"I'll wait."
Static. Then: “Ugh. This wasn’t part of the deal.”
The door clicked open.
I took the stairs—three flights, since the elevator remained a decorative fixture rather than functional machinery—and found her door already cracked. I pushed it open to discover Willow Monroe in gray sweatpants, an oversized hoodie that proclaimed "I Like Big Books and I Cannot Lie," and a bun that looked as though it had been assembled during an earthquake.
She was holding a coffee mug with both hands, glaring at me over the rim.
"Goodmorning," I said.
"It was." She took a pointed sip. "Then you showed up."
"Get dressed. We're going on a trip."
"Excuse me?"
"A day trip. You and me. I'm driving."
She stared at me as though I'd suggested we rob a bank. "You can't just show up at my apartment and demand I go on a mystery trip with you. That's not how this works."
"And yet, here I am." I leaned against her doorframe—the same harvest-gold kitchen visible behind her, the same questionable ceiling tiles overhead. "We need to be seen together more. Build credibility beyond charity galas. This is part of the plan. Strategic, if you will.”
"Strategic." She said the word as though testing it for rot. "At ten in the morning. On my day off. With no warning."
"I texted you."
"When?"
"Twenty minutes ago."
She grabbed her phone from the counter, squinted at the screen. "'Be ready in thirty. Dress warm.' That's not a warning, Callum. That's a hostage demand."
"You're being dramatic."
"You're being a control freak." But she was alreadymoving toward her bedroom, coffee still in hand. "Where are we going?"
"It's a surprise."
She stopped. Turned. "I hate surprises."
"I know."
"Then why?—"
"Get dressed, Willow."
She made a noise of pure frustration and disappeared into her room. I heard drawers opening and closing, the thump of what sounded like a shoe being thrown, and a muffled curse that I chose not to acknowledge.
I waited in her living room, hands in my coat pockets, examining the space with an architect's eye that I couldn't turn off. The furniture was mismatched but comfortable—a velvet couch in deep purple, a coffee table that looked like a thrift store rescue, bookshelves overflowing with romance novels and cookbooks. Plants everywhere, most of them thriving despite the building's subpar natural lighting.
It was chaotic. Colorful. Entirely her.
I found myself cataloging details I had no business noticing. The half-finished crossword on the coffee table. The reading glasses perched on a stack of paperbacks. The throw blanket tangled at one end of the couch, suggesting she'd been there before I buzzed.
She emerged fifteen minutes later injeans, boots, and a chunky knit sweater the color of rust. Her hair was down now, waves falling past her shoulders. No makeup that I could detect, though I was hardly an expert.
She looked like autumn made human. Not that I'd ever say that out loud.
