Chapter 10
Cove
The text had come in at six that morning.
I hadn’t even been fully awake yet when my phone buzzed against the nightstand, the sound loud enough in the quiet apartment to make me flinch before I’d even opened my eyes.
I grabbed my phone, still half tangled in my blanket, and squinted down at the screen.
Good morning, Cove. Due to updated security concerns regarding access to the estate, I’ll be picking you up going forward instead of a rideshare. I’ll arrive at 7:40. Let me know if that timing needs adjusting. – Ben
Security concerns?
I sat up slowly in bed, reading the message again just to make sure I hadn’t misunderstood something.
Security concerns sounded… serious.
Like something had changed overnight.
Like maybe there’d been an incident I didn’t know about.
Had one of my drivers done something yesterday? I hadn’t noticed anything, and they’d both seemed like normal people, but maybe..? I just hoped it wasn’t my fault if something had happened. But I was the one who insisted on providing my own transportation…
I typed back before I could overthink it too much.
That works for me. Thank you!
Then I stared at the message again after sending it, wondering if I should have asked what the security concerns actually were.
Maybe I should have.
Maybe that was a normal question.
But maybe it wasn’t my place to ask, either.
That was the part I kept circling back to as I sat there in the gray light of my bedroom, phone loose in my hand, blanket tangled around my waist.
Security concerns sounded important.
It also sounded like something that belonged to a world I had only recently been allowed to stand near. Gates and cameras and private roads. Assistants who texted before sunrise. Houses on cliffs with entire ecosystems hidden behind glass.
I rubbed at my eyes with the heel of my palm and read Ben’s message one more time, as if there might be a second meaning tucked between the words if I stared hard enough.
There wasn’t.
Ben would be here at seven-forty.
Which meant I had less than two hours to become a functional person.
I threw the blanket off and swung my legs over the side of the bed.
The floor was cold beneath my feet, enough to make the hair on my arms stand up as a shiver wracked through my body, and for a moment, I just sat there, listening to the hum of the old apartment fridge and the distant rush of traffic outside my window.
Yesterday, I’d gone to Tobias Kelly’s estate as his new aquarist.
Today, someone was coming to collect me.
There was a difference between those two things.
I wasn’t sure what to do with it yet.
The shower helped.
Not emotionally, exactly, but physically.
The water pressure in my apartment was probably shit compared to the sleek, ridiculously expensive-looking shower attached to the office Tobias had given me, but it was still hot enough to ease some of the stiffness from my shoulders.
I stood under the spray longer than I meant to, eyes closed, letting water run over my face while my brain tried and failed to arrange the day into something predictable.
Work.
It was work.
That was all.
I had a job. A real one. A wildly improbable one, sure, but still a job. People got picked up for jobs all the time, didn’t they? Maybe not by the personal assistant of a billionaire because of vague security concerns, but that was probably just what normal looked like in Tobias’s life.
Normal for him, anyway.
I washed quickly after that, scrubbing sea salt-scented shampoo through my hair and rinsing until the water ran clear. By the time I stepped out, the mirror had fogged over, blurring my reflection into something soft-edged and unfamiliar.
I wiped a circle clean with the side of my hand.
I looked as gangly as usual, just a mess of long, thin body parts and bony hips with divots that made me want to be able to inject fat only into that area so that it’d look less odd and more like a normal body.
I brushed my teeth, then stood in front of the sink for too long trying to decide what to do with my hair.
Leaving it down was easier, but it got in the way around tanks.
A bun was nice, but always called for a hundred and one bobby pins and a potentially toxic amount of hairspray.
I didn’t love repeating hairstyles back to back, but eventually I decided my mind was too busy already to think about it any longer. Braid it was.
So I combed through the damp strands, carefully untangling them before drawing everything over one shoulder. My hair was long enough that braiding it took actual concentration, and I had to restart twice when the sections came loose between my fingers.
By the third try, it behaved.
Mostly.
A few coppery pieces slipped free around my face, too short or too stubborn to stay tucked in, but I decided that was fine. I wasn’t going to a meeting. I was going to spend the day checking filtration systems and feeding dangerous marine animals.
