Jamal did not get back to Tom's house until very late that evening.
The sky was already dark by the time his car turned into the long driveway of the mansion. The porch lights glowed warmly against the quiet night.
He leaned back briefly against the seat before turning off the engine.
"Finally," he muttered tiredly.
His day had been a chaos.
One of the animation teams had missed a major delivery deadline for a project that was supposed to launch the following week. That alone had turned the studio upside down. Meetings, emergency calls with the marketing team, angry partners, and a last-minute rewrite of the distribution schedule had swallowed most of his afternoon.
Then when he finally left the office, traffic had refused to cooperate.
Now his shoulders felt stiff and his head throbbed slightly.
Still, the moment he thought about Dawn and Josh inside the house, the tightness in his chest eased a little.
