Chapter 4

Between long shifts, Lara was, yet again, having to drop off mail for Zavien. However, it wasn’t as if she could simply slide it under his door, nor could she leave it in the hall for someone to take.

She, unlike some, was not a crappy neighbor.

Not by default, anyway.

So, she resigned herself to writing him another note.

While she had warmed to the idea of defiling her cute Post-its with vulgarity aimed at her inconsiderate jackass neighbor, she would have to ease off the cursing in favor of some actual communicative language, especially now that she was in possession of one of his packages.

The language being: ~Come get your goddamn package, you loathsome demon~. She would be lying if she said it didn’t make her feel vindicated to get her licks in, small though they were.

She was sliding the envelope containing a Post-it under his door when she saw it again: a shadow, movement. She had already knocked several times, and, as usual, there had been no answer, no footsteps, nothing.

But she wasn’t so exhausted this time around that she couldn’t grasp what she was seeing. There was someone at the door. And music ~was~ playing softly from inside. “What on earth…”

“Lara!”

“Oof!” Lara bonked her head hard against the door in surprise.

“Oh, shit, my bad.” Travis’s heavy footfalls drew nearer as he jogged toward her.

She mumbled about it being fine before warily eyeing the door, waiting for it to open. If anything was going to get someone’s attention, her head nearly smashing through the wood would do it.

When it didn’t open, she breathed a sigh of relief.

“Sorry,” Travis apologized as she stood to her full height. “I guess you haven’t been able to catch him?” He jerked his head toward Zavien’s door.

Lara huffed in frustration. “No. Is he just never home?”

“I’d say it’s more likely that he’s home more often than you are,” Travis said with a wry smile. “Anyway, I was wondering if you’d like to grab coffee before your shift?”

With one last annoyed look at the ever-closed door, Lara accepted defeat and agreed to move on to greener pastures with Travis. “Yeah, I’d love that,” she said, only stepping back into her apartment long enough to grab her bag and put on sneakers.

The coffee shop across from their building didn’t have as many options as the expensive chain Delia had gotten Lara hooked on throughout college, but they were able to give her a latte loaded up with hazelnut syrup, and that was good enough for her.

They took their coffees to go and strolled through the park adjacent to their apartment complex.

Travis pointed out the different trees growing along the path, commenting here and there on the landscaping and even dropping a couple of vegetation-themed jokes. Any time he spotted a piece of trash on the ground, he stopped to pick it up.

“I can’t believe what a tree hugger you are,” Lara said, full of appreciation for this imposing, muscular, absolute softy.

Travis didn’t seem embarrassed by her assessment. “Our relationship with the Earth ought to be mutually beneficial. Makes me crazy that people don’t agree.” He paused to collect more trash, smiling bashfully when Lara raised a brow at him. “Well, they could at least care a little.”

Lara laughed. “I think it’s great.” And she meant it.

“Well, what about you? You don’t strike me as the indifferent sort.” He glanced at her sideways as he sipped his coffee, leaving a pointed silence following his words.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She laughed, only a little offended.

“Nothing, nothing!” He held up a hand in surrender. “You’re just not exactly laid-back, from what I’ve seen.”

“No, I guess not,” she admitted, albeit grudgingly. She wished she could simply let go of things, but sometimes she was just a dog with a bone. “I have this need to get answers. To make progress. To be better. I wouldn’t even accept my parents’ help paying for university.

“That’s why I went for nursing instead of going straight for my MD. And I love my job, don’t get me wrong. I learn new things every day. I can feel myself improving every day, but I can see the ceiling, and it’s like the more I achieve, the closer the ceiling gets.

“I just want more.” She shrugged. “I need to ~be~ more. I feel like I’m in a rat race with my own dreams.”

“Hmm. Competitive,” he surmised.

She sighed. “Kind of annoying, huh?” Her shoulders slumped as she deflated.

Travis kept his eyes forward, squinting in thought. “No,” he decided with a wide grin before returning his gaze to her. “I think you’re brilliant.”

***

The sound of metal on linoleum filled the otherwise quiet break room as Lara slumped into a chair at the table where Travis was already sitting.

He glanced at her over his phone, smiling before doing a double take; his expression then changed to surprise. “Rough day?” He set his phone aside and leaned toward her.

Lara sighed and sank further into her seat, burying her face in her hands. “I’ve had to change my scrubs twice today already. And only one of those times was because of blood.”

Travis sucked in a long breath, and she could picture him cringing.

