I quickly showered, realizing I wanted to wash off the water, before drying off and finding the locker where I’d stored my things.
By the time I’d dressed, I was more in control but no less irritated. With myself and them, with this place, with Hannah, and with...I didn’t even know, life?
Yeah, life seemed like a good place to start.
And my back hurt like hell again.
LUKA
Okay,okay, it had been a day.
More than twelve hours anyway, so that had to count, right? I’d left Rowan alone since he left the spring yesterday evening. I hadn’t checked on him after dinner, and I hadn’t even checked his activity log attached to his access pass. Not that he would know I hadn’t, but goddammit, it was the principle of the matter. I had tried to give him the space he clearly wanted, but Christ, I had a job to do, and he was here for a reason.
Which was why I had been standing outside his room, staring at the device that would give me access. All I had to do was swipe my card and enter. There were no indicators that told me I should go away. He had already logged in for the day, which meant he was awake; neither privacy nor do-not-disturb mode had been activated, and he hadn’t used the private messaging system to tell me to leave him alone.
Of course, he hadn’t ever used the messaging system, but that wasn’t important.
I thought about calling Reggie, who had told me from the moment I passed my training that I could call him no matter what when I was on this job. That he would always be there tohelp me, because shit mattered; it always mattered, no matter how stupid it might seem.
Except...ugh, except I didn’t want to call him.
Oh noooo, my assigned guest was being stubborn and emotional, duh. The people who came here had problems, and I didn’t need to go crying to Reggie just because I wasn’t sure what to do. Other Guides had figured out how to do my job before I came along, which meant I could figure it out too.
Right, yes, exactly.
I could do this.
Right?
No, fuck that. Yes, I could.
Taking a deep breath, I pressed my card against the reader. Only the guest’s Guide or supervisors could enter a guest’s room during standard, resting mode. Well, there were also emergency protocols, but the AI controlling the systems had algorithms to handle them. Or at least that’s what I was told, and considering the reader flashed green to show my card had been accepted, that meant I was walking into a room that was perfectly?—
“Oh!” I cried out.
Everything in the room was where it should have been. A table and chair, if the guests wanted to eat alone, and a small nook in one corner for reading. The bed in the other corner, the bookshelf, a small fridge, and so on.
Except the breakfast area wasn’t empty, Rowan was there, his pants discarded, his hand wrapped around his?—
“Shit!” I hissed as his eyes flashed open and saw me. “No, no, the door was…fuck! Sorry!”
I was out of the room before you could say ‘yessir,everythingis proportional’ and slammed the door behind me.
Oh no, fuck this; I was calling Reggie.
“Hey, hey, Mr.…” Reggie began.
“Help!” I snapped into the phone. “SOS, 911, emergency!”
There was a pause, then Reggie’s voice, lacking its normal bluster and warmth, said, “An actual emergency?”
“Not the medical or life-threatening kind,” I corrected, before he got the wrong idea.
“So you’re having a personal emergency.”
“Yes?”
“Oh, good. I wasn’t ready for anything life-threatening,” he said, his tone returning to normal. “So tell Daddy what’s wrong.”
