It started with little things.

Buying you dinner, picking up coffee for you in the morning before work.

You let him, because it wasn’t obscene.

This—this is obscene.

Bags of groceries delivered to your doorstep after you’d complained about having to budget for the rest of the month to make it work. A brand new, high-end coffee machine on your kitchen counter after yours sputtered out and died a week ago.

You confront Ward about it, in his office, more than once.

He shrugs, looks at you like you’re crazy for even questioning the gifts.

“You needed it, and I can afford it. Let me.”

And then the conversation doesn’t come up again.

Ward keeps spoiling you, and not in subtle ways, either.

He takes over your subscriptions, puts them on autopay on his card so you ”never have to think about them again.”

The next time Ward comes by your tiny apartment, he brings more groceries—fancy ones, brands you’d always dismissed buying because of the price, all now filling your fridge and stuffing your pantry.

When you give him a sidelong glance, clearly a little too proud to be spoiled by him the way that you are, he simply gives a soft laugh, adjusts himself on your tiny, cozy couch.