บททั้งหมดของ SHE WAS NEVER HIS MISTRESS : บทที่ 11 - บทที่ 20

ARIA'S POV The bed frame had been there for two weeks and I still woke up surprised by it. Not by the frame itself, just the solidness of it. The way it didn't shift under me like the air mattress did. I'd gotten used to sleeping slightly deflated and slightly tilted as the plastic tilted every time I moved but now I had a real bed and I kept waking at 3 AM to the radiator banging through the wall and thinking I was somewhere I didn't recognize. It was three weeks out and apparently, this was what progress looked like. Saturday morning, I put on my clothes and stood in the kitchen drinking coffee from the corner store two blocks down. I'd learned in week one that the place closest to my building made coffee that tasted like hot water with ambitions and the one on Morrison was better. The art supplies had been sitting in a bag at the corner since I moved in. I'd arranged them twice without opening anything. Setting up the small easel Jordan helped me carry up four flights. Pu

ARIA'S POV It was thirty-three days now. Not like I was trying to count, It just happened automatically, underneath everything else. I used to track other things. The days until our anniversary. How long between Flynn's work trips. Gallery opening countdowns marked in my planner with small stars. Now I counted survival days. Morrison Street coffee, a radiator that screamed at 3 AM and the slow uncomfortable education of my own company. I was getting better at it. Some days. Elena Vasquez arrived on a Tuesday morning and immediately ignored the front desk. She's an abstract painter, fifty-five, and recently widowed. She is considering the gallery for her first solo show since her husband died. He'd shown me photos of her work. Large canvases, mostly. Color laid down in thick deliberate layers, each one visible under the next like she wanted you to see all the versions of the painting that existed before the final one. She was shorter than I'd pictured. Silver threaded through dar

ARIA'S POV I painted my walls on a Saturday as I was tired of looking at the color of giving up. I didn't do anything to dramatic though. The landlord had approved it weeks ago and I kept putting it off because buying paint meant committing to staying, and committing to staying meant admitting this small apartment was my actual life now not a temporary situation I was passing through on the way back to something else. I bought the paint today. Warm white, the kind with yellow underneath it. Two coats, one weekend and a roller I didn't know how to use properly until the second wall. My shoulders hurt for three days. The apartment looked completely different when I was done. Not bigger, just intentional. I stood in the middle of it on Sunday evening, paint still drying, and did an honest count. I loved what I had done. The sleep thing had fixed itself about two weeks ago. For the first six weeks I'd wake up somewhere between 2 and 4 AM reaching across the bed before I was consciou

FLYNN'S POV The report arrived on Thursday in a plain envelope with no logo, no return address, exactly how I'd requested. I hired the investigator five weeks ago. Purely for business. Dominic Ashford had been circling three of my active markets with actions that didn't show it happened by accident, and I liked to know who I was dealing with before they became a problem I hadn't prepared for. I read it after everyone left the office. Dominic Ashford. He is thirty three, from south Boston, and had a MIT scholarship. He built something from nothing, sold it at twenty-eight for a huge amount of money. The investigator had pulled his business history, his investment patterns, how founders talked about him off the record. The picture was clear. He was smart, patient, and self-made. He'd grown up with nothing and learned early that the world required more from him than it did from people who started with something. That lesson had shaped everything. His strategy was aggressive but neve

FLYNN'S POV My phone rang at 4:06 AM. "It's happening Flynn!" Sienna's voice was tight, controlled, like she had breathing through it for a while before deciding to call. "I've been timing them for two hours. They're six minutes apart now." I was already sitting up. "Have you called the hospital?" "They said I should come in." "I'll be there in fifteen minutes. Don't lift anything. Just sit and breath." I drove through empty dark streets without thinking as that could wait for later. Portland at 4 AM is just traffic lights changing for nobody so I made every one of them green. I finally got there and found her at the door of her building with a bag that looked underpacked, her hair loose, with one hand braced against the frame. She didn't say anything when I pulled up. She just got in carefully, I saw she was trying to manage the wave between the pain. We made it to Providence in twelve minutes and after that, it was out of my hands. They took her to the back and left me in t