Page 194 of Top Shelf

Carina looks at the kitchen, then grimaces. “Oh.”

“Fuck all of you!”

Nia laughs again through my phone. “Put me somewhere useful, Heid. I wanna see upstairs.”

I pick her up and escape before Viktor can assign me another moving-related restriction, and continue the tour of our house.

Our house.

I still get a strange little jolt of joy every time I think of those words. It isn’t enormous, despite us being fully capable of buying something with six bathrooms and a wine cellar neither of us would know what to do with. But it’s on a quieter street west of the city, close enough that my commute to Return To Play doesn’t make me homicidal, and far enough that Viktor gets trees, a garage for Priscilla and a yard he keeps insisting he has no strong opinions about—but has been sending me links to native Colorado plants for weeks.

We chose this place together. We looked through every room and discussed every compromise. And when we signed the mortgage documents, I made an obscene joke just to see whether I could make our lawyer uncomfortable. Viktor told him to ignore me. Then he squeezed my knee beneath the table while I signed my name beside his.

The master bedroom is currently the most complete room in the house because item one on Viktor’s list was ASSEMBLE BED, followed by MAKE BED.

I point my phone through the door. “Bedroom.”

Nia whistles. “Look at you two with your big bed. Actual grown-ups.”

“Rude.”

“Where’s the Pink Lady?”

“At the studio.”

The answer comes easily, because the lamp belongs there now, glowing in the corner of my office beneath the certificates with my name on them. I carried her through every version of myself that needed reminding I could take up space exactly as I was. She doesn’t need to follow me home anymore.

Nia makes an approving noise just as the doorbell rings downstairs.

“Delivery!” Chase shouts.

My stomach flips, and I turn too quickly, nearly colliding with Mila at the top of the stairs.

She catches my shoulders. “Jesus, Heid.”

“Sorry.”

Her eyes narrow immediately, because Mila is disturbingly good at detecting secrets. “What’d you do?”

“Nothing.”

“That face says otherwise.”

“I have to go downstairs.” I slip around her before she can interrogate me further and take the steps too quickly, with Nia still watching from my phone.

Two delivery guys are carrying a huge flat package through the front door, and Viktor is standing there watching them with a crease between his brows.

His eyes cut to mine. “What is this?”

“Art.”

“What kind of art?”

I clear my throat, gesturing for the guys to carry it through to the living room. “The tasteful kind.”

“That does not answer my question, Heidi.”

“It will in approximately twenty seconds.”