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As if to make up for your perfidy, you set about to cleaning the place up.

It’s pretty clean already—Kai’s not a slob, and you know he has a housekeeper come in weekly.

None of that matters. Restless energy has you buzzing, making your palms itch for something productive to do.

It’s just how you are wired. It takes some more rummaging before you find a cordless Dyson stick-vac mounted on the wall in the same closet that houses his washer and dryer, so you run it over the floors while you wash a small load of dark delicates from the hamper in his bedroom.

On his kitchen island, there’s a no-name candle with a label that reads “Laundry Day.” You light it, and a chemical-y, artificial (if not completely unpleasant) smell of clean linen fills the first floor.

It takes fluffing the throw pillows on his sectional couch for the fifth time and discovering that the cloth you use to wipe down his counters comes back completely spotless for you to decide that you are wasting your time.

So you head upstairs and throw open the closet you investigated earlier.

It’s not a small closet, despite being one-third the size of any of yours, but it is absolutely jammed.

It hadn’t occurred to you that Kai had so many clothes.

There appears to be little organization, with t-shirts and button-downs sharing space with jeans and dress pants.

It’s all a mishmash of fabrics. His shoes, too, are a disaster.

Despite there being dedicated storage for shoes in built-in cubbyholes, the majority are thrown in a few round laundry baskets on the floor.

Obviously, the maid doesn’t venture in here.

You resolutely tie your hair back in a ponytail and get to work.

First, you think, you will sort all the clothing by type, and then hang each category in color order, which is how you like your own closets organized.

Items that are falling off hangers, you straighten and adjust. Tops will go on the top bars, and bottoms on the bottom.

In this way, you lose an unknown span of time.

Sitting on the floor of your boyfriend’s closet, surrounded by his clothing, trying to decide whether track pants should be lumped in with sweatpants or given their own sections.

There are corners of the closet that probably haven’t seen the light of day since Kai’s rookie year, and things are pretty dusty.

It must have been one of the resulting sneezing fits that drew Cherie Reinhart’s attention when she, unbeknownst to you, entered the condo and came upstairs.

“Christ on the cross, baby, you scared the hell out of me!” she exclaims, clutching her ample chest.

You are equally startled, lost as you were in the reverie of sorting 12 green Nike t-shirts by shade.

(Kai, it seems, really likes green. Maybe because of Cyclones loyalty?

Celadon obviously falls on the light side and hunter green on the dark, but what the fuck is there to do about mint, which is the same saturation as celadon, but less yellow in tone?)

“Oh! H-hi,” you stutter, which is unlike you. You’ve been marinating in the cool white light of the closet LEDs for long enough that the daylight Mrs. Reinhart is letting in seems uncommonly bright.

“Sterling, honey, what are you doing?” She pushes her glasses up her nose and stares down at you.

It’s kind of intimidating, honestly. The woman is only about 5’3”—her strapping sons all got their height from another part of the family, clearly—but radiates Big Matriarch Energy. Maybe it’s the cherry-red hair.

You gesture around at the clothing piles that cover the floor like so many snow drifts. “I’m organizing.”

She raises an eyebrow. “You decided to come over and organize Kaius’s closet?”

“Well, when you say it like that, it sounds weird.”

Shrugging, she raises her hands. “We all deal with stress in our own ways.”

Rocking backwards, you pull yourself to your feet. Your ass is a little sore from having been cross-legged on the floor for a couple hours, but it’s nothing you can’t handle.

“What are you doing here?” you ask her in return, brushing off the seat of your pants.

“Didn’t you get my messages?”

It’s right at that very second that, after a few moments of patting yourself down, you realize with a thrill of horror that you must have left your phone downstairs. If you had to guess, it’s probably on the island beside the unattended candle.

“No,” you say, appalled.

Mrs. Reinhart shakes her head. “I thought it was peculiar that you didn’t respond, but I figured you were dealing with business. Kaius is coming home.”

“When?”

“Any minute. I don’t have my car down here, so the team arranged a ride for him.”

Panic spills over you like a bucket of cold water.

She doesn’t have a car. Of course she doesn’t!

The cars that you own are literally innumerable.

