Free After Hours by Cara McKenna Page B

Nervous, I peered through
     the peephole.
    Kelly, of all people.
    Every ounce of my hard-earned self-possession vanished in a breath.
    I swung the door in. “Um, hello.”
    He took up the entire threshold, and he was holding a vase of white lilies.
    Fucking hell, he was here to woo me. And I would go so,
so
easily.
    I wished I hadn’t just gone from heels and a dress to bare feet and an oversized Red
     Wings tee shirt.
    “Happy birthday.” He held out the flowers and I accepted them.
    “How did you know that?”
    “Saw it on the roster this morning—the participants list for the restraints course.”
     His chameleon eyes looked blue again, the pale robin’s egg shade of my walls.
    “Oh. Well, thanks.” He was being so uncharacteristically sweet, I offered a dopey
     smile and admitted, “I wish you’d said something earlier. I was feeling sorry for
     myself all day, thinking no one knew.”
    “That’s a shame. Want me to sing to you?” This was a strange hybrid version of Kelly,
     a mix of the cool, civil man I passed on the ward, and the more mischievous one who’d
     proclaimed himself a controlling hothead in the neon intimacy of the bar.
    “That’s all right.” I put the flowers on my dresser, disreputable bits of me still
     clinging to the hope that he was here to seduce me. Getting trounced by a gigantic
     orderly seemed a great way to kick off my twenty-ninth year. Except for . . . well,
     he was my coworker, for one. And nearly a stranger, and a bit of a chauvinist.
But only a bit,
my pussy pointed out.
And he brought me flowers.
Valid points.
    I cleared my throat and nodded to the vase. “They’re lovely, thanks.”
    “They’re secondhand. I nabbed them from the party.”
    Aaannnd
 . . . seduction ruined. “You stole someone’s going-away flowers?”
    “With permission. She had plenty more where those came from.”
    Okay, so he hadn’t driven into town and back to get me a gift, but what in the fuck
     did I expect? Who did I think this guy was to me?
    “It’s the thought that counts,” he pointed out.
    “You’re right.” I wandered to my bed and took a seat, weariness redoubled. Kelly must
     have sensed it, as he said, “Excited to spend your first morning off practicing choke
     holds?”
    “Oh yes, thrilled. Though I’d rather do it with you than a patient.”
    He crossed his arms and leaned against the door frame.
    “You can come in, if you want.” I pointed to a chair that didn’t match its desk, all
     the furniture secondhand, castoffs like my flowers. Like every stitch of clothing
     I’d owned growing up, even the shirt I wore now, inherited from some ex-boyfriend
     whose face I could barely conjure.
    Kelly’s gaze flicked around the room, but after a pause he shut the door behind him
     and pulled out the chair. My room was small to begin with, but stick Kelly Robak in
     the middle and it seemed all at once tight and hot. My womanhood suddenly felt much
     the same.
    I cleared my throat.
    “Seems like you’re finding your feet,” he said. I thought I could smell him, behind
     the lilies, but it was probably a delusion.
    “I’m starting to get the routine. I know where stuff is, know some people’s names.
     Thanks, for letting me tail you at the party. It’s the least square-peggish I’ve felt
     so far. Overdressed or not.”
    His eyes darted around again, and not in a sexy,
Which wall shall I nail her to?
kind of way.
    “Is my room creeping you out?”
    “Nah, not quite. It’s just weird. It’s so much like one of the rooms from the locked
     ward, but a different color and without the bars, and with like, stuff on the walls.
     I keep thinking, ‘
slashing hazard,
’” he pointed to a framed photograph that’d been there when I moved in. “
Suicide risk
.” He nodded to a belt of mine, draped around a bedpost, then to a bottle of perfume
     on my dresser. “
Accelerant. Search the room for matches
.”
    I smirked. “You haven’t clocked out