POV: Emma
Exactly one month.
I stared at the date on my clipboard before flipping to the rent ledger.
Apartment 1A.
Paid.
2C.
Paid.
3B...
Also paid.
On time.
Again.
I frowned.
That shouldn't have surprised me, yet somehow it did.
When Damian Knight first walked into Brookside Apartments with polished shoes and the expression of a man who'd never assembled his own furniture, I'd quietly predicted he wouldn't last two weeks.
Instead...
He'd survived burned dinners, laundry disasters, supermarket confusion, a flooded bathroom, neighborhood gossip, community cleanups, cooking lessons, and enough public embarrassment to make most people disappear forever.
Somehow he was still here.
Even stranger...
He no longer looked like he wanted to escape.
A knock sounded on the office do
