Page 26 of His Reckoning

“Oh, no,” he says with a grin. “This is going to be very entertaining.”

Then he just stands up and leaves like he didn’t just cause a week’s worth of shit-talking from the guys.

But at least the office is quiet again.

Then my phone buzzes one more time on the desk.

Roman: Good luck.

I set the phone down.

Because if there’s one thing I already know about Kayla, it’s this: living with her is not going to bring peace and quiet.

Chapter Five

Kayla

The strange thing about moving out of an apartment is how quickly it stops feeling like yours.

Three days ago, this place felt normal. Now it feels like a storage unit with sentimental attachments.

I stand in the middle of the living room, holding a half-empty box labeledBooks, trying to decide if I actually need to keep three separate copies of the same romance novel.

The answer is yes. Some things are nonnegotiable.

Melissa’s old room is already empty. Her closet door hangs open, the hangers spaced out like tiny metal skeletons.

The silence in the apartment feels different without her here.

Not sad exactly. Just … unfinished.

I set the box down and glance around the room. Suitcases, plastic bins, and stacks of clothes I haven’t decided whether to keep or donate surround me.

And one stubborn laptop sitting on the coffee table.

I walk over and open it. The document appears immediately. Three sentences.

Still terrible. Still exactly the same three sentences I wrote last night.

I stare at them for a moment.

Nothing happens. My brain offers absolutely no assistance.

I close the laptop again. Instead, I grab another suitcase and start filling it with clothes from the hallway closet.

We technically still have two weeks left on our lease. That’s how long I have to move everything into storage and to pretend living in a billionaire’s penthouse isn’t extremely weird.

I drag the suitcase into the living room and glance around again. There’s a lot more here than I remember owning: books, shoes, and boxes labeled things likeOffice SuppliesandMiscellaneous.

I check the time on my phone. If I hurry, I can probably get most of this moved over in a few trips today.

The elevator in Sawyer’s building is big enough to fit several suitcases at once which is helpful because at this point, it feels like I own my body weight in belongings.

I zip the suitcase closed and drag it toward the door. The apartment echoes slightly when it’s this empty. For a moment, I pause in the doorway and glance back inside.

Three years—that’s how long Melissa and I lived here.

Three years of late-night takeout, bad reality television, and deadlines that always seemed to arrive too quickly.