Prologue
Six months.
One hundred and eighty-three days of entries. One hundred and eighty-three nights of coming home to his sparse apartment, opening the leather notebook, and losing himself in the only world where he mattered.
Marcus Chen had filled the first notebook completely. The second was already half-full, the pages warped slightly from the pressure of his pen, from the intensity with which he wrote. Jessica Thornton had left the firm in March, taken a position at a competitor downtown, and he’d written her goodbye in his own way. A fantasy where she came to his office on her last day, locked the door, and begged him to give her something to remember him by.
Sarah Mitchell had gotten engaged. He’d written that one too. The night before her wedding, sneaking into his hotel room at the rehearsal dinner, needing one last taste of what she was giving up.
The notebook knew all of it. The notebook held everything he couldn’t say, everything he couldn’t have, everything he wanted so badly it burned.
It was the only place where his shyness didn’t matter. Where the social anxiety that had plagued him since high school, the way his throat closed up around attractive women, the way he became furniture in any room that contained more than three people, simply didn’t exist. In the notebook, he was confident. Commanding. Wanted.
And then, on a Tuesday in October, everything changed.
Marcus was organizing discovery documents when she walked past his door.
He looked up reflexively, the way he always did when movement caught his peripheral vision, and his breath stopped in his chest.
She was new. He would have noticed her before. You didn’t forget a woman who looked like that.
Tall, maybe five-seven, with black hair that fell past her shoulders in a thick, glossy curtain. Brown skin the color of caramel, smooth and warm-looking. Dark eyes lined with something that made them look larger, more intense. She was wearing a navy blazer over a white silk blouse, tailored slacks that hugged her hips, and heels that clicked against the hardwood floor with each step.
She paused at his doorway. Looked in. Made eye contact.
And smiled.
“You must be Marcus,” she said. Her voice was low, melodic. “They told me you’re the one who actually knows where everything is.”
He realized he hadn’t said anything. He was just staring at her like an idiot, his mouth slightly open, his thoughts scattering like the documents he’d just organized. Say something, he told himself. Anything. You’re thirty-one years old and you’ve forgotten how words work.
“I’m Priya,” she continued, stepping into his office, graciously pretending not to notice his malfunction. “Priya Sharma. I just started today. Paralegal, like you.”
She extended her hand. He shook it. Her grip was firm, her skin soft, and the contact sent a jolt through him that settled directly in his cock.
“Marcus Chen,” he managed. “Welcome to the firm.”
“Thank you.” Her smile widened. Her teeth were very white against her brown skin. “I have a feeling we’re going to be spending a lot of time together.”
She held his hand a beat too long before releasing it. Or was he imagining that? He was probably imagining that.
“If you need anything,” he said, “I’m right here.”
“I’ll remember that.” She turned to leave, paused at the door, and looked back over her shoulder. “I definitely will.”
Then she was gone, her heels clicking down the hallway, and Marcus sat in his chair with a throbbing erection and the absolute certainty that he was fucked.
Not literally. Never literally.
But in every other way that mattered.
That night, he skipped his usual routine. The leftover pad thai reheated while half-watching true crime documentaries he’d never admit to anyone he loved, the hour of mindless scrolling through Reddit while the group chat from college sat unread because he never knew what to say. Instead, he went straight to his desk and opened the notebook to a fresh page.
His hand was trembling. He hadn’t felt like this since his first entry, two years ago, when he’d been so consumed by wanting Jessica Thornton that he’d had to do something or lose his mind.
This was worse. This was so much worse.
Because Priya Sharma hadn’t just walked past him without seeing. She’d stopped. She’d smiled. She’d held his hand too long and said his name like she was tasting it.
And he couldn’t stop thinking about what he wanted to do to her.
He uncapped his pen. Pressed it to the paper.
And wrote.
