Delia
Monday evening, someone knocked on my door like they had every right to disturb the fragile quiet I’d built.
I hobbled over on my crutches, already annoyed because navigating four steps was currently my maximum tolerance for human interaction, and opened it to find Axel Irving standing in my hallway with his assistant.
The assistant—Mark, I remembered seeing a handful of times—was holding grocery bags. Multiple grocery bags. Enough grocery bags to suggest they were preparing for an apocalypse.
“What are you doing here?!” I asked. Half shocked, and unable to avert my gaze from the bags.
“Someone requested a favor. I’m fulfilling it.” He said it like that explained showing up at my apartment with enough food to survive an apocalypse.
“Someone? Favor?” I echoed.
“I’m sure you know who.”
His assistant looked like he was trying very hard not to laugh.
Axel turned to his assistant. “Mark, I’ll call you later. Clear my schedule for the next few weeks. Move everything nonessential.”
Mark’s eyebrows rose. “Everything?”
“Everything.”
“The board meeting on Thursday?”
“Non-essential.”
“The investors flying in from Tokyo?”
“Mark.”
“Right. Clearing schedule. Making everyone unhappy.” Mark adjusted his glasses and looked at me with something like sympathy. “Good luck.”
He left before I could ask what that meant.
Axel picked up the grocery bags and walked past me into my apartment.
I stood there, door still open, my brain trying to catch up with whatever this was. Then I closed the door and followed him inside, crutches thudding against the floor.
“For the nth time, I don’t need a babysitter.”
“Second.”
“What?” I asked, confused.
“It’s only the second time you said that,” he said as my mouth hung open at the absolute audacity.
He didn’t give me time to respond before he said, “And I know you don’t need one.
Which is just as good…” He started unpacking groceries onto my counter.
“Because I’m terrible at babysitting, but I’m decent at cooking. ”
Vegetables appeared. Fresh vegetables, not the half-wilted ones from the mall a few blocks away. Cheese that looked like it came from somewhere with opinions about cheese. Bread that was probably hand-kneaded by monks or something equally ridiculous.
“This is ridiculous,” I said. “I’m a grown woman perfectly capable of feeding herself.”
“I’m aware.” He kept unpacking, completely unbothered. “But you’re not actually doing it. So here I am.”
His tone was so matter-of-fact, so devoid of judgment, that it somehow made everything worse. Like my disaster was so obvious it didn’t even need commentary.
“You can’t just break into my house—”
“Daniel asked me to check on you.”
“Daniel doesn’t get to make decisions about my life.”
“He’s just worried.”
“He’s overreacting! You all are!” I grabbed my phone, hobbled to my bedroom area for privacy, and hit Daniel’s number. He answered on the second ring.
“Delia—”
“Did you send Axel to babysit me?”
A pause. “I asked him to check on you. There’s a difference.”
“No, there isn’t! I’m not a child who needs supervision!”
“You fractured your ankle dancing alone in an empty studio.” His voice was gentle but firm.
That doctor voice that made everything sound reasonable even when it wasn’t.
“You’re barely eating. You won’t answer my calls half the time.
You’re shutting everyone out. Even Sarah. So I’m allowed to be concerned.”
“So you sent your best friend to spy on me?”
“I sent someone who cares about you to make sure you’re okay. Someone who has the time and resources to actually help.”
“I don’t need help!” I shout. “And he doesn’t care about me. He pities me. I don’t need pity.”
“Delia.” He sighed, and I could hear the exhaustion in it. “I can’t be there. I have Mom to take care of, Aunt Maria needs support managing her care. Axel volunteered.”
“Volunteered,” I repeated, flat as concrete. “Daniel, do you really expect me to believe that a robot in a suit volunteered to help me out of the kindness of his heart? You must have him confused with an actual human being.”
“Yes.” He ignored me. “He came to your house because he knew you’d never go to his. He’s being charitable, and you’re being difficult.”
