Page 149 of Unexpected

The house was quiet,and it was later than I expected to be home. Sadie greeted me at the door like I’d been gone for years instead of a few hours. I stooped down in the entryway and buried my nose in her coat as I scratched behind her ears.

The plan was to shower, change, and head over to Hazel’s apartment to be there when she returned from her lunch with Blakely. She’d been there for almost two hours, and I was continuously checking her location to make sure she hadn’t left even after she texted me and said it was going well less than an hour ago.

Nervous didn’t even begin to describe how I felt about their impromptu lunch reunion. Blakely had many redeeming qualities and was a good friend, but she was also stubborn and hard to get along with on a good day. I didn’t doubt that Hazel could stand up for herself, though, if the need arose.

It only took a few seconds for the water in the shower to begin steaming and just the thought of stepping under the spray made my muscles relax. I stripped off the sweaty scrubs and immediately let the hot water wash away the stress and uncertainty for at least a few minutes.

Since Hazel had catapulted herself into my life, my favorite way to relax had become replaying the multitude of ways and places we’d fucked. I also frequently found myself imagining the ways I wanted to have her and hadn’t yet had the opportunity to try. But we had forever; I knew we would try everything, experience all the new things we could, both inside and outside of the bedroom. A lifetime of making new memories.

I was halfway through one of my favorite imaginary scenarios, which included Hazel naked in the bed of my truck, when my phone began ringing from the bathroom counter right outside the shower. I pulled the towel from where I tossed it over the shower door and casually dried off before I stepped out of the shower and immediately grabbed my phone.

It was only a missed call from Josh, and I was slightly disappointed it wasn’t Hazel letting me know she was on her way back. I put my phone back on the counter and grabbed jeans and a T-shirt—a navy-blue one that Hazel said she liked—from the dresser in my room. As I draped the wet towel back over the shower door, Josh’s name scrolled across my locked phone screen once again.

Begrudgingly, I answered.

“Hello?”

“Where are you?” he asked in a hurry.

“At our house. What’s up?” At his clipped, exasperated tone, I instantly stiffened.

“You need to check Hazel’s social media. Now.”

My heart thundered in my chest at the mention of Hazel. “What the hell are you talking about? I deleted all that shit years ago after the Valerie and Blakely shit went down. Why?”

“Fuck!” he bellowed, and I yanked the phone from my ear. “I’m pulling in the driveway now.”

Without another word, he ended the call at the same time I heard the squealing of tires outside.

I met him at the garage door, which he whipped through like a bat out of hell. His face was red with rage as he thrust his phone toward me.

I didn’t know what I was expecting—possibly a picture of her and Blakely from lunch or something of the two of us since she’d been keen on snapping photos frequently. But neither of those was the picture that filled the screen.

It was a close-up shot of two faces that were pressed together in familiarity. At the bottom of the photo, you could see partially full wineglasses in their hands like they were toasting, and both were smiling. As usual, Hazel was beautiful, with a slight flush to her cheeks which made me guess it wasn’t her first glass. There was nothing wrong with her half of the picture, and there wouldn’t have been anything wrong with the picture at all except the person she was standing next to.

Her black hair was pin straight, framing her heart-shaped face. And although her mouth was smiling, Valerie’s dead eyes still lacked any warmth.

“Is this some kind of joke, Josh? Because if you’re trying to be funny right now, you’ve missed the mark by several miles.”

Josh was still fuming and ripped the phone out of my hand. “No, Luke. You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me. You really think I’d do something like this? It’s not a joke; this is arealpost on Hazel’srealaccount. Look,” Josh said as he pointed to the text at the top that had her account handle @hazel.cooper just above the photo.

“It’s her account. She hasn’t posted in a while, but this photo of her and Valerie was just posted to Hazel’s account. Now, look at the caption.”

He pointed to the text below the photo like I didn’t know what I was looking at. I grabbed the phone back from him and read the few words slowly: “To new neighbors and new friendships.” At the end of the caption, there was a wineglass and a red heart emoji. I continued scanning the post, noting that a few dozen people had liked it in the past thirty minutes since it had been posted.

There was too much information to intake and analyze. My mind was racing to a million different conclusions, each of them leading to Hazel being in danger.

My own phone said hers was still located at the restaurant she was supposedly at with Blakely. I dialed her number and tried to tamp down the panic that was threatening to rip through me. I paced the entryway, thrusting Josh’s phone back into his unsuspecting hands, as Hazel’s phone rang and rang and rang. When her voice mail picked up, I waited and left a simple message asking her to call me back. Then I texted her and locked my phone.

“She’s not answering,” I told Josh.

“Yeah, I figured as much when you left the voice mail,” he quipped.

“Josh, don’t fucking joke around right now. I’m in over my head and don’t know what the fuck to do. I swear, if anything happens—” My voice cut off because I couldn’t actually say the words that were going through my head. Nothing could happen to Hazel; I wouldn’t let anything happen to Hazel which meant we needed to move quickly.

“Oh fuck.” I was still pacing when Josh showed me his phone once again. “Look at the profile that’s tagged in the picture.” Josh clicked on it and the entire profile was only pictures of Valerie. In a few of them, her hair was dyed a faded-orange color, but it wasn’t difficult to identify that it was still her. Then in the more recent ones, her hair was back to what was very close to her original color. A couple of the photos were just of her, but there were a few taken within the past couple of weeks with both her and Hazel.

The entire room collapsed in on me, and I braced my hand on Josh’s shoulder to keep myself standing.

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