All Chapters of I Will Find You: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

74 Chapters

A Soft Place to Land

RemyBy late afternoon the building had that Thursday hum—phones quieting, printers spitting their last forms, the shop rolling toward second shift’s rhythm. I’d signed two fleet renewals, fixed three problems that didn’t need my title to fix, and stared at the email draft to the Council long enough to know I shouldn’t send anything until morning. Pierce paced in me like he does when the day is mostly human: patient, watchful, ears pricked toward a single scent that lives downstairs.Ask her, he said, not in words so much as a push toward the stairwell. But don’t chase.“I know,” I told him, and left the office before I could talk myself into five more responsible tasks. Responsible can be the habit that keeps you lonely.The lobby door was propped with a rubber wedge and the winter air threaded through, carrying metal, coffee, and Holland. She sat behind the counter with a pen tucked into her bun and a crease between her brows that meant someone’s form was lying to her. She looked up

Last Updated : 2025-09-29

Soon

She had a blanket draped over the back of the couch, the kind that looks like someone’s grandmother taught someone’s granddaughter how to make it right. A stack of takeout menus, a notebook with a lemon on the cover, and the remote sat on the coffee table like artifacts from a comfortable culture.“Order now or later?” I asked. “I can be persuaded by anything that arrives in paper boxes.”“Let’s order first,” she said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear in a way that was more practical than coy. “I won’t survive this movie on lemon bars alone. Chinese okay?”“It’s your religion,” I said, and earned a pleased noise I filed under yes, again. She dialed with the ease of a person who already had this plan in her bones before I asked my question upstairs. I loved her for that—having wants, voicing them, letting me meet them instead of guessing.She rattled off an order that sounded like comfort with a side of heat: steamed dumplings, fried rice, broccoli with garlic, General’s chicken

Last Updated : 2025-09-29

Sick Day

RemyThe phone rang at 6:02 a.m., slicing clean through the steam of my shower and the quiet that lives before the shop wakes. I almost never get calls that early unless something is on fire—literal or otherwise. I grabbed the towel, hit accept, and said her name before it could turn into a question.“Holland?”A breath. Not the calm, measured one she’s been practicing, but the ragged kind you use when your body is staging a revolt. “I think… the Chinese got me,” she said, voice hoarse and small. “I’m so sorry for calling. I’ve been up since like… three? My stomach is—” She swallowed and I could hear the swallow go wrong. “I’m not going to make it to work.”Worry landed in my chest like a dropped wrench. Pierce went alert—ears-up, nose-forward alert—and then sat back, watchful, waiting for instructions. Sick, he said, not alarm, just assessment. We go. We take care.“Don’t even think about work,” I said, already moving—phone to shoulder, shirt until it didn’t matter which, socks, boot

Last Updated : 2025-09-30

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

We spent the next hour in the gentle choreography of sick-day survival: a few more sips, a single cracker accepted like a summit treaty, peppermint refreshed, the fan on the noise machine clicked on to crowd favorite, curtains tilted to let in winter light without glare. I cleaned the bathroom without comment, because there are gifts you don’t wrap in words. I swapped her damp pillowcase with one from the closet and made a note to return tomorrow with laundry detergent if she’d let me. I texted Banks to log a sick day for “Ward” and to cover her emails so she wouldn’t feel like she’d abandoned a ship that sails fine without one sailor for a day.Around ten, after a brief, less dramatic return to the bathroom, her body decided to negotiate. The nausea backed down. The headache—the one that blooms behind the eyes on days like this—made a bid for center stage and then pouted when I turned the lights lower. She lay on her side, facing the back of the couch, one hand curled under her jaw l

Last Updated : 2025-09-30

Menu of Care

HollandI wake to the soft hiss of the fan and the kind of quiet that feels earned. For a second I don’t remember where I am, just that my mouth tastes like peppermint and sleep. Then the room resolves into the Maple apartment: the low, kind light from the cracked blinds, the throw blanket bunched at my waist, the coffee table’s neat little arrangement that didn’t exist before Remy arrived this morning.I push up on my elbows and take stock of it all again. The couch smells like detergent and something new that I’m going to call safety. On the table: a glass with ginger ale gone flat on purpose; a chipped blue bowl with three brave saltines waiting like volunteers; a folded washcloth, still cool at its corners; three paperbacks stacked in a tidy fan, the top one a mystery I put on a wish list I didn’t know was visible to the world. Next to that, a small mountain of soft: a lemon-print pajama set, fuzzed socks, slippers with a ridiculous plush lining, a medium-gray blanket with that per

