Page 18 of For the Plot

“I’ll have the contract sent by end of day,” I manage.

“Looking forward to reading it.”

I almost hang up.

Almost.

But something makes me pause.

“Skye.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m trusting you with a lot.” I don’t say it as a warning or like I’m worried she can’t handle it, but I also need her to know the reality of the situation. As my right hand, she’ll have access to me and my company in a way nobody else does.

Her voice softens again, but there’s a smile in it too. “Don’t worry. I’ll behave.”

That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.

“See you soon,” I say.

“Can’t wait.”

The line goes dead, and I set the phone down with more care than necessary. I stand there for a long moment, staring at the city as if it might offer some kind of absolution, but it doesn’t.

By the timeI get home, the sun has dipped behind the skyline, casting my penthouse in long shadows and a golden haze. I set my keys down on the entryway table and loosen my tie with a slow, practiced motion. The silence here is familiar, soaked into the walls, expensive and expansive.

I used to think it felt like freedom. Zero obligations to anyone. Nobody to pester me about getting home late or working on the weekends. Nobody to remind me that I’ve misseda significant date. Now, more often than not, it feels like an echo chamber.

I cross the space to the bar and pour myself a drink, an aged bourbon that burns just right going down my throat. I settle into the leather armchair by the window, glass in hand, and stare out at the city below. From this height, the world looks manageable. Predictable even.

Which is a lie, of course.

I’ve built my entire life on the illusion of control. Systems, routines, measured choices. I know how to take a risk without letting it show. I know how to negotiate without raising my voice. I know how to want something without letting it interfere.

At least, I used to.

Skye Rhodes shouldn’t be interfering.

But I can still hear her voice. That sharp, teasing lilt as she said, “Looks like you’ve got me at your beck and call… at least temporarily.”She made it sound like a game. Like she knew I’d already lost.

She doesn’t belong in my world.

Not because she isn’t capable—she’s more than capable—but because she’s not afraid of me. Most people walk into a room with me and shrink, recalibrate, try to figure out who they need to be to earn my time. Skye does the opposite. She challenges by default. She meets power with irreverence and fires back twice as fast.

And it unsettles me.

I take a slow sip of the bourbon and let it settle in my chest, trying to drown the image of her, barefoot in her apartment in that oversized hoodie and those damn leggings she wore the other night, smirking at her laptop as she typed her email to me.

The part of me that is still logical, still rooted in rules and risk mitigation, knows this is a mistake. I hired her to be myassistant, but there’s a part of me, one that’s been quiet and buried, that’s already imagining more.

I close my eyes, picturing what it’ll be like to see her every morning. To hear her voice outside my office door. To feel her presence in the space I’ve kept sterile on purpose. She’ll bring chaos, I already know it. She’ll ask questions I’ve avoided asking myself for years because she knew me before this world.

And I’ll let her.

I shut my eyes and lean back in the chair, the weight of the day catching up with me all at once. I’m tired. But more than that, I’m lonely. Not in the obvious sense. Not in the dinner-party-for-one kind of way. It’s quieter than that. Deeper. The kind of loneliness that builds when you’ve stopped letting people matter.

My wife died when I was thirty-five.