I hadn’t exactly been looking forward to tonight, but I had expected… something better than this. I would have rather gotten stood up than this. I needed to just get home, call Lily, and let her cheer me up.
Neither one of us said much as I hailed the waitress and she brought us our check, splitting it Dutch when he didn’t offer to pay for my one and only drink, because that’s what kind of date it had been.
The topping on the sundae was the man getting up and leaving with a “Yeah, see ya.”
And by the time I stood up and turned around, I forgot to look around at whoever he’d been talking about that was staring over.
I didn’t care.
There was never a big guy or a small guy or any kind of guy there for me either, and it made my heart hurt just a little. I was just feeling pretty darn sorry for myself, and that didn’t help anything.
I wasn’t about to give up on dating even though this wasn’t exactly going so well, but what did I expect? To find a soul mate in two dates? In weeks? Months?
Lily liked to watch this show on TV about people who were set up in arranged marriages, and I had never really thought it was that weird, contrary to her beliefs that she could never marry a total stranger. But now… I could definitely see the appeal in it. What was wrong with someone who wanted to be in a relationship? Someone who cared about you and wanted the best for you, wanted to have a family with you. What was a relationship if there wasn’t respect in it?
I wanted someone who wanted to be with me, and not just as a booty call.
In the meantime, I had a nice comfy bed at home I could go to bed early in.
*
My spidey senses went off the second I parked my car in my driveway.
For one, I knew I’d left the porch lights on. I was paranoid about someone hiding in the dark and attacking me from the bushes. I wouldn’t play around with my safety.
Two, my front door being wide open, like a gaping maw in the dark, would confirm that something wasn’t normal. Under no circumstance would I have left the door open. I was known for getting back out of my car and checking the front door if I couldn’t clearly remember tugging on the handle after locking it.
And third… if the lights I knew hadn’t been left off and the door being wide open hadn’t been enough, bits and pieces of broken wooden frame being all over the porch would have confirmed that someone had broken into my place. Through the front door.
Someone had broken into my place.
Someone had broken into my place.
Shit.
SHIT.
Pressing my fingertips over my brow bone, something ugly and warm and... just horrible… instantly filled my chest. And my throat. And my mouth. And the urge to throw up blew up in my throat and—
Think, Luna.
Trying to calm that beast in my body, I pulled my phone out of my purse, searched for the number to the police department, and hit the call icon.
Then I ignored how bad my hand was shaking and how bad I wanted to throw up and how worried I was at the fact that someone had broken into my house. It wasn’t a bad neighborhood. It was quiet. If the house had been fully remodeled when I’d moved in, it would have easily been four times the price I had gotten it. Even the realtor had told me I had scored it as a foreclosure.
It had been old, but steady.
While I would have been perfectly happy with any style of house, the instant Lenny had driven me by the dilapidated bungalow in desperate need of a paint job and a remodel to bring it up to this century, I had fallen in love.
And now, someone had gone into the one and only place that had only ever been mine. They might have stolen things I’d worked my ass off for. They might have gone through my drawers and personal things.
Don’t cry. Your insurance should cover everything. It was just stuff.
You’re happy. Healthy. You’re safe. You’re alive. You still have a job.
It’s just stuff. It’s just stuff. It doesn’t matter.
But one glance at the kicked-in door made all the hairs on my back stand up.
A door can be fixed. An alarm can be set. A deadbolt put on.
“Thank you for calling the Houston—”
It took about twenty minutes to talk to the police department and let them know what had happened.
Stay there, they had said.
But all I had to do was look up at that door….
I shivered. Then I shivered some more as I stood there, staring into the darkened house….
Another wracking shiver down my spine had me reaching for my phone. Had me dialing the number in my phone. There was one ring before the voice mail picked up. “This is Allen Cooper of Cooper’s—”
I had forgotten he turned off his phone while he slept.
Okay. All right.
Focus, Luna.
I took a breath and dialed another number. It rang. It kept ringing and ringing and ringing, until, “The voice mail box you have reached is full—”
Lenny was asleep too. Okay. That was fine. I could do this. I could—
Someone had broken into my house. Someone might have taken my things. Gone through my laundry. Been in the room I slept in. Someone had kicked in my door. Someone could do it again… this mean, evil voice in my head whispered, making me swallow as I stared at the front door.
I’d locked it without a shadow of a doubt. The same lock I had always put on every night. The lock that was supposed to keep people out, supposed to keep me safe.
Tears swelled up in my eyes all of a sudden, stinging, uncomfortable, shitty tears that made me glad I was all alone. I was a sucker. I was a sucker with terrible luck. I should have been used to it. You’d figure I would be.
But I’d be fine. I would. I’d be all right. Things could be worse.
Taking a breath through my nose, I glanced back toward the wide-open door leading into the place I had felt so safe at for so long. I didn’t let myself cry.
But if a couple of tears slipped out of my eyes, I sucked in a breath and pretended they hadn’t.
I stood there and just stared at the door, telling myself to go in. What were the chances there was someone inside?
Someone inside. How could there have been someone in my house? What if I’d been in there too?
Crouching down, I just stayed there, staring at the dark hole. The police would get here when they got here. I wasn’t going to go inside. Not alone.
My hands went up to my cheeks without thinking, wiping at my face slowly. I set my hand on my chest and for some reason thought about the necklace I had put on Rip. He still hadn’t given it back. Just as quickly as that thought came into my head, it slipped right back out as I focused on the front of my house again.
Everything would be fine.
It would.
Chapter 21
I wasn’t at all surprised when I got zero sleep that night.
I figured it wasn’t unheard of when the only thing keeping your front door closed was a console table you had dragged over. If I’d had anything heavier that I could have pushed on my own, I would have. But there was only so much I could do alone, and I didn’t have that much furniture.
So, I hadn’t slept. I’d been too paranoid, lying in bed and listening to make sure no one pushed the door open. When I wasn’t worried about that, I laid there thinking about my sisters talking to my dad.
It hadn’t exactly been the greatest night of my life.
So when the alarm clock went off, just as I had barely started to sort of doze off, I had almost cried. Almost.
Why did things like this always have to happen to me? Why? Why couldn’t I catch a break every once in a while?
I knew I was being dramatic. I knew there were worse things in the world than having your home broken into and your things stolen and broken. At least I had a place to call home. At least I had insurance. But… it all still felt like a donkey kick to my freaking soul.
You get one step ahead and then have to take five back. That was life sometimes, wasn’t it? For everyone, not just me.