The words stabbed my heart with hurt. “Charitable.”
“That’s not—I didn’t mean it like that.” Daniel’s voice softened. “I mean he’s trying to help. And you’re making it harder than it needs to be.”
“Because I don’t want people hovering over me like I’m a mess!”
“You’re not a mess. You’re recovering.” He paused. “Please. Just let him help. For me. I need to know you’re okay so I can focus on Mom without worrying about you too.”
The guilt landed exactly where he knew it would. Daniel was trying to manage Mom’s declining health, his demanding career, and apparently me. And here I was making it worse by being stubborn.
“Fine,” I said through my teeth. “But I’m setting boundaries.”
“That’s all I’m asking.”
I hung up before he could say anything else that made me feel like a petulant child.
When I hobbled back out, Axel was still unpacking groceries like he owned the place.
“Okay,” I said. “Daniel guilt-tripped me. You can stay. But there are rules. Only one, actually. If you’re staying, you sleep on the couch.”
“Alright.”
Why did he agree so easily to that? This was not how I thought his reaction would be.
“No pity. No hovering. And absolutely no telling Daniel every detail of my life.” I continued.
“That’s not one rule.”
“Shut. Up.”
“Okay. Understood.” He held up his hands in mock defiance.
“I mean it. This is my space. My apartment. My rules.”
“Of course.”
He said it so agreeably I should have known something was wrong.
“Good. Now—”
He picked up his duffel bag and headed toward my bathroom.
“What are you doing?”
“Unpacking.”
“I didn’t say you could—”
Too late. He’d already flicked on the bathroom light.
I hobbled after him on my crutches, dread building in my stomach. “Axel, wait—”
He opened my medicine cabinet.
“No. Absolutely not. You can’t just—”
He started moving things. My three half-empty moisturizers were suddenly consolidated. My collection of hair products I’d bought and never used got rearranged. He was making space for his stuff with terrifying efficiency.
“This is my bathroom!”
“Shared bathroom now.” He set down shaving cream next to my razor. “We need to be practical.”
“Practical? You’re reorganizing my private—”
He moved to the shower, started placing his shampoo next to mine.
That’s when I saw them.
My bra and panties. Purple. Lacy. Hanging on the shower rod where I’d left them to dry this morning.
Oh god.
Time stopped. My face caught fire. Axel’s hand froze mid-reach.
“Get out,” I managed. “Get out right now.”
“Delia—”
“OUT!”
I tried to lunge forward but the crutches made me clumsy. One caught on the bathroom mat and suddenly I was pitching forward, my injured ankle screaming in protest.
Axel moved fast—faster than anyone had any right to move. His arms caught me before I hit the tile, pulling me upright with the kind of easy strength that should not have registered in my currently furious brain.
But it did.
My hands grabbed his biceps for balance, and the first thought that shot through my head was: where the hell did that lanky boy I remembered go?
Because Axel Irving was not lanky anymore. Not even close. Whatever he’d been doing for the past years included apparently turning into someone who could catch a falling woman one-handed while holding a bottle of body wash in the other.
I caught myself staring at his arms, at the way his shirt sleeves were pushed up to his forearms, at the solid muscle under my palms that had absolutely no business existing on someone who spent his days in museums and board rooms.
“Steady?” he asked, his voice maddeningly calm.
I yanked my hands back like I’d been burned. “Fine. I’m fine.”
“You should be more careful with the crutches.”
“I should be more careful? You’re the one invading my bathroom!”
“And you’re the one who just tried to charge at me on one functioning leg.” He set me back on my feet with irritating gentleness. “That wasn’t tactical.”
“I wasn’t being tactical! I was being furious!”
“I noticed.” He went back to arranging his body wash like he hadn’t just prevented me from cracking my skull open on my own bathroom floor. “This goes here, I think.”
“What are you DOING?”
“Making space.” He said it like it was obvious. “Shared bathroom. We have to be practical about these things.”
