Page 86 of How to Train Your Billionaire

Before I can answer, my phone pings. It’s the invite for my mother’s annual Fourth of July party.

“Sorry, I can’t,” I tell Victoria, brain already working overtime. Charles always attends my mother’s party. And now I’m wondering if Frankie will be joining him.

Chapter Thirty-Three

New Normal

Frankie

The cubicle walls are beige. Not cream, not tan—beige. Like someone took the color of sadness and slapped it on particleboard.

I stare at my computer screen, where spreadsheet cells blur together in neat little rows. Column A: Account numbers. Column B: Transaction dates. Column C: My will to live, slowly draining away.

“Frankie?” My supervisor, Janet, hovers beside my desk, clutching a stack of invoices. “Can you reconcile these by end of day?”

“Sure.” I take the papers without looking up. More numbers. More beige.

Janet walks away in her sensible shoes, and I go back to typing. Click, type, click, type. The rhythm that used to soothe me now feels like a metronome counting down to my death.

My phone buzzes with a text from Tessa.

Tessa:How’s the dream job?

Frankie:Living the dream. If the dream involves slowly losing your mind in a fluorescent-lit prison.

Tessa:That bad?

Frankie:I just spent twenty minutes entering data about toilet paper purchases for a law firm.

Tessa:Glamorous.

I set my phone down and rub my temples. This is what I wanted, right? Stability. Predictability. A job where the biggest surprise is whether the coffee in the break room is slightly less terrible than usual.

So why does it feel like I’m suffocating?

At lunch, I sit alone in the break room, picking at the turkey sandwich I brought from home while my coworkers discuss their weekend plans. Concerts in the park. Beach houses in the Hamptons. Wine tastings up in Beacon. Normal people doing normal things.

I think about Charles. The way he’d hum off-key while doing the crossword. How he’d get excited about stupid things like finding a good liverwurst sandwich.

How he’d look at me like what I had to say mattered.

“You’re new, right?”

I look up. David from HR is standing there with a sad desk salad, smiling hopefully.

“Sort of.” I’ve been here for a week. In cubicle time, it feels like three years.

“Mind if I sit?”

I gesture to the empty chair. David settles in, adjusting his tie. He’s nice. Safe. The kind of guy who probably has a 401(k) and sends his mom flowers on Mother’s Day.

“How are you liking it so far?”

“It’s great,” I lie. “Very ... structured.”

“That’s what I love about it. You always know what to expect.” He takes a bite of lettuce. “I heard you used to travel a lot? For work?”

“Something like that.”