I haven’t really paid much attention to Frankie’s room, using most of my focus the couple of times I’ve been in here on the pretty girl I always find sitting on her bed, but Bronwyn’s observations do nothing but anger me even further. Frankie isn’t a child. She’s a beautiful woman, the mother of my unborn child, and I hate seeing someone who doesn’t even like her in her space. It’s a violation, an intrusion.

“Get. Out.”

I use the same tone Frankie used with me the last time I stepped foot in here, only I’m not able to hide the hatred in my voice the way she did.

“Fine,” Bronwyn huffs before looking back at her friends.

Her two friends slide past me, but Bronwyn reaches for me when she draws near. I shrug out of her grasp.

“Don’t touch me,” I hiss, looking down at her and hoping she can tell I wouldn’t touch her if she were the last girl on earth.

All the dislike I faked with Frankie is one hundred percent accurate for the way I feel about this girl.

“Want to go to your room? I can help you get in a better mood.”

The offer is ridiculous, and she knows it. Other than using her for a prop to upset Frankie, I haven’t laid a finger on her. I don’t know what her skin feels like or if her lips are soft. I know nothing about her. I don’t listen when she talks, and if Frankie isn’t nearby, I don’t even pay her an ounce of attention.

“You need to leave,” I repeat. “Not just from up here, but you need to get out of this house. Take everyone else with you.”

Bronwyn gives me a quick smile, leaving me wondering if she even understands what I demanded of her as she walks away. She doesn’t leave. She doesn’t tell everyone else to leave either, and I just can’t be bothered enough to go down and tell them either.

I lock myself in my borrowed bedroom and tune them all out.Chapter 40Frankie

“Calm down!” Piper demands when I throw all of my pillows to the floor.

“I can’t! Will you help me look?” More than morning sickness threatens to make me sick.

“We looked there already.”

I don’t stop pulling everything from my bedside table, uncaring if my floor looks like it was the primary focus of tornadic activity.

“It’s a pregnancy thing,” Piper says as she reaches for me, a bid to make me calm down, but that is an impossible feat. “Pregnancy brain. I read all about it. It’ll turn up.”

I can’t even focus on the fact that my best friend has done more research on pregnancy than I have, and she isn’t even the one facing motherhood. Maybe if I could hold my eyes open for longer than an hour, I’d be able to get around to it.

“What’s in it?” she asks calmly.

“Everything,” I tell her, swiping at the tears that refuse to subside. “This summer. The pregnancy. Everything. Someone took it.”

“No one took it.” She grabs me by my shoulders and forces me to look her in the eye. Concern draws her brow in. “Calm down.”

“Would you be calm if someone took your journal?”

Her mouth clamps closed, and I have my answer. She writes in her journal daily, or at least she used to before all of her time was taken up by Dalton. I don’t know if she still does, but I’ve been writing in mine a lot since I returned from Utah. I spilled every ounce of my soul into that stupid journal, and now it’s missing.

“When did you last see it?”

I do my best to think back, matching my breathing to her calming pace.

“Fr-Friday, I think.”

Every day for the last week has seemed like a million years long. I spent the weekend at Piper’s avoiding this house and the birthday party Zeke threw himself. Strangely, the house was in complete order when I returned home this morning to change when I expected to walk into a war zone.

“You think?” she asks.

“Yeah.” I take a deep breath. “I wrote in it before I went to school.”

I don’t mention getting up that day before the sun rose because I had been sleeping the entire day before after Zeke found the tests in the bathroom. My eyes widen with realization.

“I wrote about…” I swallow. “Everything. Everything is in there.”

“We’ll find it. You just misplaced it.”

“He took it, Piper. I know he took it.”

I make a move to go around her toward the bathroom door leading to his room, but she stops me.

“We have to go to school, Frankie. He has practice after school today, right?” I nod. “Then we’ll come home straight from school and tear his room apart.”

I keep my eyes on the door.

“After school,” she repeats. “Grab your backpack. We need to head downstairs and get that baby something to eat.”

Tags: Marie James Westover Prep Romance
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