Updated Dec 11, 2025 • ~8 min read
The coffee was still hot when Daphne threw it.
Not at me—that would’ve been too honest. She threw it at the wall beside my head, close enough that I felt the spray of scalding liquid hit my cheek. The ceramic mug shattered, pieces skittering across the polished floor of her corner office, and for one frozen second, I actually thought about bending down to clean it up.
Old habits.
“Do you have any idea,” Daphne said, her voice that special kind of quiet that meant she was about to detonate, “how much that presentation meant to me?”
I did. I’d stayed until three in the morning perfecting it. I’d fact-checked every slide, formatted every graph, spell-checked every word. I’d even picked up her dry cleaning on the way in this morning, the dress she was supposed to wear to the pitch meeting with the Hartley Group.
The pitch meeting she’d missed because she’d been hungover. Again.
“I know,” I said carefully. “That’s why I took the meeting.”
Wrong answer.
Daphne’s face went from pink to red to that particular shade of purple that usually preceded someone’s termination. “You took the meeting. YOU. My assistant. You walked into a room with Hartley Group executives and presented MY work without MY permission.”
“You weren’t answering your phone—”
“Because I was BUSY!”
Busy sleeping off last night’s bottle of whatever she’d convinced herself was self-care. But I didn’t say that. I’d learned, over two years of working for Daphne Merrick, that honesty was a luxury I couldn’t afford.
Except apparently, I’d forgotten that lesson this morning.
“They loved it,” I said quietly. “The presentation. They signed.”
The silence that followed was worse than the yelling.
Daphne’s mouth opened. Closed. Her eyes, bloodshot and ringed with yesterday’s mascara, narrowed. “Get out.”
My stomach dropped. “Daphne—”
“You’re fired, Hannah. Pack your desk. Security will escort you out.”
The thing about the worst day of your life is that you don’t know it’s the worst day until it keeps getting worse.
Twenty minutes later, I was standing on the sidewalk outside Hartley Tower with a cardboard box of desk supplies and no job. The sky was doing that thing it does in March where it can’t decide between rain and sleet, so it just does both. My phone buzzed in my pocket—probably Elise, my best friend, calling to see how the morning went.
I pulled it out. Not Elise. My landlord.
Eviction notice filed. You have 48 hours.
I stared at the message until the words stopped making sense. Forty-eight hours. Two days. I’d been late on rent before, but always managed to scrape something together. Always promised it wouldn’t happen again.
This time, I’d been counting on my paycheck. The one I was no longer getting.
The box slipped from my hands. Pens scattered across wet concrete, rolling into the gutter. I didn’t bend down to get them. What was the point? A three-dollar pen wasn’t going to save me.
My phone buzzed again. I almost didn’t look.
Your card has been declined. Payment of $47.23 could not be processed.
Of course. The phone bill. Because why not? Why not throw that on the pile of catastrophic failures that was Hannah Whitman’s life?
Twenty-nine years old. Broke. Jobless. About to be homeless.
And it was starting to rain harder.
I pulled up the rideshare app with shaking fingers. Home. I just needed to get home, crawl into bed, and figure out how to fix this. There had to be a way to fix this. There was always a way.
The app spun. Searching for drivers. Searching. Searching.
No drivers available in your area.
“No,” I whispered. “No, no, no, come on—”
I refreshed. Searched again. The little circle spun and spun, mocking me. My phone screen was wet now, rain dotting the glass, making it hard to see. Or maybe that was tears. Hard to tell anymore.
The rain came down harder. I didn’t have an umbrella. Why would I? This morning, walking into the office, the sky had been clear. This morning, I’d had a job and an apartment and a future that looked like something other than a cardboard box.
I was going to cry. Right here, on the sidewalk, in the rain, holding my dead phone and my empty wallet and the shattered remains of my dignity.
And then I heard it. The smooth purr of an expensive engine.
