I nodded my thanks. He must have realized I was so tired, I wasn’t going to be getting up off this bench anytime soon – unless there was an emergency.
I sat there until close. Drake never came back in. Grey never came back in. Eventually, Nikolai came to tell me the last customer was gone and I got up, feeling all the aches and pains in my body and glad – not for the last time – that I’d driven to work. Even though it was a short enough distance away that I could easily walk it, after nights like tonight, I had no desire to walk anywhere. Even pressing my foot on the accelerator pedal felt almost like too much.
I locked the door of my apartment behind me, fell on the bed, and slipped into a deep sleep before I’d even taken my shoes off.
But I still had time, between shutting my eyes and drifting away, to wonder what I was going to find when I came to work tomorrow – and whether my chance to find out if Drake might be open to something more than just rivalry was gone forever.
Drake
“Rafael just told me he caught you taking drugs.”
I sighed and sat down in front of Grey’s desk. The man himself hadn’t sat yet, but stood over me on the other side of the desk with his hands deep in his pockets. He looked like he was on a roll of cutting off heads.
There was no point in denying it. Honesty was going to be the only policy that could get me through this situation.
I took the bag of pills out of my pocket and set them on the table between us.
“What are they?” Grey asked, looking at them pointedly as if he wanted to rifle through them – but, at the same time, didn’t want to touch anything illegal.
“Painkillers,” I told him. “Strong ones. I have a prescription.”
“Why are they in a bag?”
“Bottles rattle, and they make a weird shape in my pocket.” I shrugged; then, knowing Grey as I did now, I made a move that was either very smart or very, very stupid. “I wouldn’t want anyone to get any ideas about what I might or might not have in my pocket.”
The corner of Grey’s mouth quirked upwards at the innuendo, and a little of the righteous fire in his eyes was put out. I was getting somewhere. “Why are you taking them?”
I bit my lip for a long moment, but there was no getting around it. I had to come clean. I laid my right wrist on the desk in front of me like it was an exhibit. “I have RSI,” I said. “Repetitive Strain Injury. I ended up having to take some time off my last job because the pain was out of control. It’s under control now. I just need to take the pills now and again when there’s a particularly busy service, like today.”
Grey made a humming noise. He sat down. “What’s the pain like?”
“It’s like an aching, burning feeling,” I said. “If I don’t address it right away, it develops into stiffness, until it feels like I can’t move my wrist at all. And I’m a stubborn fuck, so I keep on moving it anyway, and it’s agonizing. Then it starts swelling up and cramping, and then I’m off work for days, maybe weeks. I don’t let it get past the burning anymore.”
“You can work with this?”
I nodded.
“Reliably?”
I tilted my head to the side. “Let me recover from today and I’ll show you how reliable my wrist is,” I said. I hoped he knew from my tone that I meant it as a statement of confidence, not a promise of something I would actually carry out.
Grey snorted and shook his head, rubbing the back of his neck. “You swear to me this won’t affect your performance here?”
I leaned forward across the desk. “I have it under control,” he said. “I didn’t mention it before because I know what it sounds like. It sounds like I’m going to go on sick pay as soon as you give me the real job. But have I ever needed to take a break during a single service so far?”
Grey shook his head. “You’ve kept up with everything.”
“Including today,” I pointed out. “And from what I hear from the other guys, that’s about the busiest it’s possible for The Crow to get.”
Grey nodded. “That much is true.”
I sat back in the chair, my case made. “Then you know I’m not going to let you down.”
There was a long moment. My heart thundered in my chest despite the confidence I’d shown. I didn’t know whether he was going to dismiss me, anyway, but I had a good feeling.
“Alright,” Grey said, at length. “I’ll tell Rafael to mind his own business. No one else needs to know anything about this if you don’t want them to. Would you be better supported if they knew?”
I shrugged and then shook my head. “I don’t think so. I don’t need anyone making allowances for me or helping me out with stuff. I want to do it myself to make sure the quality of the food stays high.”