“My feelings exactly,” she said. After a deep breath, she uncovered her face and sat back up. “How’s your day been?” Maybe he could take her mind off the bodily fluids that had taken up the majority of her own day.

“I’m doing surgery transfers,” he said. “So, pretty good, actually.” At least he had the decency to shoot her a sympathetic smile. “So, uh, any response from Zavien?”

“Not yet,” Lara grumbled. “I don’t get it. It’s been days now. Does he not want his package? Why order something and then refuse to pick it up?”

“Maybe he’s been busy,” Travis suggested. “I don’t actually know much about him. He’s a pretty elusive guy.”

“He’s a pretty annoying guy. How hard is it to get your damn address right? Once, I could understand, but this many times? It’s not like the mail all comes from one sender, too, so he must be giving everyone the wrong address. God, he is such an asshole,” she ranted.

“I don’t know, Lara,” Travis said with a sigh. “He’s never really had any issues with the other tenants, as far as I know.”

“So, what? I’m the problem?” She narrowed her eyes.

“I didn’t say that,” he rushed to say.

She backed down, though an irrational need to defend herself rose in her chest.

“I think that you might just be making a snap judgment. I’ve lived three doors down from him for five years and haven’t seen any problems,” Travis continued. “Why does it bug you so much, anyway?”

Lara groaned, flopping forward on the table with her head in her hands again. “I don’t know!” she admitted, finally. “I just can’t understand why it’s happening. I mean, I’m getting what looks like bills, bank statements, important documents. How is he getting his address wrong?

“I would never make that mistake twice, let alone repeatedly. For all I know, he’s doing it on purpose! It’s inconsiderate, obtrusive, selfish, and entitled, and—”

Likely sensing she was on a downward spiral, Travis took one of her hands between his own to halt her rant. “Okay, okay, I get it,” he reassured her.

Lara’s shoulders dropped as she forced herself to relax.

A moment of silence passed.

“I really want to know what’s in the box,” she confessed. “It calls to me in the night, like a siren song.”

Travis’s eyes widened, and his jaw dropped like he couldn’t believe what he had just heard. “Lara, no. Opening that box is going way over the line.”

Lara knew he was right, damn it, but it didn’t quell her curiosity.

***

The box was mocking her.

It sat on her shoe rack, innocently waiting by the door for the time when Zavien would finally come to collect it. Every time she entered, exited, or even walked by the door, it goaded her.

~Open me. Open me and reveal the mysteries of Zavien Crane.~

Learning the mysteries of Zavien Crane—what a terrifying notion. Almost terrifying enough to dissuade her from what was undoubtedly an awful idea.

Almost.

She plopped the box down on her kitchen island and sat on the stool in front of it. She rested her chin on her hands, positioning herself at eye level with the shipping label. Travis was right; she couldn’t open it. Even if Zavien was the bane of her existence, it wasn’t right.

With an exceptional display of willpower, Lara rose from her seat, determined to dump the stupid box at Zavien’s door and evade its call to nefariousness. Yet, as she slid it off the island, her thumb slipped under a lifted bit of tape along the top seam—utterly out of her control.

Pausing, she stared at the offending digit through the cloudy brown tape.

This changed everything.

The tape was already lifting; all she had to do was encourage it a little and then reseal it. She could peek, reclose the package, and dump it at Zavien’s doorstep. He would be none the wiser.

“Just a little peek,” she whispered to herself as she oh so gently raised the tape. The cardboard under it remained blissfully intact. “A teensy-weensy peek.” She squealed quietly, unable to contain her glee.

Right when the tape came clean off the box, the telltale sound of the door across the hall opening sent a jolt through her.

She nearly launched the box across her kitchen.

Before she could gather her scruples, she had already slipped into her slides and was frantically bursting out of her apartment to catch Casper the Not-So-Friendly Ghost before he disappeared again.

The first thing she noticed was that he wasn’t wearing his cap today. The second was that his hair was a shocking white-blond. And the third was that his dark eyes were much more intense without a shadow obstructing them.

He, too, seemed to be taking her in. His eyes moved from her face down, down, down, stopping somewhere below her neck.

She was almost offended until she realized that he was not, in fact, enthralled by her modest bosom but rather by the open box in her hands. Any and all righteous fury she had felt died on her lips, leaving only mortification at having been caught.

As she held up the package, its open flaps seemed to flutter as if trying to break free from the awkward situation she had created.

Lara had no excuse, no clever explanation. Only one thing echoed in her otherwise empty brain: ~Oh shit.~