“It is weird!” Snow moves further into my office and the door gradually closes on its own behind her. “You make it sound like you’re interested while almost making it sound like my presence would be a bother, like you don’t care either way.”
I bite back a small, amused chuckle for fear of offending her. “How can I be clearer than saying tell me?”
Her lips part and a flash of indignation warms her eyes, then she changes her mind and sighs. “I suppose… that’s pretty direct, actually.”
“Yes. So, will you tell me?”
Snow finally sits in the chair on the opposite side of my desk and gives me what’s clearly a toned-down version of her morning.
An alarm that didn’t go off, lost car keys, an aggravating roommate who is no help whatsoever, and a patch of ice that delayed her rush to find a good parking spot.
“Sometimes, the world works against us,” I say after my last mouthful of beef.
“You’re telling me,” Snow sighs. “And I understand Jen, to a point. I know a lot rides on what we do here and it’s my fourth or fifth time being late these past two months, but it’s never intentional.”
“Maybe you need a better alarm.”
She scoffs. “I used to use my phone alarm, but he… I mean, my phone kept vanishing while I slept, and I’d never hear it, so I switched to analog.”
“A vanishing phone?”
She rolls her eyes slightly and smiles that hesitant smile. “I’m a rough sleeper.”
“Clearly.”
“I bet you sleep like a log.” Snow chuckles. “All the work you do must be insanely stressful and just wipe you out at the end of the day.”
“Sometimes,” I agree. “Other times, it’s more like?—”
The sudden frantic beeping from my pager cuts through my words.
Pulling it from my hip, the rolling code details a large incoming trauma, and nothing else matters.
“Urgent?” Snow asks as she stands.
“Yes. I have to go.” Routine has me halfway out the door before I finish talking, but I catch myself and turn back to Snow, who stands in my doorway. “Thank you, Snow. For dinner. It really helped.”
Her warm, hesitant smile is the last thing I see before I sprint down the corridor.
I like that smile.
3
SNOW
Impossibly loud banging wakes me the next morning.
My one day off and Caleb decides it’s the perfect time to do some sort of construction.
Burying my head under the pillow, I wait out the flurry of bangs and sigh deeply.
When silence falls, lingering tendrils of my dream try to tempt me back to sleep and I ache to follow them.
Sleeping forever on my day off would be blissful.
Yesterday was the shift from hell after being so late, but there was one good thing.
That dinner with Xander.