Last Updated : 2025-10-01

What We Name the Quiet

HollandThe apartment had slipped into evening almost without asking me. The sky outside the balcony was that city blue that only happens in winter, the river a darker ribbon beyond the line of bare trees. I’d dozed, read three chapters, dozed again. My stomach had promoted itself from villain to grumbly extra; the peppermint aftertaste had finally left. I was halfway through pouring broth back into a mug when my phone lit the coffee table.Remy.Right on the dot, like he said he would. I wiped my hand on the lemon-print pajama top—ridiculous and perfect—picked up, and tried to sound like a person and not a girl caught smiling at her screen.“Hey,” I said.“Hey,” he echoed, that low, careful voice that makes a room feel bigger. “Checking in. How’s the stomach? How’s the world?”“Offended but cooperative,” I admitted. “Soup triumphed. Lemon bar medicine may have been taken in a second dose.” I eyed the incriminating box. “I would apologize but I’m not sorry.”A quiet laugh rolled throu

Last Updated : 2025-10-01

An Ordinary Door

HollandBy five-fifty the lobby has that end-of-week hush I’ve learned to love—the printers done chattering, the phone bored with its own ring, the ficus holding on to two heroic leaves like it’s daring me to water it. I count the drawer, log the day’s rentals, flip the laminated card to CLOSED and straighten it as if the angle of a sign could keep the world behaved.Keys slide into the little metal box Banks insists on calling “the vault” (it is decidedly not a vault), contracts go into the blue folder, the pen cup gets arranged in Todd’s preferred—deranged—rainbow order. I stand a second with my palms on the counter, listening: shop noises, distant laughter, the soft thud of someone closing a tool chest. Normal. I like that word now. It doesn’t mean boring anymore; it means mine.The upstairs hall is quiet, too—the kind of quiet that carries coffee and old paper. I pause at the bottom of the dark stairwell, a place that felt like a boundary marker the first week and now feels like a

Last Updated : 2025-10-02

Dress Codes and Dangerous Gravity

RemyJacek thinks he’s subtle.He’s not. He’s a six-foot-two neon sign disguised as a Beta, waltzing into my office with a “quick update,” dropping feast tomorrow; you should come, Holland like a card he didn’t just pull from up his sleeve, and winking at me on the way out as if the entire performance hadn’t been visible from the moon.And still—when Holland said yes, my lungs forgot their job.It was a small yes, gentle as a door swinging on a well-oiled hinge. Not the panicked okay of a woman trying to avoid disappointing anyone, not the deferential if you think I should, but a clean I’d love to come. It landed in my chest with a weight I didn’t know I was built to carry. Pierce, who had bristled when Jacek started meddling, licked his chops and promptly forgave him.We go, he said, smug. We bring her home. We feed her.“Slowly,” I reminded him and myself. “On her terms.”We can like the same thing, my wolf replied, and for once, we did.I don’t mind pacing. Slowness is a kind of st

Last Updated : 2025-10-02

Rooms With Pack Names

HollandThe packhouse isn’t a house; it’s a thesis. A long, low sprawl of river-stone and old timber set back from the road like it knows it’s the last thing you see before “home.” At the end of the circular drive, the porch runs the entire front, wide enough for a parade. Light spills from the windows in those soft rectangles you only get from thick glass and people already inside.My stomach does its little nervous cat stretch as Remy helps me out of the truck. The silk whispers around my legs; the flats save my ankles from an evening of regret. Remy offers his arm like we rehearsed old-fashioned in the mirror and I take it because I want to, not because I need to. That distinction keeps showing up and sitting beside me like a friend.“You’re early enough for the bustle,” he murmurs, leaning in just enough that I catch the cedar and something-warm that is him. “Which means you’re going to get accosted with six categories of bread and four categories of affection.”“I intend to be br

Last Updated : 2025-10-02

Paper Shields

RemyThe room had just narrowed to the length of Holland’s breath and the warm line of my hand at her back when the front door announced trouble like a trumpet.“Oh, Remy, you look just as dashing as last I saw you!”The music didn’t stop so much as stagger. Conversations hiccuped, then tried to carry on. I closed my eyes for a beat—one beat—long enough to put the wolf back behind his better instincts and give the man the wheel.I turned with Holland still in my arm. She tightened—just a fraction—but I felt it like a struck wire. Her scent shifted: heat, salt, the clean, bright edge that meant anger had found her, and behind it a sharper note she didn’t try to hide—jealousy flaring because the bond is honest with or without your permission.Angel stood in the foyer as if the house had been built for her entrance—high heels, winter-white dress meant for a warmer month, hair like a weapon, perfume designed to colonize air not already occupied. She moved with that smile—the one that alwa

Last Updated : 2025-10-03

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