Page 35 of Tempted By the Safety

I told myself on day one I wasn’t going to be his rescue project, and then I handed him the paperwork myself. But I’m not handing him anything else. It’s not a good decision, but it’s the only one I’ve got.

I fold his jacket over my arm and get out of the car.

13

Spencer

Milo goes straight up when we get home and I don’t hear him for the next few hours.

I make a late lunch and eat it standing at the island without tasting any of it, then make a second sandwich and leave it under a glass bowl where he’ll see it.

I find my jacket folded over the end of the banister, sleeves tucked, the way you’d hand something back at a store. I leave it there and head for my home office.

Andy’s sent fourteen emails since noon, which is what Andy does when I cancel on him. The co-packer wants to move the clumping conversation to Thursday, and the consultant wants a call, and Amanda wants to know if I’m dead. I answer them in order, and it takes longer than it should because I read every sentence twice. Around eight the pipes come on overhead, and the shower runs longer than it usually does.

At five past nine there are two light knocks on my door.

“Yeah.”

Milo comes in, wearing the cream crop top and high-waisted shorts, white socks pulled up, the Adidas sneakers on his feet. It’s the outfit he showed up in on his first day working for me.

“Hey.” I close the laptop halfway. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine.” He looks at the bookshelf. “Slept a bunch.”

“Good.”

He takes the chair across the desk and sits right on the front edge of it, both feet flat.

I wait.

“So.” He rubs his palms down the tops of his thighs once. “I’m resigning.”

“No.”

His head comes up. “What?”

“I don’t accept your resignation.”

“That’s not, um.” A short laugh escapes him. “That’s not how resigning works, Spencer. It’s not a negotiation. It’s more of a heads-up.”

“Milo.”

“Please let me finish. I had a whole thing worked out upstairs, and if you talk in the middle of it I’m going to lose the order.”

I sit back and shut my mouth.

“Okay,” he breathes out. “So. I’ll do the handover, obviously. Whenever you hire the next person, I can do it online, or I can meet them somewhere, or I can come in, whatever’s easiest, and I’ve already started a doc with all of it. The passwords, the co-packer’s assistant’s cell because he never picks up the main line, the consultant’s actual availability versus what he says his availability is, the fact that Kirsten will do anything for you if you remember her kid’s name is Theo. It’s a good doc. It’s better than the one I got, which was nothing.”

“Milo—”

“And Dean.” He plows straight over me. “Dean’s going to that court date. On the ninth, nine a.m. I will personally put him in a car and I will sit in the room with him, and you’re going to get your ten grand back, and if for some reason you don’t, I’ll pay it. It’ll take me a very stupid amount of time, and you’d have to be unreasonably patient about it, but you’ll get it.”

“Are you done?”

He nods.

“Can I ask why you’re resigning?”