A black town car pulled up to the curb, sleek and pristine, completely out of place on this street full of food trucks and construction scaffolding. The kind of car that came with a driver in a suit and a passenger who’d never had to check their bank balance.
My rideshare. It had to be. The app had glitched, hadn’t shown me the car, but here it was.
Thank God.
I yanked open the back door and threw myself inside, gasping with relief as the warm, leather-scented interior wrapped around me. Classical music played softly. The seat was heated. I could’ve cried.
Actually, I was crying.
“Thank God you’re here,” I choked out, dropping back against the seat. “I’ve had the WORST day. I mean, the worst. Just—absolutely catastrophic. Is it possible for a single day to ruin your entire life? Because I think that just happened.”
I wiped my face with my sleeve, realized I was dripping water all over this pristine car, and had approximately zero energy to care.
“I got fired,” I continued, words tumbling out in a rush. “This morning. By my nightmare boss who threw coffee at the wall next to my head because I did her job too well. And I got an eviction notice. Forty-eight hours. And my phone bill bounced. And there are no drivers because apparently the universe just hates me specifically.”
I laughed. It sounded a little unhinged. “Sorry. You probably don’t want to hear about my disaster of a life. You’re just trying to do your job. I’m sorry, I’ll—”
“Don’t apologize.”
The voice that came from the front seat was not what I expected.
Deep. Smooth. The kind of voice that made you think of expensive whiskey and late nights and things you shouldn’t be thinking about in the back of a stranger’s car.
I froze.
Slowly, I lifted my gaze to the rearview mirror.
Eyes met mine. Dark. Intense. Focused entirely on me.
Not a driver. Or if he was, he was the kind of driver who wore Tom Ford suits and had a jawline that could cut glass.
“I—” My brain stalled. “I thought—the app—”
“The app?” One dark eyebrow lifted. He had the kind of face that belonged on magazine covers, all sharp angles and perfect symmetry. The kind of face that made you forget how to form sentences. “What app?”
Oh God.
Oh no.
“This isn’t my ride,” I said slowly. “This isn’t my rideshare.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. Not quite a smile, but close. “No.”
“I just got into a stranger’s car.”
“You did.”
“And told you my entire life story.”
“Condensed version,” he said. “I’m sure there’s more.”
I reached for the door handle. “I am so sorry. I’ll just—I’ll go. Pretend this never happened. I’m just going to—”
“Wait.”
Something in his voice made me stop. Not a command. More like… curiosity.
I looked up. Met those eyes again in the mirror.
“Coffee-throwing boss,” he said. “That’s abuse. Not legal.”
“Yeah, well. Neither is eviction without proper notice, but here we are.”
“Here we are,” he echoed. He was watching me like I was a puzzle he was trying to solve. “You look like you could use a drink.”
I laughed. It came out bitter. “I look like I could use twelve drinks. But I can’t afford one.”
“What if I told you I could fix that?”
I stared at him. At his expensive suit, his expensive car, his expensive everything. At the way he was looking at me like I was interesting instead of pathetic.
“I’d say you’re either very generous or very dangerous.”
That almost-smile again. “Maybe both.”
My phone buzzed. Another message. Probably another bill I couldn’t pay, another disaster piling onto the heap. I didn’t look.
“I don’t get into cars with strange men,” I said.
“You already did.”
“Right. And that went so well.”
He shifted, turning slightly in the driver’s seat. I could see him better now. Strong jaw. Dark hair, cut perfectly. The kind of face that belonged to someone who’d never had a worst day in his life.
“You said you wanted to go anywhere but here,” he said quietly. “So. Where to, then?”
The rain hammered against the roof. Outside, the city rushed past, everyone with somewhere to be, someone to be, a life that made sense.
I had nowhere. No one. Nothing.
Just a stranger with kind eyes and a question I should absolutely not answer.
“Anywhere but here,” I whispered.
The engine purred to life.
And everything changed.
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