Cole typed back: *Playing games.*
Three seconds later: *Games are great for unwinding. Good for you.*
Cole stared at the screen.
Vanessa Vale hated gaming. Not disliked — hated. She had always considered it the clearest possible sign that a man had no ambition, no drive, no future worth investing in. In his previous life she had made that position known early and enforced it without mercy. Any time he so much as picked up a controller she found a reason to start a fight, and the cold war that followed lasted until he apologized and put it down. Eventually he had just stopped entirely without her even having to ask.
And now here she was telling him games were great for unwinding.
Derek had told her about the eight million. That was the only explanation that made sense. It was almost funny — the exact same Cole, the exact same hobby, and the only thing that had changed was the number in his bank account.
He thought of a joke he'd read somewhere in his previous life. *If a broke man plays games, he's wasting his life. If a rich man plays games, he's refreshingly simple. The problem was never the games.*
He decided to push a little further.
*Been at it since this afternoon. Honestly worn out.*
Her reply came fast: *You shouldn't play for so long. Get some rest. Have an orange — good for vitamin C.*
*Don't have any oranges at home.*
Then he put the phone down and waited.
---
Across the city, Vanessa was under her comforter in an air-conditioned room, phone face-up on the pillow beside her, watching the chat window with a cold smile. She read his last message, set the phone face-down, and settled back.
Let him wait. Let him send another message. The moment he did, she had the upper hand.
She had run this play before and it had never failed.
---
Cole gave it thirty seconds, then stood up and grabbed his towel.
He knew exactly what she was doing. In his previous life she had used this same routine on him more times than he could count — the strategic silence, the waiting game, the way she'd hold back until he cracked and sent a follow-up. And every time he did, she pulled him one step further in the direction she wanted him to go. He had spent years being managed by a woman who never once let him think he was being managed.
Not this time.
He headed for the bathroom.
His head was still half inside the novel — a particular plot point had been nagging at him for the last hour — and he wasn't paying attention to anything in front of him when the bathroom door swung open and Dana Mercer walked out.
They collided. Cole's hands shot out instinctively and caught her before she went down, and for one suspended second Dana's face was about three inches from his, her hair still warm from the shower, a clean soap smell coming off her skin.
His brain stopped completely.
"Ah!"
Dana found her footing and shoved him back hard, both hands flat against his chest. Cole released her immediately and took a full step back.
Ava's door opened. She took in the scene — Dana pressed against the wall with both hands over her chest, Cole standing in the hallway looking like a man who had just walked into a screen door.
"Did you just—"
"I didn't do it on purpose," Cole said immediately. "I didn't even know she was in there."
Ava pressed her lips together. Her expression said everything her mouth wasn't saying.
Cole turned to Dana.
"Miss Mercer. I'm genuinely sorry. That was completely accidental."
Dana's face had gone from startled to deeply, thoroughly red. She straightened up, pulled her robe tighter, gave a small nod without making eye contact, and disappeared into her room. The door clicked shut behind her.
Cole turned back to Ava.
"I really didn't do it on purpose."
Ava gave him a slow thumbs up, somehow managing to make it feel like the opposite of a compliment, and gently closed her own door.
"That's — that's not what that means—" Cole started, then stopped, because he was talking to a closed door.
He stood alone in the hallway for a moment, shaking his head, and went into the bathroom.
The steam was still hanging in the air. Something faintly floral lingered that he couldn't quite ignore. He reached past the warm water and turned the cold handle as far as it would go.
---
Vanessa had checked her phone twice. Then a third time.
Nothing.
She sat up and stared at the screen. Cole always replied within seconds — had for four years, without exception. She said she had a cold, she was suffering, she could have brought him oranges. That was practically a written invitation and he had simply not responded.
She threw the phone onto the bed.
Picked it up again immediately.
Typed: *I came down with a cold today. Feeling awful. I would have brought you oranges but I can barely move.*
Sent it. Watched the screen.
Three minutes.
Nothing.
She pulled the comforter over her head.
Fine. She had her pride. She wasn't going to send two messages in a row — that was desperate, and Vanessa Vale was not desperate.
She closed her eyes and went to sleep.
---
Cole came back from his shower, saw her message, gave a short cold laugh, and put the phone face-down on the desk.
The cold act again. Same script, different night.
He sat back down and kept typing.
---
By the time he looked up again it was four in the morning.
He had been at it for nearly ten hours straight. Twenty thousand words on top of the ten thousand from the night before — thirty thousand total, which was the threshold the platform required before he could apply for a contract.
He clicked the button, got the confirmation prompt, and leaned back in his chair.
His back ached in a specific, structural way that suggested he had been sitting wrong for several hours. His fingers were trembling slightly. He finally understood why so many web novelists from his previous life complained constantly about their health. The output was brutal on the body.
He shut the computer down, set his phone to silent, and was asleep before he'd fully processed lying down.
---
He woke up at four in the afternoon.
Twelve hours. He couldn't remember the last time he'd slept twelve hours.
He picked up his phone.
Five messages from Vanessa on the app. He scrolled past them without opening any.
Eight million dollars was doing a lot of heavy lifting in her imagination right now. He wasn't going to help it along.
Two missed calls. One from Maya Caldwell. One from a number he didn't recognize.
He called the unknown number first.
It rang twice.
"Hello, Mr. Lin — this is Sophie, editor at Starfall Reads. Your contract application for *Nine Heavens* has been approved. I've sent you a friend request through the chat app — once you accept, we can walk through the contracting process."
"Give me a minute, I'm logging in now."
He turned on the computer, accepted Sophie's request, downloaded the contract from the email she'd already sent, and spent the next thirty minutes going through the details with her. The process was genuinely tedious — print it yourself, sign it, mail the physical copy. Nothing like the streamlined online systems that would exist a decade from now. But it was done, the contract was real, and *Nine Heavens* was officially signed.
He picked up his phone and called Maya Caldwell.
She answered on the second ring.
"Mr. Harmon."