Page 151 of Bring You Back

I’m tugging my shirt over my head—the final piece—when I realize Grumbles isn’t here. She hasn’t been here since this morning. In fact, I haven’t seen her since this morning. I haven’t heard her meow, her pattering paws across the floor for almost an entire day.

This hasn’t happened before. My senses always pick her up, always know where she is.

The panic comes in stages. It stills my body, then my breathing, spirals my thoughts, then moves me around the room—my knees bending, hands lifting and pulling, eyes searching for her black frame, yellow stare.

“Grumbles!” I cry as I tear out of the room, continue my search through the hall, sweeping the rest of the rooms, except for Naomi’s. She wouldn’t be behind that closed door without me. “Grumbles!” I keep calling to her with no answer, no cat in sight.

“Hey, hey.” Julian catches me when I reach the kitchen, his hands stalling my pursuit. He takes in my face, concern shaping his at my wide stare, heavy breathing, wet face. “What happened?”

“Grumbles,” I manage, pushing from Julian’s hold as my eyes search the floor, the table, the countertops. “I can’t find her.”

I lost her.

She’s gone.

She’s dead.

My brother’s dead.

I can’t breathe.

“Hey,” Julian says again, his hands back on my arms, forcing me to look at him. My hands are wrapped around my throat and he pries them off, intertwining our fingers as his eyes hold mine steady. “We’ll find her. All right?”

“I can’t lose her,” I manage through the clog in my throat.

“She’s around here somewhere. She probably just found a new spot to hide. We’ll find her,” he repeats, but the assuring words don’t ease the dread I feel of her being gone.

She got out. I know she did. Someone let her outside, and I wasn’t there to protect her.

My thoughts continue to spiral as Julian races around me, searching the rest of the house, unable to find her.

She’s gone.

“Banks, where is she?” he questions.

Banks.My eyes find him, register him at the couch, just standing there, and my vision reddens as I charge toward him.

His hands go up in defense, and I’m being pulled back, Julian’s hold tight around my waist.

“Where is she?” I repeat the question to Banks, a roar. “Where is my cat?”

“Between your legs?”

“Banks,” Julian warns, stopping another charge forward.

“What?”

“Where is Grumbles?” Julian’s tone is hard, serious, and the cat thieving’s face now matches.

“I don’t know,” Banks proclaims, then holds up his hands again, looking me in the eye. “I swear.”

Julian’s arms shift around me, his hands finding mine as his breath finds my ear. “He doesn’t know,” he assures me, but the tension in my body doesn’t release, worsened by a new running mouth, another presence I’d failed to register.

“I do.”

We face Reyna where she stands at the island, the breath I’ve been holding rushing out through my parted lips, deflating my chest.

“I let her go this morning.”

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