All Chapters of Heartprints in the Void: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

I groan at the soft instrumental music blasting from my phone, my restless eyes fluttering open. I spent the better part of the night tossing and turning, wondering if the man that I saw last night actually was who I think he was. I’m probably trippin’. … I am exhausted… It’s as though I can feel the bags under my eyes as I pull the teal colored bed sheets from over my body, my unoccupied hand silencing my phone. The heavy sighs that erupt from a sleepy Bubbles laying on his beige orthopedic dog bed makes me side-eye him, wondering what could possibly ale my favorite unemployed freeloader. Per usual, I go about my daily routine: feed Bubbles, make the bed, brush my teeth, shower, throw on a pair of boot-cut jeans with a nice long-sleeve blouse, and I put on my eyebrows. Okay, that’s a little bit of an exaggeration. I’m actually just filling them in. I lengthen my eyelashes with mascara, brush and blow-dry my shiny, waist-length, black, straight hair while I pray for a frizz-

The hours that pass are painful. Not even the horrid HR videos that I’ve been watching for the past few hours are enough to settle my anxiety. The lunch hour couldn’t roll around fast enough, and while others in the team start trickling off at noon, I wait until Krina gets up to follow behind her. We part ways when she approaches the floor’s kitchen area and I continue to the elevator where I ride it down to the first floor and make my way to my car in the garage. Anxious to call my best friend, the phone’s already dialing as I lower myself onto the passenger seat. Closing the door, I press the speaker button, the heel of my foot incessantly tapping against the car’s floor. “Hey, girl!” Ava answers cheerfully. “What’s up? How’s your first day going?! Tell me EVERYTHING.” Under different circumstances, I would’ve been ever-so grateful for having a great friend who’s just as enthusiastic as I would’ve been otherwise. “Ava…” my voice quavers as I try not to let what I’m feeling co

The weekend couldn’t have come fast enough, and while I race through the last HR training, Mateo and Krina say their goodbyes and wish me a good weekend.These past couple of days, I’ve been staying behind, a little past 5PM so as to not be the first of the engineers on my team to leave. Today, however, it’s 10 minutes until 6PM and I’m only 5 minutes short from finishing the unskippable last video.If not for the fact that I’m aggravated by the fact that I have to finish this before being allowed to work on anything else, I need something to challenge my mind. While I know that there will come a lot of work and stress, I would much rather have to worry about that than the animosity between Cade and I.As the last 30 seconds of the video play, I stand from my seat and begin to pack up my belongings. It’s a feeling of satisfaction like no other when the intolerable voice of the woman narrating the video finally stops, and I close out of the HR screen for the last time. In one swift mot

⊰ Cade ⊱I sit at the table, sipping my beer as I wait for my date to arrive. The bustling energy of the restaurant envelops me—the clink of glasses, the hum of conversation, the occasional burst of laughter. My gaze scans the premises briefly, my gaze flickering from the semi-empty bar to the basketball game playing on the pair of TVs overhead when my attention is suddenly drawn to the door as a familiar figure walks in.Elysian.The mere sight of her is unsettling, my eyes following her as she makes her way to the bar and takes a seat. I can’t help but stare, my mind drifting, trying to recall the last time I’d seen her, before she mysteriously reappeared in my life.It was an argument, as usual. Truthfully, I can’t remember doing anything with her except arguing. She kept trying to walk away from me while I was talking, knowing full well how much I hated it when she

As I stare into the pair of monitors connected to my laptop, I rest my elbow on my desk, holding my chin in my hand.I thought that with the coming weeks, I would be too busy to think about anything outside of my work; however, nothing could have distracted me from the events that transpired two weeks ago. Worst of all, I’m all the more uneasy about Cade being back in my life.After leaving me to go ‘put a shirt on’, I had done as he told me to, reluctantly lowering myself onto the leather sofa of his living room. The wall that I faced, which would typically have a TV mounted on it, is instead one large glass wall with a beautiful view of the woods. It wasn’t until I noticed the curvy road between the trees that I realized that I wasn’t far from my apartment.I had heard about these hill-top, million dollar houses, and it didn’t surprise me that one of them is his. After all, he inherited a billion dollars from his tr