Page 27

I texted Lauren, but she didn’t respond. Which wasn’t a surprise. She was my very best friend—my only friend aside from co-workers, if I was being honest—but she didn’t have much time for me anymore. She was in love, had found her soulmate, and now he took most of her time.

Which was how it was supposed to be.

She’d found the perfect person for her and they were constantly together.

But it left me feeling lost a lot of the time.

I plopped down on the sofa and tried to see if I could find an episode of Psych , because I was too tired to write at the moment and I wasn’t in the mood for Stephen King.

But sitting there, looking for something on the TV, kind of illuminated just how stagnant my life was.

Because here I was, in a stunning multimillion-dollar apartment, and I literally had no one to call and freak out about it to.

No one but my mom, who arguably didn’t really care where I was or what I was doing if it didn’t affect her.

Truth be told, I kind of wanted to order a pizza just so I could show the driver that I was doing something exciting.

But I didn’t have money to waste on pizza.

God, I was pathetic.

Loneliness was a stupid word, a word that conjured images of moonfaced women crying because they didn’t think anyone loved them, and I wasn’t that.

I wasn’t lonely.

It was more that I was…invisible . Everyone else in the world seemed to have their full and busy lives, and my tiny little existence happened outside their jurisdiction. I exchanged conversation with customers and co-workers, and they seemed to like me, but I was alone in my personal life.

And sometimes it felt like I’d been that way for a very long time.

I was fine with being by myself—good with it, actually—but I hated when the realization that no one in the world knew where I was or cared grabbed onto me at random moments.

“Screw this,” I muttered, and turned off the TV.

It didn’t matter how tired or down I was, I was going to make the most of this staycation. I grabbed my laptop and my notebook and went out on the balcony, forcing myself to write while I still had an inspiring view.

And after a minute, everything else melted away.

Daphne grabbed my attention and it was hers.

I started writing, capturing the way Daphne would see custom cars and luxury airplanes, and it was like the words were pouring out of me.

My fingers couldn’t type fast enough. Daphne was so easy to write because she was—in a way—me, or at least her observations belonged to someone with similar experiences to my own.

And there were so many things about Declan and his life that, at a surface level, functioned as amazing characterization.

A millionaire who treated cars and jewelry as if they were disposable because he had so much money it’d lost all meaning.

A man who was used to people behaving as if he were royalty.

There was a lot more to Declan than that in real life, but the same couldn’t be said for Daphne’s love interest, Connor.

Yes, I am using Dexxie’s middle name , I thought with a grin. He would hate that.

I sat out there for hours, a million miles away with Connor and Daphne and her fish-out-of-water experiences, and only came in when I wanted to add a few reminders to my notebook and realized I didn’t have a pencil.

I popped into Dex’s office—I knew he had a drawerful of freshly sharpened pencils from all the times I’d cleaned that room—but as I was opening the drawer, my eyes spotted a piece of paper on top of the desk.

I never snooped, but when my eyes happened to see it was a printed email message from Roman to Dex, I couldn’t stop myself.

From: Roman Halder [email protected]

Date: September 29 at 4:53 PM

Subject: Invest Ops 9/29

To: Declan Powell [email protected]

Dex-

Strongly recommend the first three, your call on the 4th

-REZAK, JONATHAN {917055} 125K

-JOHNSON, CAMILLE {765003} 76K

-KPH CONSULTING {891077} 2 MILLION

-HANNIFORD, PETER {122739} 325K

I don’t know what came over me, but I got out my phone and took a picture. Dex said his work with Roman was confidential, and I knew in my gut that he wasn’t doing something criminal, but if I was going to be alone and bored all night, what would the harm be in some Google investigating?

I went back to my makeshift outdoor office, but it was getting a little chilly so I moved inside. As soon as I sat at the dining room table with my laptop, I opened the search window, too engaged with the idea of sleuthing to get back to work immediately.

I googled RWDR, but found nothing. A bunch of random things, in random places, that were obviously not connected to my fake boyfriend and his pal.

