Chapter 14
Randi
Randi did not stay long after he left. She grabbed her jacket and slowly made her way out of the dark building. With no power, staying to work was no longer an option.
Her lips still tingled as she ran to her car. Why had she kissed him? She knew better.
She rested her head on the steering wheel and rivulets of water dripped on her console. She definitely needed a new job. If she had wondered before, his recoil and reaction to her kiss put any doubt out of her head.
Interest or not, he had rejected her. Again. Maybe she had misinterpreted what she thought she had seen in his eyes. Either way, she was done. She had to be.
You deserve someone better than me.
The words didn’t make sense no matter how many ways she tried to spin them. Hot and cold. Hot and cold. The pattern repeated so clearly now that she had to question everything she thought she understood about him.
Because which version of him was real?
The man who steadied her on the lift, who laughed like something had finally broken free inside him, who looked at her in that office like the space between them mattered or the one who dismantled her work without hesitation, who refused to meet her eyes, who pulled away like she had crossed a line he had drawn without telling her it existed?
And maybe the most frustrating part, the part that kept circling back, unwelcome and persistent, was the way he looked when he pulled away. Like it cost him something and he was the one being dragged through it.
Which made no sense because she was the one standing there afterward, trying to piece together what had just happened while he walked away.
“Then why,” she muttered to herself as she started the car, “does he look like he’s the one being tortured?”
The question hung there unanswered as she drove the short distance to her apartment. After a hot shower, she sat down with her laptop while her hair was still up in a towel on top of her head.
Her temper was a bit higher as anger replaced the hurt. At some point between shampooing and conditioning, the why Chance acted like he did stopped mattering.
What mattered was the fact that she didn’t deserve it and she was done with that.
By the time she sat down at her desk, the decision had already begun to settle into something solid, something actionable instead of emotional.
She pulled up the job listings again with a sharper focus than before and scanned for anything that would give her a clean exit and a fresh start.
She needed somewhere that didn’t come with the constant risk of being thrown off balance by a man who couldn’t decide what she was to him.
She deserved better than what he was giving. And if staying at TimeOff meant enduring this constant push and pull, this slow, grinding uncertainty that made even the good moments feel suspect, then she would leave.
She exhaled and rubbed her temple as she scrolled through another job listing that wanted five years of experience for an entry level position.
“Sure,” she muttered to herself. “Let me just hop in my time machine to get a job so I can get the experience that I need to apply for the job in the first place.”
A sharp thunk echoed somewhere deeper in the apartment. Randi froze with her fingers hovering over the keyboard as she tilted her head and listened. The refrigerator hummed and the clock on the wall ticked quietly. Rain tapped lightly against the windows.
“Imagination is gonna get you,” she murmured, though her shoulders remained tightened. “It’s just the wind.”
She forced herself to keep reading. Her eyes scanned words she didn’t absorb. Marketing assistant. Fast-paced environment. Must be a self-starter.
Another sound made her snap the laptop closed.
It was nothing loud or dramatic. It was… something. A faint scrape, like something shifting where it shouldn’t.
Randi’s stomach dropped. Instincts told her that it wasn’t the storm.
Every cautionary story she’d ever heard suddenly lined up in her brain like a parade of bad decisions. Her heart thudded and each beat louder than the last, as she slowly closed her laptop.
“Hello?” she called before she stopped herself. Every movie started with the damsel in distress calling out a greeting.
Silence answered.
She slid out of her chair as quietly as she could. Her bare feet were silent in the thick carpet as she crossed the room. Her gaze darted toward the hallway that led to her bedroom where the shadows suddenly seemed darker.
You’re being ridiculous. It’s just the storm.
But her body wasn’t buying it. She heard another faint sound. Someone was in her apartment.
Adrenaline surged and she hurried back to her desk. She yanked the drawer open and grabbed her pistol, suddenly grateful that she had been forced into self-defense classes. She grabbed her phone just as it lit up and started ringing in her hand.
