Tighter this time.
This wasn’t the kind of life I wanted to bring back to Wisconsin. Not to her front porch. Not to a kid she might want to raise someday, who’d be stuck watching me stress-eat microwave dinners at midnight and snap at emails written in Comic Sans.
I wanted more than that.
No, I wantedlessofthis.
Fewer urgent flags, fewer nights spent hunched over briefs no one would remember a week later. And more…
More Fifi.
More stolen kisses and glitter-smeared counters and chickens named after celebrities.
More mornings where her laugh was the first sound I heard and not my alarm screaming me into another 12-hour day.
But first?
I needed to survive this inbox.
Or at least not let it swallow me whole.
I cracked my knuckles, opened the laptop again, and this time, instead of responding to the emails, I clicked open a blank draft.
Subject line: Out of Office – Extended.
And just for once, I meant it.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Fifi
I didn’t mean to linger outside his door.
I’d told myself I was just heading down to check the front desk log. Maybe snag another muffin. Maybe toss one in the general direction of Millie’s front porch with a note that saidNice aim, sniper.
But my feet had other plans.
Ben’s room sat quietly at the end of the hallway, the door still ajar from when I’d stepped in to check on towels, and yes, kiss him breathless like a woman who forgot how doors worked.
I was still a little dazed by how he’d looked at me before I left. Like I’d caught him off guard. Like maybe he was starting to let himselffeelsomething.
But now?
Now I heard his voice. Low. Tense.
He was on the phone.
“No. I told you I’d follow up after the fourth. I don’t have access to that here.”
A pause. A heavier sigh.
“I said I’m not home. Yes, I’m still on the trip. No, it wasn’t a last-minute emergency; it was a last-minutedecision.”
I hovered, guilty but frozen.
His voice was clipped, the edge I hadn’t heard in a couple of days slipping back in.
“Because I needed a break, that’s why. You can’t keep pushing me like this and expect me to respond on your timeline. I’m a partner.”
