Page 30 of Coming Home

Emma Carrow was back in my space.

And I was in so much trouble it wasn't even funny.

CHAPTER 11

Emma

He followed me all the way to the studio.

I asked him three times on the drive over if he didn't have somewhere more urgent to be. A grueling training session. A high-stakes sponsorship meeting. Literally anything related to his actual career and the Olympic Games now only seven weeks out.

"No," he said all three times, without a beat of hesitation, his thumb idly scrolling through his phone in the passenger seat.

"You can't come inside," I said, shifting the SUV into park near the stucco entrance. "This is a professional environment, Ralph. I need to be taken seriously."

"I'll sit in the lobby."

"You'll be in the way."

"I'll be a ghost."

"You are physically incapable of being a ghost. Your presence is loud. You take up acoustic space."

"I don't know what that means," he murmured, lips twitching, "but it sounds like a compliment."

"It's absolutely not a compliment."

He got out of the car anyway. The heavy thud of his door closing was his final answer. He followed me inside, his long strides easily matching my hurried ones, and now Ralph Brandt—six-foot-three of elite Olympic muscle wrapped in a soft black T-shirt and dark denim—was sitting in the reception area of KPFK community radio. He'd even put on those ridiculous black-rimmed reading glasses he'd started wearing around the house, looking like an incredibly hot, immovable fixture refusing to be left behind.

This entire day was Nadia's fault.

A week ago, my phone had chimed with a confirmation email for a voice-acting audition I had never applied for. A short health-education segment, a radio broadcast about chronic-illness management—fifteen minutes of scripted narration that would air on local stations across Southern California. The pay was modest but beautifully real. Enough to cover my rent and phone bill if I wanted.

I'd called Nadia the second I read the email, my heart doing a nervous little flutter.

"You cannot just submit people for jobs without asking, Nadia."

"Watch me, sweetie."

"What if I'm terrible? What if my voice sounds tight?"

"You won't be."

"What if I freeze up in the booth? What if the silence swallows me?"

"Then you'll take a breath and unfreeze."

"What if my voice cracks? What if it sounds… broken?"

"Then it'll sound human, Em. And people will bleed for it."

I hadn't had a fifth objection, so I'd sighed and given in.

Voice work wasn't foreign to me. After I quit swimming—after I burned through my savings from winning several Olympic medals, James's dwindling patience, and what was left of my fractured self-respect—I'd stumbled into it by accident. A woman at a college workshop heard me read a passage aloud and told me I had the kind of voice that made people stop what they were doing just to listen. I hadn't believed her, of course, but I had believed the two hundred dollars she paid me to narrate a series of guided meditations for her wellness app.

Then came the audiobook chapters.

Then a few corporate training modules. Then the voiceover gig that paid for my lonely motel room while James kept all my earthly belongings hostage behind a locked door.