After Hours (InterMix)

chapter Three


I woke on my birthday with more of a hangover than I deserved, peeling my eyes open at the sound of my alarm clock. I’d been waking to that same bleating for fifteen years, but once I shut it off, all the familiarity of the world abandoned me.

Strange room, windows in the wrong places. Wrong-color paint on the walls, wrong temperature as I sat up, slipped on my flip-flops in the morning chill and dug in the open suitcase propped by the foot of the bed. Wrong, wrong, wrong that I had to put on a robe, lug my towel and shampoo three doors down, and punch in a security code to get into the women’s communal bathroom, wronger still that someone else already had steam rising from one of the shower cubicles.

As I adjusted the water and hung my robe on the hook outside the stall, I decided I’d find an apartment, a real one. Soon. They’d be cheap in Darren, even without roommates, and in a way, a twenty-minute drive would be preferable to a stroll across campus—a clear, physical delineation between work and home. Maybe I’d find a place and discover I lived near Kelly Robak, and we could carpool.

My hands paused mid-lather. Where had that stupid thought come from?

Though if I did live near Kelly, I’d probably worry a lot less about the town’s least savory characters hassling me. People wouldn’t f*ck with Kelly Robak’s woman—

Oh God, where had that one come from?

Definitely not his woman, definitely not, because for one, he would totally say something like that. Going to see my woman, tonight, he’d say. And all his meathead caveman friends would probably call me that, too. I have a name, I’d say.

Then I realized I was getting bent out of shape over the way I might be treated by a man who quite possibly had no designs on me, in a theoretical romantic relationship I didn’t even want to share with him.

Clearly, I was still drunk. Only possible explanation. First thing I’d do on my day off would be to find a shiny new water bottle and make it a point to stay more hydrated. Yes, that’d solve my Kelly problems. Stay hydrated, stay sober, stay free of horny thoughts about my coworker.

It wasn’t long before that resolve was tested. I saw Kelly an hour later in the hand-off meeting. He said good morning to me, nothing in his expression or tone suggesting we’d forged some profound bond the night before. Since of course we hadn’t. He was firmly back in work mode, a big gray human wall of calm. If only parts of me didn’t have such a distracting urge to climb him.

The morning went smoothly enough, and I spent the first couple of hours shadowing Jenny again. Then at ten I headed across campus to the Warbler building for restraint training.

The class took place in a small gymnasium, a nice little setup with a basketball hoop, yoga balls, a weights set, sports equipment. A large senior nurse named Audra was leading the three-session course.

A stocky fortysomething, Audra proved herself surprisingly spry, kicking off the class by having a male orderly pretend to attack her, then breaking forcefully from his choke hold. I found the display more unnerving than reassuring, as all I could imagine afterward was being violently attacked from behind.

“Everyone awake now?” she asked through a laugh, face pink from the performance. “Good! I’m Nurse Audra, and I’ve been at Larkhaven for sixteen years, not a one of them as a patient, if you can believe that! I’ve worked in every single building and on every single ward, including the locked unit. Anybody here this morning from Starling?”

I was alone in raising my hand.

“Excellent, excellent. You’re all here for one reason—restraints. And if you came hoping this’ll be about straightjackets, well tough beans! We’re talking about the act of physically restraining a patient in order to sedate them. Lemme say first and foremost, de-escalation is always preferable to a takedown—safer for us and the patients, and you can imagine it makes for a more harmonious environment. But restraints are still skills we all need for those worst-case scenarios.

“Now the key to effective restraints and breaks is all in the technique, and I’m going to show you all how even a tiny little woman like . . .” She prompted me with a nod.

“Erin,” I supplied, annoyed by how many diminutives she’d employed.

“How even a tiny little woman like Erin here can protect herself from attacks by a resident, even one twice her size and suffering from a psychotic episode. Of course, ideally, none of you will ever find yourselves in that position without fellow staffers on hand to come to your aid . . .”

My attention wavered then, as Kelly and two other men entered from a side room, one of them carrying an inflatable dummy, the kind you might knee in his plastic groin in a self-defense class. Kelly and the third orderly were lugging what looked like a wrestling team’s worth of blue gym mats. Then Kelly’s eyes met mine for the briefest second and I snapped my attention back to Audra.

“We’ll start out gentle,” she was saying. “Let’s break into groups of four, three new recruits and one instructor apiece.”

I wound up in a group with two RNs, a perky young one and middle-aged maternal one. Audra was with another group, but shouted to the instructors to show us some “arm breaks.” Naturally, I imagined someone breaking my arm.

