KNOT: A Wake Family Novel by M. Mabie Page B

moving in.
    I’d fought the urge to call or text her well. I respected her boundaries from afar—in my own way, best I could. While I waited.
    Everything was going well at work, I’d been moved to the InformaTrade account and, although it had only been through email at first, I’d be dealing with Ives—one of her friends . I still didn’t want to cause any tension, certainly not at the office.
    It was bad enough that I made a few calls to make sure she got on my floor. I knew how it might look to her, but I’d arranged for her to live right down the hall.
    I didn’t give a shit.
    Even if I couldn’t have her, I wanted to be close. I still wanted to see her. I still wanted to find out more about her. Maybe she’d change her mind. Or maybe I would after getting to know her more. I wanted to look further into that option as well. I needed a clear answer to why I was still thinking about her and whether or not it would stop on its own.
    Still, I knew she’d react to being on my floor, so I was going to do my best to give her some breathing room.
    Timing .
    I saw her walking into the Lunar that Monday morning as I pulled out of the parking garage. A flash of excitement jolted through me. I was getting my way. Even if I was going the long way around about it.
    Was it crazy? Fuck yeah it was, but no one but me knew my thoughts.
    When she found out she was down the hall from me, she was probably going to have a fit, but I’d take my punches, as long as she didn’t threaten to move out. Another thing this extra time gave me—a chance to prepare.
    Being organized always helped my issues. My anxieties. My stress.
    The opportunity fell into my lap— she emailed me, kind of —I hadn’t sought her out after the party. Yet . So, I didn’t see it coming. Fate as it was, she loved the building.
    She came from money, but worked her ass off, and that wasn’t something trust fund babies typically did. I respected that.
    She could have bought the whole floor if she wanted to, but she hadn’t.
    No. She didn’t even buy a unit, having only applied for a lease.
    That troubled me.
    Why not buy?
    Was she only planning on being there temporarily?
    Maybe she wanted to see if she liked living there first? I wasn’t sure yet, but those were things I wanted to dive deeper into. Things I needed to tread lightly around.
    I passed Claudia on the way down the hall to my office.
    “Good morning, Reggie,” she chimed. That woman never had a bad Monday. She was always positive and ready for the day. I was happy for it, too. We’d work well together.
    Claudia was a new mother coming back into the workforce after staying home with her two little girls. She’d worked for Price-McClelland before, and it spoke well of her they wanted her back.
    “Hi. Did you have a good weekend?” I replied, stopping at her desk.
    “I did. We took the girls to the aquarium. They loved it.” She seemed like a person who was genuinely content, and the same smile she wore in the pictures on her desk spread across her face.
    “Good. I remember my dad taking me and my brother when we were kids. We’d visited Chicago for a boy’s weekend to see a ball game or something.” I tapped my fingers on the counter in front of her that was slightly higher than her desk.
    “Ready for the week?” she asked routinely.
    That week I totally was. Ready to see what would happen. “Are you kidding? I’m always ready.”
    Work went great, and for the most part, it was business as usual, but my mind was elsewhere.
    Disappointingly, I didn’t see Nora in the hall or around the Lunar that whole week, but I heard her stomping around in her apartment on Friday as I walked past her door. I paused a few feet down the hall to listen, and I heard her scream. Then, I heard a blow against the door.
    I could have kept going, but I was worried so I knocked.
    The doors in the Lunar were solid. I could hear that she was shouting something, but wasn’t sure what. The metal deadbolt