The sudden noise made her jump so hard she nearly dropped it.
Josh’s name lit up on the screen.
She answered immediately, keeping her voice low at first. “Hey, Josh…”
“Hey, you survive the apocalypse over there?” Josh’s voice came through warm and familiar, completely unaware that her pulse was trying to break a land speed record.
“I think someone’s in my apartment,” she said, louder this time so her voice carried down the hallway.
There was a beat of stunned silence.
“What?”
“I heard something,” she said with her eyes still locked on the darkened hallway. “I’m not sure, but this isn’t the storm, Josh.”
“I’m on my way,” he said instantly. “Lock yourself somewhere and call the police.”
She hesitated. Standing there wasn’t helping and the not knowing was even worse.
“Just stay on the phone with me,” she whispered to Josh. “I’m just going to check.”
“Randi, don’t!”
But she was already moving. “It’s okay. I have my gun and my sister made sure I was a certified marksman and knew my way around a weapon.
” Her voice was louder and stronger. Anyone listening would hear her.
She balanced the phone with her chin while she racked a round into the chamber, a sound that left no doubt what she carried.
Each step toward the hallway felt too loud, even though she knew she was barely making a sound. She flicked on the hall light.
The sudden brightness flooded the space. “No one is in the hallway.”
“I just texted Marissa and told her to call 911. I can’t call without hanging up with you, and I don’t want to do that.” Josh sounded like he was panicking more than she was. “I’m literally running the few blocks to your apartment building.”
She moved down the hall and checked the bathroom. Luckily, she had left the shower curtain pulled back so no one was in the tub. The linen closet door was open but contained just towels and the vacuum she kept meaning to use more often.
“Anything?” Josh asked.
“Not yet,” she said “Only the bedroom left.”
She laid her phone on the floor so she could use both hands on the pistol. She approached her room slower this time and her pulse thudded in her ears. She reached the doorframe and leaned just enough to see inside.
The room looked normal with her unmade bed and the bedside lamp on. But the window was open. She had the type of windows that were pulled open rather than pushed up.
Randi blinked as she watched the rain drench the curtains and soak into the carpet. The screen was askew in the frame and she tried to remember the last time she had actually opened that window.
She reached over and yanked her closet open with one while she kept the gun steady in the other. Nothing but clothes. All the tension drained out of her at once and left her feeling a little ridiculous and a lot relieved.
“Oh my God.” She dissolved into a breathy laugh as she picked her phone up.
“What?” Josh demanded. “What is it?”
“It’s my window,” she answered while she pushed the window shut and engaged the lock. “It’s just that my window was open. Maybe I didn’t have it locked and the wind must’ve pushed it open.”
A pause. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“I’ll be there in two minutes.”
Silence settled in when the call ended. Randi leaned against the wall and laughed again as adrenaline receded. She went out to wait for Josh.
When she opened the door for him, he was soaked. His hair was plastered to his head and his clothes dripped much as hers had earlier. She handed him a towel.
“Wow. I really went full on crime drama, didn’t I?”
Josh exhaled audibly. “You scared me.”
“Me too,” she admitted. “Turns out the real threat was just Florida weather.”
“I’ll still stay for a few minutes. Just in case the window tries anything again.”
She smiled and warmth replaced the last of her nerves. “Yeah, yeah. My hero.”
But even as he dried off, she couldn’t help one last glance over her shoulder just to be sure. She felt safer now that Josh was there, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she had missed something. Or someone.
Josh stayed until the police arrived and made sure the scene was secure. One of the officers mentioned that he knew Chance and thought he was an upstanding guy. It made Randi’s heart flipflop a bit, and then guilt crept in when they praised Josh for rushing over.
Because he didn’t deserve to be part of the dysfunction between her and Chance.
He didn’t deserve to be the safe alternative, the visible contrast, the way she proved to herself that she could move on.
And that she wasn’t stuck in something that had never even fully begun.