The session was scheduled for nine.
Aurora arrived at five past, which was unlike her—she was almost always precisely on time, the kind of punctuality that communicated something without needing to say it. Five minutes late was the result of sitting in her car in the parking garage for four minutes before deciding that whatever she was doing in the car was less useful than going upstairs.
She had decided, somewhere between her apartment and the building, that none of it needed to carry into this room. The Instagram story. The familiar jacket at the edge of the frame. The caption that had been designed to be seen. She had processed it in Ray's passenger seat and again in the grocery store and a third time in her apartment before bed, and by morning she had filed it cleanly and properly in the category of things that were not her concern, because Liam Ashford's personal life was not her concern, and she had work to do.
She took the elevator up. Told herself she was fine.
