By the time the knock comes, I’ve memorized the cracks in my ceiling.
There’s one that looks like a lightning bolt above my bed, another like a question mark over the door. I stare up at them from the couch, bare feet tucked under me, laptop open but abandoned. My phone face-down on the coffee table still buzzes occasionally, a wasp trapped under glass.
The knock is soft, controlled. Three raps, evenly spaced. Not a delivery guy. Not a neighbor. Not the kind of pounding that says, “Internet mob here to drag you in person,” either.
I sit up too fast anyway, heart lurching. The room tilts for a second before it settles.
“Emma?” a voice calls through the door. Male. Low. Calm like still water over something sharp. “It’s Jonah Creed. Marcus sent me.”
My fingers go cold.
I stand there in the middle of my living room, clutching my own elbows, the way I’ve been half-hugging myself for days. I’ve seen his name in the emails. The contract my lawyer forwarded. The NDA. The bullet points: full-time protection, undercover arrangement, temporary cohabitation.
Move in.
Undercover boyfriend.
It all sounded abstract until that voice slid under my door.
I cross to the peephole on legs that feel like they belong to someone else. Outside, the hallway light is dim, flickering at the far end. He’s standing squarely in front of my door, back to the opposite wall. Not crowding the frame, but filling it anyway.
Everything about him is angles—jaw, cheekbones, the cut of his coat. Dark hair, clipped close. No smile. His eyes are what stop me: pale, unnervingly focused, like he’s already cataloging bolt locks and sightlines through a fisheye lens.
He has one hand on a black duffel at his feet, the strap looped through his fingers. The other is loose at his side, relaxed in a way that feels intentional.
He knows I’m looking.
“Can you say the code word?” I call, wincing at how thin my voice sounds.
There’s a pause. Then, flatly, “Marcus doesn’t do code words. But he told me to tell you you didn’t bill him for the last consult and that annoyed him more than your current crisis.”
That… is depressingly accurate.
I undo the chain, slide back the deadbolt, and open the door halfway, keeping my body in the gap.
He’s taller up close, or maybe my apartment shrank. Broad shoulders beneath a charcoal henley and a worn, dark jacket. He smells faintly like the outside air—cool, metallic, November—and something warmer underneath. Soap, maybe. Or just him.
For some reason, I’d expected tactical gear and a taciturn growl. He’s in black jeans and boots and looks like the kind of guy who could be heading to a late movie or to break someone’s wrist, depending on whether he smiled.
He is not smiling.
“Ms. Vale.” His gaze tracks over my face, down to the hand still on the door, up again. Not lingering. Assessing. “Can I come in?”
I feel suddenly conscious of everything: my oversized sweatshirt, the mess of takeout containers on the counter, the string of hate notifications pulsing on the face-down phone like a living thing.
I start to say yes. What comes out is, “Do you always introduce yourself like a tax audit?”
One corner of his mouth twitches, the ghost of something that might be amusement. Or irritation. Hard to tell.
