Page 193 of Top Shelf

“I am,” I say, my voice rough against her temple. “I have been looking at you since before I even understood what I was looking at. Even before you climbed onto the back of Priscilla and trusted me with your life while insulting my driving.”

A laugh trembles out of her, and I press my mouth to her hair as the song carries us through the dream she built, through the future she is letting me stand beside.

“I am always looking at you, min fru,” I whisper. “And I am aiming top shelf.”

Epilogue

Nine Months Later

By eleven-thirty on moving day, Viktor has a system. And by eleven-forty, I have destroyed it.

In my defense, I didn’t realize the colored stickers meant anything beyond Viktor having an unexpectedly whimsical moment at the stationery store. Green is supposedly for the kitchen and blue is for our bedroom. Yellow is bathrooms. Pink is “miscellaneous,” which feels like a dangerous category to introduce into a home containing me, but nobody asked.

There is also a shared note on my phone titled MOVING DAY ORDER OF OPERATIONS, which currently contains twenty-three numbered items and the optimistic instruction Do not open boxes until furniture is in correct room.

I have opened nine boxes. Possibly ten.

“Why is there a bath towel on the kitchen island?”

I glance up from where I’m crouched beside an open box containing two cookbooks, a vibrator charger, one hiking boot and a ceramic bowl I don’t remember buying.

Viktor stands at the other end of the kitchen with his hands on his hips, looking so uncannily similar to Ebba I almost laugh. His black T-shirt is damp between his shoulder blades from carrying furniture, and there’s a streak of dust along his forearm. Behind him, Reid and Rhys are maneuvering our dining table through the doorway while Chase offers advice from a position that involves touching none of it.

“I needed something from the bathroom box,” I explain.

“What were you looking for?”

I look down at the things around me. “I don’t remember.”

Viktor closes his eyes, and from my phone propped against the fruit bowl, Nia’s laugh crackles through the speaker. “I’d like the record to show that I called this. You should’ve organized professional movers.”

“I wanted the experience of it! Plus, it’s off season and these hockey goblins need jobs to do.”

Viktor shakes his head and looks at the kitchen around me. “You have somehow created more work.”

“I’m unpacking.”

“You have removed objects from boxes and placed them beside different boxes.”

“Yes. That is phase one.”

“There is no phase one.”

Reid makes a choking sound behind Viktor that might be a laugh, while Rhys lowers his end of the table carefully and straightens. “I’m not getting involved in this.”

“Smart,” Chase says.

Mila walks past carrying two plants, pauses long enough to look at the chaos I’ve created, and immediately changes direction.

“Coward,” I call after her.

“I’ve worked for you long enough to know when something can’t be rehabilitated.”

Rhys’s mouth twitches as he watches her disappear down the hallway. I see it, and he catches me seeing it. But when my eyebrows lift, his expression instantly rearranges itself back into something suspiciously neutral. Before I can comment further, Carina comes through the front door carrying a box against her hip.

“Why is everyone standing around?”

“Heidi is helping,” Viktor says, gesturing toward the array of opened boxes around me.