I googled the names on the list but couldn’t find information that meant anything at all.

I found an RWD Consulting in South Dakota, but it looked like an IT firm that was super… unimpressive.

They probably made their own website using Canva, and it looked like they had three Midwestern-looking employees.

It was not the kind of business that millionaires were looking to invest in—or anyone, honestly—so either it was the wrong firm, or this made even less sense.

I was getting bored with my search when my phone buzzed. I jumped, feeling like I had gotten caught.

I picked it up off the table and was disappointed to see it was Lauren and not Dex.

Which was dumb; why would he even be calling me?

“Hello?” I said, closing out my search engine and opening my Word doc.

“I cannot believe the pics you sent!” she squealed. “I am so jealous that you are just hanging out like a millionaire.”

“It’s pretty great,” I said, leaning back in the chair, looking around the room.

Tall ceilings, big windows, recessed lighting—the place was a dream.

“So what are you doing? I put a tracker on Mr. Powell’s car, by the way. It looks like it’s parked in a garage downtown.”

I laughed in spite of myself. What would Declan do if he knew? He’d probably be pissed, but I could honestly say I knew nothing about it because I really didn’t.

I didn’t even know what a “tracker” was. I was assuming it was the industrial version of an AirTag, but what was I, a spy? “It’s down in the garage beneath me.”

“Oh, I know,” she said, and I could hear how proud of herself she was. “And my initial check of your boyfriend-for-the-weekend came back clean, by the way.”

“Told you,” I said. “Although…”

“Although what?” She instantly sounded intrigued. “Did you find something, Ab?”

“No, nothing like that,” I said, wondering if I should tell her. It technically wasn’t breaking confidentiality when I didn’t know anything, and Lauren was literally a vault. If you asked her to keep something quiet, she’d take it to the grave.

“Okay here’s the thing: this is nothing I’m worried about; this is something I’m nosy about. I totally trust Declan, but…I just really want to know what one of his businesses is and he says it’s confidential.”

“He is a murderer,” she said knowingly.

“Oh, my God, he is not!” I laughed, getting up to pace while I talked to her. I wasn’t good at sitting when I was talking on the phone.

I told her exactly what I knew, and then I told her about the email that I found.

“You should send me the screenshot,” she said. “I won’t do anything, but I’m better at investigating than you are. Let me sleuth for you.”

I looked down at my toes, which were still perfectly painted— thank you, Kat— and second-guessed telling her. He’d told me it was confidential; should I really be sharing his information?

“No,” I said, walking into the kitchen. “I shouldn’t have read it, much less taken a picture. I’m already done with my time playing fake girlfriend, so what he does with his life is none of my business.”

“But aren’t you curious?” she prodded. “Wouldn’t it be fun to know? To have a secret on the millionaire that you once spent a weekend with? Ten years from now, when you see him in the paper with his second wife and third yacht, won’t it be fun to feel like you know more than her?”

Why did I hate everything she’d just said? “I doubt he’ll ever have one wife, much less two. He works twenty-four-seven.”

“Just let me peek; I’m sure I won’t find anything, by the way. If Declan Powell says it’s confidential, I’m positive it can’t be found by some rando cool chick on the internet.”

“Okay, I’m sending it,” I said with a groan. “But please delete it the second you’re done looking.”

“It’ll be scrubbed by midnight,” she said. “I promise.”

She shifted gears then, telling me about her new martial arts obsession, and by the time we hung up, my stomach was grumbling. I hadn’t eaten since brunch, so regardless of what time it was, I needed food.

I went into the kitchen, now fully aware of the location of virtually everything in Dex’s cabinets, and it was a little mind-boggling, the way it suddenly felt like I was staying at a friend’s house instead of a stranger’s apartment.

As I pulled some angel hair pasta from the pantry, I wondered if he would actually text me when he landed. He could easily forget, or just not care to.

Of course, that begged the question: Was our last conversation the final one we’d have before this whole thing ended, or could it be the start of something different?