Page 52 of His Reckoning

I leave the kitchen before I can change my mind about anything that just happened.

Chapter Nine

Kayla

The sound of his footsteps fades down the hallway. A moment later, I hear a door close somewhere in the apartment. The penthouse is quiet again.

“Well,” I murmur to myself, “that was weird.”

I push away from the counter and begin to rinse the glasses in the sink, but my brain is still replaying the moment from thirty seconds ago.

How he looked as he stepped closer. The way his voice dropped when he said my name.

I dry my hands and head down the hallway toward my room because, clearly, the best solution to this situation is sleep. Except when I get into my room, I’m not tired at all.

My brain is buzzing.

I sit on the edge of the bed and stare at my laptop.

“You’re not getting me again,” I tell it.

I hesitate before I open it.

I’m just going to check something—that’s what I tell myself.

The blank document pops onto the screen.

I sigh. “Fine.”

My fingers start moving. At first, the words come slowly. A sentence here, then another one a minute later. But before I know it, a scene begins forming almost without my permission.

At some point, I glance up at the clock to see that an hour has passed.

I blink at the screen in shock when I realize I wrote an entire chapter. I lean back against the headboard and stare at the word count.

“Unbelievable.”

The truth is painfully obvious. My writer’s block didn’t just magically disappear. It left the moment Sawyer cornered me in that kitchen.

Just like it did the other night after the gym.

I close the laptop slowly.

“Well,” I say to the empty room, “that’s inconvenient.”

Because if this keeps happening … living with Sawyer might turn out to be extremely productive.

* * *

I’m lying in bed, thinking about last night and the fact that I apparently wrote an entire chapter because the man had cornered me in a kitchen.

I pull the pillow over my face. “Great.”

Eventually, I roll out of bed and wander down the hallway.

The apartment is already awake. Sawyer is standing near the windows with his phone pressed to his ear.

“… that’s not what I asked for,” he says calmly.