Not the guards or the locked rooms I’m not supposed to access.
This. The table, the toast, the gray morning light. The ease of it. How quickly it’s becoming a routine I would miss.
I drink my coffee and keep these thoughts to myself.
24
ELLIE
The knock is already halfway formed when I stop myself.
My knuckles are an inch from the door, and I’m standing in the corridor outside Rolan’s office, thinking about the last time I walked in and what happened afterward.
I knock anyway.
“Come in.”
He looks up when I enter.
“You said to come this afternoon.”
“I did.” He opens the second drawer from the top on the right side of the desk and produces a leather wallet, slim and dark. He extracts a card from it and holds it out.
The card is matte black and has no visible numbers on the front. He extends it toward me, and I take a step forward, reaching for it.
He doesn’t let go.
I look at his hand. Then at his face.
The corner of his mouth moves. “You thought this was going to be for free?”
“I — yes, actually, you said?—”
“I said I’d give you the card.” He leans back in the chair. The card is still in his hand, held loosely. “I didn’t specify the terms.”
I look at him. At the card. At him again.
“What terms?”
He doesn’t answer. He tips his head toward the desk. Warmth starts in my stomach and radiates outward without asking permission.
I walk around the desk.
I stand in front of his chair, and he looks up at me. The reversal of our usual positioning, him lookingupat me, rouses butterflies in my stomach.
“Take them off,” he orders.
I stare at him. “That was not in the contract.”
“It is now.”
“You can’tadd clausesto a?—”
“The top first.” He settles back further, watching my face. “Unless you’d like to start somewhere else.”
My hands are already at the hem of my sweater before I’ve finished the internal argument.
I pull it over my head.