Town cars, black SUVs, daily drivers that various members of your team use…

and the fucking Cyclones had to arrange a ride for Kai and his mother to come home?

You should have been there.

Here you are, sitting like a moron on the closet floor, when your partner needed a ride home from the hospital. All because you apparently took leave of your intelligence and left your phone downstairs.

The play of disquieted emotions across your expression must have been obvious, because Mrs. Reinhart’s face softens.

“Baby, it’s okay,” she says. “I got an Uber. The team people offered to give me a ride as well, but I wanted to come here fast and make sure things were set up. Quill needed to get back to Georgia. He thanks you kindly for the flight.”

“Just tell me what to do,” you say. “Put me to work. I was just killing time until they released him.”

She flicks her fingers in the direction of the staircase.

“He got flowers in the hospital. A lot of flowers. We donated most of them to two local women’s shelters, but there are a few he wanted to bring with him.

The concierge helped me load them onto a hand-cart, and those are in the living room.

I thought maybe I’d start working on making him some dinner, but then I realized Kaius ain’t got nothing in this house besides snacks.

I placed a grocery order a couple hours ago to get his pantry stocked. Those sheets been changed on the bed?”

You rack your brain. “Um, his housekeeper comes on Thursday, and it’s only Monday. So they’re pretty fresh.”

She wrinkles her nose with an unspoken, dismissive distrust of the hired help. “I’ll change them again,” she declares. “Sterling, baby, you be a good boy and leave that mess of clothes alone. It will still be here later. Can I put you in charge of those flowers?”

“You surely can,” you say obediently.

She dismisses you with a wave of her hand. As you leave the room, she’s behind you in hot pursuit of the linen closet in the hall.

Mrs. Reinhart wasn’t kidding about the flowers. There are six large arrangements on the handcart, which boggles your mind when you remember that Kai gave most of them away. As you are mentally deciding where you can place the vases, you peek at the cards.

There are dozens of multicolored tulips from Sandy and Jamie.

Roman and August, Kai’s other two brothers, sent sunflowers and hydrangeas, respectively.

The Cyclones’ front office was responsible for the massive, sprawling bouquet of goldenrod, thistle, bottlebrush, and yellow spray roses that’s taking up half the available space.

Appropriately, you notice, it’s all green and yellow.

Kai’s college friend Steven sent an elegant, masculine arrangement of ferns, protea, and berries.

The last arrangement is small; just a modest spray of lilies and white roses.

Curious about this one—which is neither as interesting to look at as the others nor, by process of elimination, a gift from his inner circle—you open the card.

Get well soon, Mr. Reinhart. We’re thinking about you and holding you up in prayer as you recover. Don’t hesitate to call if you ever need anything.

Affectionately,

Cal and the Grayson Enterprises Security Team

You can’t help the small “aww” that you breathe into the cool, linen-scented air.

It’s a toss-up as to what is cuter: the thought of stoic, frowning Cal ordering pretty flowers, or Kai’s obvious delight in receiving them.

He’s told you before that he thinks Cal is scary—which is kind of the point, although you yourself know that Cal isn’t scary unless he needs to be.

Are you witnessing the budding of a tentative bromance between your boyfriend and your head of security?

The thought puts a smile on your face for the first time in what feels like a solid week.

It takes some time to decide where to situate all the vases so that they don’t overwhelm the space.

Overhead, you can hear Mrs. Reinhart bustling around.

You have only just barely situated the last arrangement and swept some fallen flower petals into a dustpan when the front door opens, making you look up.

Two women in navy-blue scrubs enter the foyer backwards, one directing the other as she carefully pulls a wheelchair through the doorway.

Kai is in the wheelchair. There’s a plastic hospital band on his wrist and one of those thin, picky white institutional blankets on his lap.

His eyes are closed. The sight of him makes your heart jump in your chest like it’s doing a speed round on a trampoline, a frantic up-down throbbing that threatens to break your ribcage.

“Hey, you,” you say softly. You address the nurses. “Is he awake?”

A deep laugh rumbles from Kai’s chest. “Oh, I’m awake,” he mutters, without opening his eyes. “Damn sunlight is out to personally oppress me.”