“Where’s Cora?”

I poked my head into the kitchen to see Max chopping up some stuff for dinner, and Nolan glancing over a pile of papers with a drink in his hand. They both looked up wth curious expressions.

“What do you mean?” Max’s brow furrowed.

“I mean she’s not home.”

He shrugged. “Dude she’s at college. She can stay out.” He rolled his eyes at me, putting his knife down and reaching for a beer as he moved to slump into a chair at the kitchen table.

“I just thought she was going to be home. Thought you guys were cooking dinner.”

“I got it handled,” Max shrugged, reaching for his laptop.

Nolan snorted. “You know we’re not actually her daddies, right?”

I gave him the finger. “Har-fucking-har. Her car’s gone, and she usually just walks to campus.”

Nolan’s brow furrowed, and he set his drink down.

“Hmm.”

“Yeah, hmm,” I growled, my anxiety growing. Fuck, I’d never been like this. I’d never been so fucking worried about someone like this — so protective. Immediately, my mind was going to worst-case scenarios — car crashes, a freak accident, Ukrainian sex-traffickers abducting her like some sort of Hollywood movie.

Nolan and I looked at each other, both of us with the same hard, worried expression. But finally, he shook his head.

“Fuck, look at us.”

I sighed, my tension deflating.

“We gotta stop,” he said quietly. “We can’t just be worried about her whenever she’s not here. She’s a tough girl, she can handle herse—”

“Oh fuck.”

We both whirled to see Max staring at his laptop screen, his face white and furious looking.

“What?” Nolan said quickly.

Max ignored him, or didn’t hear him, his eyes growing wide.

“What?” I hissed, my anxiety spiking again.

“I— I let Cora use my laptop the other day.”

“And?”

His eyes dragged from the screen up to look at us. “Her text messenger is still logged in under her account on here.”

I was about to tell him to stop snooping into her life, but there was something fucking real wrong with the look on his face. Nolan and I glanced at each other for half a second before we dashed across the kitchen to see what Max was seeing.

Sure enough, his messenger app was open, but with Cora logged in from when she’d used it. And she was texting with someone.

Matt.

Her fucking ex. The guy Max had laid out, and the one that’d tried to get her to fucking sleep with him for a place to stay like a complete piece of shit.

There were a few messages already on the screen, and I felt anger roar through every part of me.

More rage than I’d ever felt before spiked through me, and I could hear both of my other friends brimming with anger, growling as they read the words on the screen.

What the fuck was she doing?

More texts came through.

“What the fuck is this?” Nolan spat, his face going red and his muscles clenching and rippling. I could see Max’s shoulders heaving, like he was barely containing his own rage. And I wasn’t sure how much more I could read before I destroyed something.

“What fucking video?!” I roared to no one who could hear me.

The kitchen went silent.

My blood ran cold, and it felt like I was sliding through the cracks in the floor. Rage, hatred, fear, and horror washed through me, and I whirled. I stumbled across the kitchen in a nightmare dream, stumbling until I caught myself on the edge of the counter. I sucked in a breath of air, my nerves jangling. Slowly, I turned to see my two friends looking about as furious and horrified as I felt.

“Where does that fucker live?” Nolan hissed quietly, his hand clutching the back of Max’s chair so hard I thought either it or his fingers might break.

“I know exactly where he lives,” Max spat out, jumping out of his chair and grabbing his car keys off the kitchen counter. Nolan and I were right behind him, blood roaring through our veins like diesel as we sprinted for the car.

I just hoped to God we weren’t too late by the time we got there.