I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my face.
This was the part of the day where my brain usually started looking for an exit ramp.
Lunch.
I pushed away from the desk and stood up slowly. My ankle reminded me it still existed. The limp had mostly faded but long stretches of sitting made it complain again.
From his perch near the living room window, Markie said, “LUNCH.”
“Yes,” I muttered.
The kitchen felt strangely orderly when I walked in. The cabinets were arranged. The dishes had homes. The small stack of boxes I had planned to unpack sometime in the next three weeks had vanished.
I opened the freezer and grabbed one of the frozen meals I had stocked up on before moving. It went straight into the microwave.
I leaned against the counter while it rotated slowly behind the glass.
And that was when the second realization hit.
Liam had done all of this.
The kitchen hadn’t looked like this before him. The cabinets had been chaos. The counter had been covered in moving supplies and loose kitchen tools I had intended to organize eventually.
Now everything was where it belonged.
I glanced toward the hallway.
The same thing had happened in the living room. My bookshelves were assembled and organized. The television was mounted. The furniture had shifted into actual functional placement instead of the temporary disaster I had been living in.
The microwave beeped.
I glared at it.
I didn’t like how easily he had stepped into my life and started fixing things.
I especially didn’t like how helpful it had been.
Or how he made me laugh.
Or how he paid attention.
Or how he looked at me in a way that made my entire nervous system stop screaming for five minutes.
And—
No.
I opened the microwave and pulled my meal out.
That line of thinking was banned.
I walked back to my laptop, carrying the steaming plastic tray.
The room looked almost respectable now. My desk was clear. The monitors were aligned. The cables were bundled together neatly along the wall.
I hadn’t really registered any of this before now. I was totally checked out.
I sat down, and then I screamed.
