Chapter 1
Robin
The apartment looks wrong empty.
Not bad-wrong. Just wrong the way a face looks without eyebrows — technically fine, deeply unsettling, impossible to stop staring at. Toby's bookshelves left ghost rectangles on the walls where the paint didn't fade. The couch is gone. The coffee table with the ring stains from four years of mugs neither of us ever used coasters for. The hook by the door where Toby hung his library lanyard every night like a responsible adult while I kicked my shoes into a pile and called it a system.
I'm standing in the living room holding a roll of packing tape and trying to decide if I'm sad or just dramatic.
Both. Definitely both.
My phone buzzes on the kitchen counter. I grab it hoping for Toby — he's running a senior reading program at the library and promised to call on his lunch break — but it's Gordon.
Menu change for Thursday. Client wants gluten-free options for ALL desserts. Not some. ALL. Handle it.
No hello. No "hey Robin, sorry to bother you on your day off." Just orders delivered like I'm a piece of kitchen equipment that happens to have a phone number.
I type back:Got it. I'll rework the tart bases and swap the puff pastry for an almond flour shell. Should be seamless.
Three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again.
Don't get creative. Just make them edible.
I stare at the screen for a long moment, then put my phone face-down on the counter. "Go fuck yourself, Gordon," I say to the empty apartment, because the walls can't report me to HR.
Not that Gordon's company has HR. Gordon's company has Gordon, his wife who does the books, and eleven kitchen staff who've learned that "feedback" means getting screamed at in front of clients. I've been there for years. I could do his job blindfolded. He knows it. That's probably why he hates me.
But today isn't about Gordon. Today is about boxes and moving trucks and starting over at my brother's house.
I tape the last box — KITCHEN: DO NOT DROP OR I WILL END YOU written in Sharpie across all four sides — and add it to the stack by the door. The truck's been sitting outside for two hours while I wandered through rooms that used to be ours, touching walls and door frames like a weirdo. Toby's at work. Ash isn't answering his phone, probably at the range shooting things to deal with feelings like a normal person.
I try Ash one more time. Voicemail.
"Ashley Martinez," I say sweetly. "Your baby brother is moving into your house today, which you know because you invited me, and you are currently unreachable, which means you're either dead or ignoring me. If you're dead I'm selling your bikes. If you're ignoring me I'm rearranging your garage. Either way you should be afraid."
I hang up and call the bar.
"Yeah?" Vaughn's voice, gruff as always. Like the phone personally offended him by ringing.
"Hi handsome, it's Robin. I need a huge favor."
Silence. I can practically hear him deciding whether to hang up. Then: "What kind of favor?"
"The kind where I have a bunch of boxes and no way to get them into Ash's house because my brother is being emotionally unavailable and ignoring his phone."
"You need help moving."
"I need some strong lions to lift heavy things while I watch and make encouraging noises."
He sighs. It's a good sigh — put-upon, resigned, not actually annoyed. I've learned to read Vaughn's sighs the way sommeliers read wine. This one meansyes but I want you to know I'm suffering.
"We'll be there in ten."
"You're an angel, Vaughn. A grumpy, gorgeous angel."
He hangs up on me, which is honestly fair.
I use the ten minutes to check my hair twice, change into a tighter shirt, and then change back because I'm not trying to impress anyone. I'm moving. People wear old clothes to move. The fact that this particular old shirt makes my arms look incredible is coincidental.