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“Oh um…?” Nicola pursed her lips and scrubbed a little harder at a sticky spot on the bar back. “I know her more because I’ve been staying with her since Warren and I broke up. She’s been helping give me some breathing space to get back on my feet.”

“Warren’s aunt?” Tommie froze in disbelief. “Jesus, I thought that woman was as locked up as a vault. How did you manage to convince her to do that?”

“It wasn’t that hard, actually.” Nicola didn’t dare look up at Tommie. “I guess it helped because she felt bad for me after the whole breakup.”

“Why would she feel bad for you?” Tommie sounded confused.

“Because he broke up with me,” Nicola confessed.

“What? You didn’t ditch him?”

“No.” Nicola blew out a breath and rolled her eyes at herself. “I was an idiot in a lot of ways, and even though I knew he wascheating on me for years, I wasn’t the one to take that step. He did.”

“Why did he break up with you? What did he say?” Tommie’s voice was soft now and she was leaning over the other end of the bar, like this was serious and she wanted to make sure that Nicola knew that.

“He told me that I’d outrun my usefulness to him.”

“What?” The word cracked through the empty bar. “He’s such a douche canoe.”

Nicola snorted and then laughed. “Yeah, yeah he really is.”

thirty-four

“I don’t know what to do!” Abagail started as soon as Elia answered the phone.

“Well, slow down, tell me what happened.” Elia’s calm voice was all Abagail needed right now—well, almost.

One week.

And Abagail was going crazy.

One week ago, she’d gone to Nicola’s room only to find it empty. Her things were gone, her car was gone, she was gone. And the house had been so quiet, the air thick with something that she couldn’t name, and she hated it.

Nothing Abagail had done in that week had made a dent in changing the atmospheric wake left by Nicola’s absence. And yet, Abagail still couldn’t put a damn name to what she was feeling or thinking.

Worried? Yes.

Nicola had no place to go or stay. She did have a job, and Abagail had been such an idiot that she had checked and seen if Nicola had been showing up for her shifts—she had been. So she was around still, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t sleeping in her car again. Which Abagail suspected she was. She’d prefer the car over dealing with the fact Abagail had ended their agreement.

Fearful? Absolutely.

Nicola wasn’t prepared for the world out there. She hadn’t done a good job of setting herself up for success, and even though she was a survivor and had proven that over and over again, Abagail knew it would be easier if she’d just let Abagail take care of some things. Not everything, but a few things here and there, like a damn roof over her head and food in her belly.

Mad? Damn straight.

What if Nicola had ended up back together with Warren? It would explain many things, including the silence that Nicola had given her in the last week. Abagail had tried to text and call her, but Nicola hadn’t answered or responded later. And Abagail had slowed down her attempts to contact her. But she hadn’t been lying when she’d told Nicola that she wasfondof her.

Lonely?

Abagail wasn’t sure she’d quite label what she was feeling as that. At least, not yet. She certainly missed her nights with Nicola, although they hadn’t had many of those before she’d left anyway. But there did seem to be a hole left by Nicola’s absence, one that wasn’t very dark, wasn’t very deep, and Abagail was still trying to explore exactly how it was there. Because it felt so similar to when she and Elia had been in the height of their issues.

But Nicola wasn’t Elia.

“What’s got you so upset about this?” Elia asked, and Abagail could hear her breathing heavily through the phone.

“Are you busy?” Abagail finally asked, realizing far too late that she hadn’t asked if Elia had time for this conversation.

“I’m just getting to my house for dinner. I’ll be home in a minute.”