There was an obnoxiously loud beeping sound that just wouldn't stop. I rolled over and tried to focus, but it still took me almost a minute to recognize it was the alarm on my phone.

I groaned and laid back down. It had been a while since I woke up in such an agitated and very aroused state. The dream had seemed so real and so similar to the last time me and Austin were intimate... before he disappeared. Austin had just been so freaking perfect, and so good...

Everything had always been so good with him. And so easy. Despite us having been so young when we were together, and us being each other's first, he was still the best I'd ever had.

"Fuck you, Austin William whatever," I groaned and rolled over, pulling the blanket over my head.

Selma, who must have thought we were playing some kind of game, nudged the pillow with her head while whining very loudly in my ear.

"Stop," I mumbled into the pillow, but she didn't, of course.

I gave up and got out of bed. After a quick shower, I fed her and realized I was out of tea.

"What?" I sighed. How the hell did I let myself run out of tea? I used to have tea bags all over the place. Including a couple of emergency packs in my bag, but no luck.

I should have known then that it wasn't going to be a good day.

There was a long line at my favorite coffee shop. Waiting would make me late for work, but I decided to do so anyway because I needed my morning tea. Ten minutes later, I finally got my large cup with just the right amount of milk. I smiled as I raised it to my lips, just for the lid to come off, which resulted in me spilling a hefty amount straight down the front of my creamy white blouse.

"What the actual hell?" I groaned. I was already late. My choice was to arrive to work in a stained and wet blouse, or find something to change into. And finding something businesslike at eight in the morning wasn't easy. Especially since I was already late.

All I had in the trunk of my car was an oversized yellow cardigan that I wore when I was out running errands during the colder months or at night, if it got chilly. Well, it was late spring in Georgia, and nowhere near chilly. But that couldn't be helped. I wrestled into the large cardigan and decided to turn the temperature down a few degrees in my office instead.

The day didn't get much better from there. I was called into my boss, Nolan's office, before I had a chance to finish my tea. He gave me a once over as I walked in and looked a bit confused at the big yellow cardigan I had wrapped around me like a security blanket. He, like most of the male employees in our office, either wore a button-up shirt or some kind of golf shirt, but didn't mention it.

"I spilled tea," I mumbled instead as a way of explanation, and I took the seat across from Nolan's large desk.

He only nodded, and then after clearing his voice, he said, "We need to talk about Peter."

And of course we did.

Peter was one of my sales representatives. He was normally very good at his job, but his numbers had been slipping lately. I knew that, but I didn't know how bad they were until Nolan showed me and informed me that I needed to do something about it.

Peter was having a tough time. He was in the middle of a rough divorce, which was something I hadn't disclosed to anyone, but now it seemed like I needed to have a real talk with Peter.

And how the hell do you tell someone that "I'm sorry your personal life has fallen apart, but unless you step it up at work, you may not have one much longer?"

Like he didn't have enough to worry about.

"God dammit," I mumbled as I walked back to my office.

A quick search showed me exactly where Peter's numbers had fallen, and it was even worse than what Nolan had pointed out. It was clearly a bigger problem than I'd realized. I looked over my choices. I could either call him in and reprimand him about the poor job he'd been doing and tell him he needed to do better, or I could try to offer him some help.

Peter had a daughter that was close in age to my niece, Brielle. I knew he prioritized spending time with her because she was having a rough time with her parents splitting up. Maybe that wasn't the correct thing to do from a work perspective, but knowing the amount of time my sister and Brian spent with Brielle, it didn't seem fair to punish Peter for prioritizing his daughter.

So I spent the next couple of hours on the phone, talking to the doctor's offices that had been quiet over the last couple of months. A few of them were happy to hear from me and placed orders right away, while a couple promised to go through their inventory and follow up with Peter regarding their needs in the next couple of days.

I sent an invitation to Peter for a meeting for the following day so we could come up with a better plan for him to handle his territory, but it least it felt like all hope wasn't lost.

While I was at it, I ran William's name through our internal search system once again. All the contact numbers and emails for everyone employed in the company should be in an internal phone book, connected to our emails. I had tried before and found nothing. This time I tried William Rodger, instead of Rodgers, and found one person with no address, just a phone, and an email address. I changed the name again to Will Rodgers with no hit. I tried again and came up with another possibility: Bill Rodgers, out of West Virginia.

William Rodger didn't answer the phone when I dialed and I didn't leave a message, but Bill Rodgers did. "Yeah, this is Billy," a burly man's voice, which was very clearly not Austin's, said through the phone. I apologized and explained that I thought he was someone else.

"Don't worry," he chuckled. "You're not the first one making that mistake today."

That caught me off guard.

"Oh, no?"

"No, I just had someone else call and ask if I was William Rodgers. Turns out I wasn't who they were looking for, either." He chuckled again, and I forced out a laugh which sounded extremely fake to my own ears.

When I hung up the phone, my belly was full of dread. Why was someone else looking for Austin?