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But the boxes are still there. My car is a temporary storage unit because unpacking them feels a little too permanent.

And I’m not staying.

I still check apartment listings every day. I’ve saved four this week. One disappeared before I could schedule a showing, two would require selling an organ to afford, and the fourth would make my commute long enough to qualify as a second job.

I’ll keep looking. I’m just not panicking about it anymore. Which probably has nothing to do with the man who poured my coffee this morning. Probably.

And that’s precisely why I have to find a place of my own sooner rather than later. Because every time a line gets blurred, I have trouble remembering why there are lines at all.

The elevator finally opens into the lobby.

“Happy Friday, Miss Laney.” Henry catches me on my way past his desk and holds out a Werther’s.

I take it with a grateful smile. “You have excellent timing.”

“So I’ve been told.”

He offers his fist, and I bump mine against it. “Have a good weekend, Henry.”

“You too.” The revolving door spits me out onto the sidewalk, and the first breath of cold October air hits my lungs.

I can breathe. I pull in another breath, deeper this time.

The city is already moving around me. A bus groans away from the curb. Tires hiss over damp pavement. Someone lays on a horn half a block away, and the sweet smell drifting from somewhere nearby mixes with exhaust and coffee. Normally, it would be sensory overload.

This morning, I need it—anything to clear the last traces of clean soap and cedar from my head.

I unwrap the Werther’s and pop it into my mouth, letting the familiar caramel sweetness melt over my tongue as I join the flow of people headed toward the train.

I can’t wait to get to work. That’s exactly what I need. Manuscripts. Reader reports. Fourteen overly specific suggestions from Steve.

Things I can actually make sense of. Unlike Bishop.

By the time I reach the train, I’ve done what I do best—shelved the entire incident in the back of my mind with all the other moments over the years that I’ve read too much into.

Falling asleep together was an accident.

For a few hazy seconds, I let myself believe waking up in his arms meant I wasn’t the only one who’d wanted that moment to last. But his reaction was the not-so-gentle reminder I needed.

He was half asleep, but I was the one dreaming.

And now I’m wide awake.

Bishop and I are never going to happen.

The sooner I remember that—and find a place of my own—the better off we’ll both be.

End of story.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

DELANEY

“What are you doing?” Bishop leans over my shoulder, close enough that I catch the faint scent of soap and cedar and feel the heat of him at my back.

I don’t lift my head from my laptop. “Looking at apartments.”

I try not to think about how he just spent the last twenty minutes in the shower or the hour before that in the home gym working up a sweat.