Which, honestly, I still couldn’t believe was my job now. Just a month ago, I’d been preparing myself to pack everything up and retreat back home to my parents’ place in San Diego, and now I was a highly paid private aquarist for one of the richest men in Australia.
It was insane, but I knew when to quietly and happily take what I’ve been given.
I dressed in a fitted black shirt and olive shorts, then changed the shorts because I looked a little too close to cosplaying Kim Possible, then changed back into them because the other pair made me look like I was trying too hard.
I stood there afterward, staring at myself in the mirror with the intense discomfort of someone who had become too aware of his own body only recently.
Sure, I’d sometimes wished it were easier to put on muscles or just weight in general, but it’d never been a thing, really. It was a passing thought that quickly took a backseat to the more important things going on in my life.
It hadn’t become a thing until after the move.
And I know that noticing my body and moving don’t seem to correlate, but when you move to a whole other country, you suddenly become insecure.
Not only because I had to learn that arvo means afternoon and servo means a gas station, but also because I was completely alone.
I’d gone from living at my parents’ house to living in a dorm at university, always having friends or family around, always having someone available to answer “adult” questions about insurance, car payments, and the next best step to take.
And then I was here.
And honestly, it’d been terrifying at first.
But after a month or two, things had started settling down, and I’d been able to finally get my footing in this new place.
Just to go into panic mode when I’d begun to realize the aquarium wasn’t going to keep me on.
And somewhere in the midst of all of that, somewhere in the midst of realizing I’d somehow caught the attention of Tobias Kelly, I had another realization that if this man noticed me, who else did?
And what did they see when they looked at me?
And how much did they see?
Tobias noticed things about me that I’d never thought about.
The way I touched glass without actually touching it. The way I spoke to animals. The way I drifted when water held my attention. He noticed when I was nervous, when I was confused, when I was about to apologize for something that didn’t need an apology.
I didn’t know what he would notice today.
It was unsettling feeling so seen.
My phone buzzed while I was tying my shoes.
Ben.
I’m outside whenever you’re ready. No rush.
I checked the time.
Seven thirty-six.
Early.
Of course, he was early.
I grabbed my bag from the kitchen table, then stopped with my hand halfway toward the lunch container sitting beside it.
I didn’t need it.
Tobias had made that clear.
Breakfast and lunch would be provided. Dinner too, if I stayed late. He’d said it like it was the most obvious arrangement in the world, like food was just another system he’d decided to maintain because I happened to be part of the house’s daily function now.
I left the container on the table.
Then, after three seconds of staring at it, I shoved a granola bar into my bag anyway.
Just in case.
The hallway outside my apartment smelled faintly of detergent and someone’s burnt toast. I locked the door behind me, checked the handle twice, then made my way downstairs with my bag strap gripped too tightly in one hand.
Ben was waiting at the curb.
Not leaning against the car. Not scrolling his phone.
Just standing beside the rear door with that easy, effortless posture of his, blond hair neatly styled, blue eyes bright even in the weak morning light.
He looked like the sort of person who could walk into any room and immediately know where to stand, what to say, who needed charm, and who needed space.
In other words, the exact opposite of me.
When he saw me, he smiled.
“Morning, Cove.”
“Morning,” I said, slowing as I reached him. “Sorry if I kept you waiting.”
“You didn’t. I was early.”
“I noticed,” I laughed.
His smile widened. “Tobias likes punctuality.”
“I noticed that too.”
Ben opened the rear door for me before I could reach for it myself.
I hesitated for half a beat, still not used to that, then climbed in.
The interior was just as absurd as I remembered. Soft leather, quiet air, tinted windows, the faint clean scent of a car that had probably never known fast food crumbs or old receipts stuffed into cup holders.
Ben closed the door behind me, then got into the driver’s seat.
This time, there was no Tobias sitting across from me.
That should have made the ride feel less intense.
Somehow, it didn’t.
As the car pulled away from the curb, I glanced down at my phone, then out the window at my apartment building slipping behind us.
“So,” I said after a moment, raising my voice enough that Ben could hear me through the open divider, “um… is everything okay?”
His eyes flicked briefly to mine in the rearview mirror.
“With what?”