His to Hold: A Billionaire Romance (His to Have Book 2) by Piper Hayes Page B

is off, and I don’t dare turn it back on for fear that my father or Ben or someone worse than either of them will find me. I don’t know what kind of trouble Blake is in, but I know he’d want me to stay safe. I know he’d want me to wait for him.
    Little by little, I convince myself that maybe he’s calling, maybe something happened and he needs my help. I manage to go to sleep without turning the phone on, but my dreams are filled with calls. I dream that Blake is trying to reach me, that he needs my help. I dream that he’s trying to warn me, that he tells me I need to get out of New York at any cost. I toss and I turn, and I wake up more times than I can count. By the time morning comes, I decide I can’t wait another minute. I pick my phone up and turn it on.
    I have a missed call, but it isn’t from Blake. It’s from Ben. I listen to the voicemail. Ben wants to know if I’m safe. He asks me to call and says it’s important. There’s nothing from Blake. I turn the phone off, and I decide I’ll wait at least another day before checking again. A day passes, but there’s still no word from Blake. I start to worry that something really did happen to him.
    I remind myself that Blake said to wait for him here. It’s clear that he or someone he knows stocked the place for me. The fridge is full, and there’s an ample supply of pasta and other non-perishable food. I decide to wait things out. If Blake isn’t back by the end of the week, I’ll leave and figure something out. For the meantime, I stay in.
    I read. I cook and cook and cook some more to pass the time. I play solitaire. For the first time in my life, I clean. I find a bucket and sponges and cleaning supplies and I scrub the loft to within an inch of its grimy little life. By the time I’m done with it, it almost looks good. One thing’s for sure, it looks brighter, and I feel good about myself for a little while. I don’t even mind the way the cleaning supplies dry out my hands or the fact that the faint smell of bleach hangs in the air for hours after I’m done. I take both as reminders that I did something.
    While cleaning, I notice two filing cabinets at the back of the loft. They look like they’re left over from when the loft was actually part of the business below. I try to open the drawers, but they’re locked. I decide to leave them alone and go back to working on the rest of the space. I fold the futon down into a bed, and decide to think of it only as a bed. I’m hopeful that this will make me feel less like a broke college student. Blake is a billionaire, and for some reason, he didn’t spring for a couch or a mattress for this loft. The decision is made. The futon is now a bed. End of discussion.
    The only thing I don’t touch is the windows. I leave them dirty and streaked in case anyone were to notice the light on or anything. It takes me three days to clean the loft from top to bottom, and then I start to worry. I wonder what the hell I’m doing with my life, but mostly I worry about Blake. I worry that he’s in jail or that something worse has happened to him. With each passing day, the pit in my stomach grows a little bigger. I start to wonder if I’ll ever see him again.
    I turn my attention back to the filing cabinets. I don’t know why, but I want to know what’s inside. If Blake was so interested in preventing Ben from finding out about this apartment, there must be something here that he wanted to hide. I doubt it’s the futon, so whatever’s in the filing cabinets must be important. I search through the loft and find two paperclips. I remember seeing something somewhere about picking a lock using hairpins, and I try to remember. I jam one into the lock, and push another in and out while trying to turn the lock. Nothing happens.
    I pull the paperclips out, bend one of them and try again. I nearly break it in half as I try to get the lock to turn. I pull it back out and try every possible permutation of the two