Page 15 of You, Only You

I stood alone in the unit, surrounded by everything I'd built and hidden, and tried to identify what was different. The boxes were the same. The wall was the same. The humming lights and the concrete smell and the weight of what I carried, all the same.

Except it wasn't. Because someone else had seen it and hadn't run. Had looked at the worst of what I'd done and asked to do it with me.

My phone buzzed. A text from a number I didn't recognize:

Already started preliminary research on Meridian's corporate structure. Tomorrow, 8 AM?

I stared at the message. Then I typed back:

Bring coffee. It's going to be a long day.

Her response was immediate:

I know. That's why I'm not planning to sleep.

I pocketed my phone and pulled down the rolling door, sealing the unit back into darkness. On the walk to my car, I caught myself doing something I hadn't done in years.

I was looking forward to tomorrow.

Not because of the case. Not because of the hunt. Because of the way she'd saidwelike it was the most natural word in the world, and for a few seconds, I'd almost believed her.

I got in the car and sat there, engine off, replaying the evening. I should have been running contingencies. Should have been calculating exposure, building new firewalls, figuring out how to mitigate the risk of trusting someone I'd known for less than a week.

Instead, I was thinking about the way her hand felt in mine.

That should have worried me. It didn't. Which should have worried me more.

I started the car and drove home through empty streets, and somewhere between the storage facility and my building, I stopped trying to figure out what I was doing and just let myself do it.

That was new.

I wasn't sure whether this was progress or a mistake. But either way, I'd find out tomorrow at eight.

5.Lindsey

Ideveloped a system for working in the storage unit. Laptop on the left. Printouts on the right. Coffee in the exact center, enough distance between both elbows, because I'd already knocked one cup onto a shell company diagram, and Will had looked at the coffee stain like I'd personally insulted his research.

The system was excellent. Airtight. The one variable I hadn't accounted for was Will Steele's forearms.

He'd started rolling up his sleeves on day two. Just folded the cuffs back, twice, neat and precise, like everything he did. It shouldn't have registered. It was a practical decision in a cramped, poorly ventilated concrete box. I was a professional. I had spent a decade training my brain to notice patterns in data, not in the musculature of my colleagues' arms.

My brain, apparently, had other ideas.

The storage unit had become our world, a ten-by-fifteen concrete box stuffed with evidence, bad takeout containers, and the particular tension that comes from two people pretending very hard that the room is bigger than it is. My domain was the folding table on the left, covered in financial printouts, shell company diagrams, and a laptop that had seen better days.Will's domain was the wall, where his web of red string and photographs grew more intricate by the hour.

The space between our domains was approximately eighteen inches.

I discovered this on day two, when I reached for a file box at the same moment he turned from the wall. My shoulder connected with his chest, and I stumbled backward with all the grace of a newborn giraffe.

"Sorry," I muttered, face burning. "Tight quarters."

"Noted." His voice was dry, but his eyes flickered with what might have been amusement. "Try not to assault me again."

"I make no promises."

After that, we developed an unspoken choreography. He'd step left when I needed the file cabinet. I'd lean right when he reached for the printer. Our movements became a careful dance, always aware of where the other was, always maintaining that crucial sliver of distance.

The problem was that awareness didn't come with an off switch. I'd catch myself tracking his movements the way I tracked numbers: automatically, constantly, without deciding to. The way he planted his feet when he was thinking, weight slightly forward, like he was always ready to move. The way he held a pen, not writing, just turning it between his fingers while he stared at the wall, and his hands were distractingly capable-looking, which was not a thought I needed to be having about a man holding a pen.