“Those are my—you can’t just—this is—”
“It’s fine.” He glanced at me, expression maddeningly uninterested. “I’ve seen most of this before anyway.”
Every coherent thought vanished. “WHAT?”
“When I lived with your family.” He said it casually. So casually. “You weren’t exactly careful about closing doors. Or picking up laundry. The purple set is new, though.”
I wanted to die. Right there in my bathroom with my purple bra as a witness and the lingering sensation of very solid biceps still tingling in my palms.
“You—I’m going to—”
“Nice choice, by the way.” He arranged his razor next to mine. “The matching set.”
“I HATE YOU!”
“No need to be embarrassed.” He moved to the cabinet under my sink. “We’re adults.”
“GET OUT OF MY BATHROOM!”
“Almost done.”
He was absolutely not almost done. He opened MY cabinet and started moving things around like he had every right.
I chased him out of the bathroom, swinging my crutches in a way that was definitely not doctor-approved. He dodged with infuriating ease—and infuriating athleticism I was absolutely not going to think about—heading straight for my bedroom.
“No. Absolutely not. The bathroom was bad enough—”
He opened my closet doors.
“AXEL!“
“You have a lot of black.” He started pushing hangers aside. “Do you own anything with actual color?”
“This is an invasion of privacy!”
“I need somewhere to put my clothes.” He hung up three shirts like he owned my entire room. My room!
“The duffel bag! Put them in the duffel bag!”
“That’s unsanitary.”
“I don’t care!”
He listened, at least. I hobbled to the kitchen, grabbed a glass, filled it with water, and drank it trying to cool the fire currently consuming my face.
Axel followed. Took the glass from my hand when I was done.
“What—”
He opened my fridge, and pulled out the orange juice I’d forgotten I bought.
“Juice helps you calm down,” he said, pouring a fresh glass. “Vitamin C. Better than water.”
He handed me the juice.
I stared at him. At his completely calm expression. At the way he’d just taken my empty glass, and replaced it with juice like that was a normal thing to do.
“You just…”
“Yes. Juice is better for you right now.”
I drank the juice because I needed something to do with my hands that wasn’t throwing the glass at his head.
He watched me with that same cool expression, like I hadn’t just spent ten minutes screaming at him.
“Are you done?” he asked.
“Done?”
“With the yelling.”
“I don’t know. Are you done invading my personal space?”
“Probably not.” He said it so seriously I almost laughed. “I still need to put my books somewhere.”
“Touch my bookshelf and I’m calling the police.”
“Noted.” He moved toward the living room. “I’ll leave them in the bag.”
“Good.”
“For now.”
“Axel—”
“Kidding.” He held up his hands. “The books and clothes stay in the bag.”
I finished the juice. Set the glass down so hard it was a miracle it didn’t crack. My face was still hot, my heart still racing from the mortification of purple bras, closet invasions, and the way he’d moved through my apartment like he belonged here.
“This is temporary,” I said firmly.
“Agreed.”
“And you stay out of my private spaces.”
“Define private.”
“Anywhere I don’t explicitly invite you!”
“So the bathroom is…?”
“SHARED UNDER DURESS!”
This time he actually did smile. His lips curving in a way I hadn’t seen before and if I wasn’t so pissed, I’d find it striking.
I grabbed my crutches and headed for my bedroom.
“I’m going to bed. Don’t touch anything else.”
“Sleep well, Delia.”
His voice was warm. I slammed the door harder than I would have, inhaling deeply, I sat on my bed, trying to process what had just happened.
Axel Irving was in my living room. His toiletries were arranged in my bathroom.
And Daniel had made it sound like I was being unreasonable for objecting.
I lay down, pulled the covers over my head, and tried not to think about it. About the way he’d moved through my space. The apartment felt different with him in it. Less empty. Less like a cave.
This was temporary, I reminded myself. Just until I got back on my feet. Just until I figured out who I was without Jake.
I could survive a few weeks of Axel Irving.
Probably.