Page 7 of His Good Girl

Sent.

I froze as a cold rush went through me, followed almost immediately by a hot one. My heart started beating everywhere:temples, wrists, throat, stomach. I clicked into my sent folder because I guess I needed to look directly at the crime scene. There it was. A favor. 11:48 p.m. To: Callum Rowe.

“Oh, my God,” I whispered.

My phone buzzed again.

Jules:Well?

I picked it up with numb fingers.

Me:I sent it.

The typing bubbles appeared instantly, disappeared, appeared again.

Jules:That’s my girl.

Then, a second later:

Jules:Proud of you. Even though you’re disgusting about your godfather.

I laughed, but it came out shaky.

Me:Goodnight, chaos demon.

Jules:Dream of load-bearing walls.

I set the phone down, closed the laptop, and sat in the lamplight with my hands clasped between my knees. Nothing had changed, not really. My apartment was still too small. My bank account was still anemic. My resume was still a patchwork of bad luck and worse judgment. Callum Rowe was still somewhere across the city, impossibly far above me in every practical sense, and now an email from me was waiting for him in his inbox, slipping silently toward him through wires and servers and whatever invisible machinery carried humiliations from one life into another.

I should have felt relief. Instead, I felt like I had stepped off a curb without looking and heard, somewhere close, the low and unmistakable sound of a large truck heading right for me.

I turned off the lamp and crawled back into bed, but sleep did not come quickly. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Callum’s name glowing on the screen. I saw his face from that construction photo, wind-cut and serious, his eyes narrowed against the weather. I imagined him reading my message in the morning with coffee in hand with his tie still loose. Ignoring it. Forwarding it to someone so they could handle it. Calling me personally, his voice calm, saying my name like he had always known exactly where I was going to end up.

Avery.

Just that.

Just my name, in his mouth, with all the years between us suddenly rearranging themselves into something I did not know how to survive.

Outside, the rain kept falling. Inside, my phone stayed dark.

And in the morning, everything would either be exactly as bad as before, or much, much worse.

CHAPTER 2

Avery

My phone had been buzzing for a while before I understood it as a real sound and not part of the anxious, half-lit dream I had been having, which involved a conference room, my father’s old drafting table, and Callum Rowe reading my email out loud to a jury of women who all looked vaguely like Marlena Cross. I clawed my way toward consciousness one humiliating inch at a time, face mashed into my pillow, mouth dry from too much wine and too little dignity, and reached blindly across the blanket until my fingers closed around the warm rectangle of my phone. For one perfect second before I looked at the screen, I did not remember what I had done.

Then I saw the notification.

Unknown Number:Ms. Hale, this is Benjamin Mercer, Mr. Rowe’s executive assistant.

My heart tried to leave my body through my throat, and I sat up so fast the room tilted. There were four messages, all from the same number, all delivered at an hour when only responsible adults, assassins, and men with personal assistants were awake.

Unknown Number:Mr. Rowe has read your email.

Unknown Number:If you are actually serious, Mr. Rowe will meet you for an interview at 9:00 a.m. Rowe Tower, 47th floor. Bring identification. Bring a current resume if one exists in the wild.