Chapter 2

The contract arrived the next morning.

Not by email. By hand — a courier at her door at nine am with a sealed envelope and a pen and a line for her signature at the bottom of three pages of precisely worded terms.

She read it twice at her kitchen counter with her coffee. It said exactly what he had said in her living room — one month, his terms, her conditions written in clean legal language at the bottom of page two. Nothing that leaves a mark. Nothing that humiliates. Stop means stop.

She signed it.

She texted the number at the bottom of the last page....