Page 74 of His Reckoning

Sawyer studies me for a second longer than necessary, like he’s seeing me differently all of a sudden.

Then he steps back. “Problem solved.”

I clear my throat. “Right.”

He sets the bowl on the counter and grabs his keys. “I forgot I have a meeting.”

“Of course you do.”

Sawyer pauses at the doorway before he glances back at me once.

“Try to eat something today,” he says, and then he leaves.

The door closes behind him.

I stand in the kitchen for another minute, staring at the cabinet like it personally offended me because something about that moment crossed a line neither of us acknowledged.

I have a feeling my writing productivity is about to spike again.

The apartment falls quiet after Sawyer leaves. Which is strange because it wasn’t exactly loud before, but somehow, the absence of him changes the space.

I shake my head and grab my laptop.

“This is ridiculous,” I mutter.

At this point, Sawyer Maccini is becoming a workplace hazard for my creativity.

Unfortunately, my mind seems to disagree.

I carry the laptop down the hallway to my room and close the door behind me. The moment the screen lights up, the words start coming.

The words come too fast for me to stop them. The scene forms almost immediately.

Two people standing too close together in a kitchen. A cabinet door open above them. The heroine trapped between the counter and the hero’s arm braced against the wall.

I pause for half a second, then keep typing.

The tension builds as the heroine notices everything. The way he smells. The way his voice drops when he speaks to her. The way he looks at her, like he’s trying to decide something.

My pulse speeds up a little, which is deeply annoying because I know exactly where the inspiration for this scene came from. And I know exactly which man’s voice my brain keeps using when I write the dialogue.

I stop typing when the line between fiction and memory disappears completely.

“Unbelievable,” I whisper.

I immediately begin to replay the moment in the kitchen.

Sawyer leaning over me while his hand was braced against the cabinet. How he looked down at me, like he’d suddenly noticed something new.

I stare at the screen and continue. The scene shifts. Now the hero’s hand slides along the counter beside the heroine.

Not touching her, but close enough that the lack of contact becomes its own kind of torture.

My stomach flips, which is new for me because I’m the one writing the scene.

I lean back against the headboard and read what I’ve written.

Not touching her, but close enough that the lack of contact becomes its own kind of torture.