A moving box.

“I’m not moving,” she said automatically as he pulled a roll of tape from his back pocket. “Drake will be coming back soon.”

“Baby, he’s not coming back.” The screeching sound of the packing tape unraveling made her jump. “It’s time for you to move on.”

“No, it’s not,” Belinda snapped. She stormed past her father, scooping her purse and keys into her hand. One hand on the doorknob, she paused, and her voice was deadly quiet. “He is coming back. And when he does, you will never see me again.” Tossing a look full of the anger and pain she felt over her shoulder at her stricken father, she spat the parting words. “I hate you.”

She slammed the door behind her and ran to her car, the raindrops making it hard to see where she was going.

Oh. Those weren’t raindrops. They were angry tears.

Dashing them aside, Belinda cranked the engine of her Audi and stared at the dash.

She couldn’t let him go. She would not let him go. This woman was the problem. It was all so clear now. He’d been on his way back to her, then some Texas skank had thrown herself at him.

Now he was stuck there until the bitch let him go.

The tiniest notion struck her then, a tendril of hope burrowing through the clouds of despair in her frontal lobe.

Everyone had something to lose. Even the stranger who’d answered Drake’s phone only a little while ago. It was simple, really. Enough stress could cause anyone to break. And if this woman broke?

Drake would come back home, where he belonged.

A wave of confidence passed through Belinda, and her angry desperation turned to triumph.

Yes. She could and she would make him come back. And if she had to ruin some anonymous bitch to do it?

So. Be. It.





15.

“Hopeful Paws, this is Everly, can I help you?”

“Hey, baby girl.”

The warm, velvety voice poured through the phone like audio chocolate. Everly smiled as she coiled the cord around her pinky.

“Hi, Drake.”

“I just got off shift. You want to meet me at our restaurant for dinner?”

Their restaurant. The sushi place they’d gotten takeout from and eaten by the lake while watching fireworks. Over the past ten days or so they’d eaten there at least four times.