“No,” she whisper-hisses. “I’m at Tim’s.”
“Okay…”
“Like,insideTim’s apartment,” she screeches. “I did something awful, so I need you to come save me.Anddon’t tell Archer!”
“Oh my god.” Giggling, I look to Arch and merely shake my head when he stares so hard it’s almost as though he’s probing my mind. “Are you safe?”
“Not for long!” she grits out. “Come get me. Don’t bring the cops.”
“Good lord.” I bring a hand up and rub two fingers between my brows. “Okay. Fine. But only because I was mean and owe you a solid. Is Tim with you right now?”
I let the guilty silence hang for a beat.
“Are you decent?” I ask.
“I didn’t sleep with him!” Broken glass crunches, then the music changes, first through the call, then through the walls I share with the bar next door. “Please come help me.”
“I’ll be there in a minute.”
Rolling my eyes, I hang up and cross back to the kitchen to find a grilled cheese already sitting on a plate. Since Archer hasn’t yet cut it, I go to the knife block and halve our dinner, then I grab my share and step onto my toes to press a kiss to his lips. “I have to go out for a minute. But you’ve been expressly prohibited from coming.”
Surprised, his brows shoot high. “You’re saying I can’t come with you?”
“I’m saying Aubree specifically said you’re not allowed.” Turning on my heels, I take my dinner and cross to the couch, then dumping the blanket and slipping on a pair of sneakers, I peek down at my infusion site and the small drop of blood fighting with the circle band-aid.
“You can come to Tim’s, I suppose. But you can’t follow me to Aubree. Oh, and on a side note,” I take a smiling bite of my sandwich, “how might someone sneak up to Tim’s apartment without Tim knowing this someone is in the building?”
“Are you fucking with me right now?” Arch snags his sandwich half and stalks across to get his boots on. “What did she do?”
“Something entirely innocent, I’m sure of it.”
* * *
“What did you do?” The moment I step into Tim’s apartment and look around, my stomach jumps at the mess in front of me. “Aubree!”
“I was having a nice time with this guy…” She dashes from one side of Tim’s dark apartment to the other and picks up the lamp that lies toppled on the floor.
Tim’s living space is different from Archer’s. Dark wood, dark carpet, dark furniture. He works at night and sleeps in the day, so it makes sense he wants his place to reflect as little light as possible, but this is a whole new level of depressing.
Not helped, I’m sure, by the broken carnage on the floor.
“Colin was nice! He wasreallynice!” She uses her hip to shove the couch straight, but with the movement comes a cat scurrying across the room with a feral hiss.
“Shit!” I jump when the feline bolts under my feet in search of the exit. “Tim has a cat?”
Clamping her lips shut, Aubree shakes her head with a panicked ferocity. “No, he does not.” Rushing to the rug in the middle of the room, she crouches low and tugs it neat. “He absolutely does not own a cat. But I was having a good time with Colin.”
“Who the hell is Colin?”
“A cop!” Shoving up to stand tall, she rushes toward another room—the kitchen, I discover when I follow her. “He’s a really nice cop who wanted to buy me a drink. So I said sure.” Then she spins and points a threatening finger my way. “Tim said no.”
“Tim said no to what?”
“To everything! He said I couldn’t hang with Colin. He said I couldn’t drink with Colin. He just said no! Like he thinks he can control me. And when I didn’t listen, he got pissy about it.”
Searching Tim’s under-sink cupboards, Aubree triumphantly stands with a hoot and shows off a tube of super glue. Reaching into the sink, she takes out a dinner plate already broken into three large pieces, and hurriedly starts gluing it back together.
“I said I was done waiting and being the pathetic little idiot pining after a man who didn’t want her, so I said sure to Colin.”