Fated to My Flash-Married Billionaire novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Six Boxes

Willa packs in front of Preston, Lydia and the landlord; Rowan's car arrives and Preston sees whose it is; Margaret orders her to lunch.

I woke up in a guest room with a view of the lake and a gold band on my thumb.

On the nightstand was a note in square handwriting: Driver downstairs at seven. Eat something.

There was a banana beside it, and a glass of water, and no Rowan.

At seven-twenty the driver parked in front of my building and carried the first flat box up four flights without being asked.

I had a key to the apartment where I'd lived for six years.

It didn't fit.

Preston had changed the lock in one night, and I stood in the hallway holding a useless key with the driver behind me.

Then the door opened from the inside.

Lydia stood there in my robe, the blue one with the frayed belt, holding my favorite mug.

"Willa," she said. Her eyes were swollen. "I made chamomile. I knew you'd come."

"Where's Preston?"

"Asleep. He cried until four." She stepped aside. "Please don't hate me. I can't bear it. You're my sister."

Behind her in the hall stood two suitcases with luggage tags from last month's trip to Lisbon.

Both of them were zipped and packed.

I looked at the tags, and Lydia saw me look at them.

"I had them in the car," she said quickly. "In case Preston's mother threw me out."

I was too tired to ask why Preston's mother would throw out the woman she had wanted for him since they were nine.

I walked past her into my own home.

The couch was mine. The rug was mine. Eleven houseplants stood in the window where I had put them, and three of them were dying already.

I started on the bookshelf.

Vet school textbooks, the ones I had finished at night while Preston studied for his architecture license on the other side of the same table.

I had paid his exam fees and his rent for two of those years.

I put that out of my head and filled the first box.

The landlord knocked on the open door at eight.

"Preston called me at six," he said. "He wants to put a second name on the lease. Is this a good time?"

Preston came out of the bedroom in boxer shorts, running a hand through his hair.

"Willa, what are you doing?" he said.

"Packing."

"You can't just leave. The lease is in my name. You can't take things."

"I can take my own things."

The landlord looked from him to me and shifted his weight.

Down the hall a neighbor's door opened a crack, then another.

"That's my pan," Preston said.

I had the cast-iron skillet in my hands, the big one, black from years of eggs.

"It's mine," I said. "I bought it on Black Friday in 2019. My name is on the receipt in the second drawer."

"We shared it."

"You never once washed it."

Someone in the hallway laughed, and then made a throat-clearing sound to cover it.

Preston went red to the ears.

"Your name's on the dishwasher too," I said. "As the person who's loaded it every night for six years. Do you want that, or can I go?"

Lydia put her hand on his arm.

"Let her take it, Pres," she said gently. "She's hurting."

He let me take it.

The driver carried out the skillet and the quilt my grandmother made and six boxes of books and scrubs, one trip after another, in a dark suit and white gloves.

I took the three dying plants too, because nobody else was going to water them.

I left the key on the counter.

Preston followed me to the top of the stairs.

"Where are you even going to live?" he said. "You don't have anywhere. You don't make that much."

"I'm fine."

"You can't be serious about this guy. You met him last night. It's a stunt."

"Then you shouldn't have anything to worry about."

Downstairs the driver opened the back door of a long black car, and I got in.

Preston came out onto the sidewalk in his boxers.

He stopped at the curb and read the small silver plate on the front fender: Ashcroft Harbor Group.

The color went out of his face.

"That's his actual car?" he said through the glass.

I rolled the window down two inches.

"You said I didn't have anywhere to go," I said.

Lydia was standing in my window upstairs, holding my mug, watching.

She didn't wave.

The car pulled away, and my phone buzzed on my knee with a text from a number I didn't know.

This is Margaret Ashcroft. My son's assistant found last night's video of you on the internet at five this morning and sent it to me.

Lunch is at noon at my house in Lake Forest. Bring a coat. I'm putting you in the roses.

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