My team’s instructor—a far warmer and more reasonably sized orderly than Kelly—had us take turns grasping his arms, then showed us in slow motion how he could swoop his hands up between our elbows to get free. We did it ten times apiece, quicker each time, then he made us put him in headlocks. It was almost fun. Though I sort of wished I got to put Kelly in a headlock. Probably be my only chance to feel like I had the better of him.

After twenty minutes of drills, Audra gave a lecture about the importance of proper technique, horrifying us with statistics about how many patients wound up with dislocations and fractures and sprains from panicky staffers not restraining them properly.

“Let’s switch up those groups,” she said with a clap, “and I’ll take you through the basics of a prone restraint.”

Two junior nurses and I ended up in Kelly’s group. He gave me a reassuring little nod that said, You’ll be fine, a taste of the more personal side of him from the night before. It was the last thing I needed, that wriggly feeling upsetting my middle when I was trying to learn skills for avoiding maiming people and getting maimed myself.

“The goal for a restraint is always to have three staffers on hand. One for each arm and one for the legs.”

Audra and Kelly and the two other instructors walked us through a demo—Audra pretended to attack one of the orderlies, and he broke free of her grasp. Then Kelly and the other guy rushed over and eased her to the ground on her belly, one man pinning each arm and another her ankles.

“As you can see,” Audra said from the floor, speaking mainly to the gym mat, “I’m completely immobilized, and no longer a danger to myself or others.” Her feet wiggled and her hands flapped, and I had to bite back a giggle. Then I glanced at Kelly’s flexed and forceful arm and my body swapped in a few other inappropriate reactions. The southerly migration of my blood gave me a head rush and I quickly shoved the thought aside, lest I pass out and look even more incompetent than I felt.

They ran through a few other demos: a restraint mid-attack, a two-man restraint, a restraint with Audra flailing like a windmill.

For such a large man, Kelly had a certain grace about him. Most men his size would’ve lumbered, but his movements were measured and controlled, yet fluid. A ballet dancer he was not, but dexterous and quick. I imagined him f*cking, and the grunting, frantic caveman I might’ve previously conjured was replaced by a picture of elegant, filthy labor.

Oops.

Thankfully I didn’t get any more time to fantasize, as it was the new recruits’ turn to try the moves. The first few were easy, slow motion. But after a half hour, Audra had rotated to our group, and we struggled to “gently but assertively” wrestle her to the ground while avoiding her kicks and thrashes. The woman didn’t f*ck around.

By that time she’d worked up quite a sweat, and she stood from our latest successful attempt, red-faced. “Okay! Let’s try a few two-staff scenarios. One on arms, one on legs. Rotate!”

She bounded off to assist the next group, and Kelly strode to mine. I swallowed.

“You and you,” he said, pointing to a nurse and an orderly. They both looked a bit wary, but surely they didn’t share the fear that had me so unnerved—the fear of enjoying touching this brute far too much.

I watched as they ran drills with Kelly, and tried very hard not to think about getting drilled by Kelly. Then it was my turn, me and another young LPN.

“Legs,” she said. We’d been taught to “call” our intended target, much like shouting “I got it!” in a baseball game to avoid colliding with one’s teammate. It meant I was on arms. Big huge scarred-up Kelly Robak arms. When the moment came to grasp them, my hands were nowhere near big enough to get a decent purchase on his obscenely thick biceps. Lordy me.

He went down pretty easy the first time, and if I wasn’t mistaken, he smiled at me. With the side of his face pressed to the mat, it was tough to tell.

“Enjoying yourself?” he asked, like he’d come upon me reading on a park bench.

“I am. Maybe I’ll order you a white wine, while you’re down there,” I said, too quiet for anyone else to hear.

Now he was definitely smirking. “With a straw, I hope.”

“A funnel.”

“Touché.”

Audra shouted her approval of our technique and we let Kelly go. We switched legs and arms, then it was time to rotate again. I was tiring, my back achy from all the bending, shoulders grinding in their sockets. This was a hard-ass job. A decent workout, though, if dampened by the possibility of bodily harm.

“Let’s try some headlocks,” Audra said after a water break, some time later. We’d just rotated back into Kelly’s tutelage and I eyed his arm yet again, imagining it clamped around my windpipe.

“Trainees, attack your trainers, and trainers, break free in slo-mo.”

I swallowed as Kelly turned to me first. With me at five-three and him at least a foot taller, it was easier said than done. I’d look less like an attacker than a scarf.

“You want a stepstool?”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not that short,” I said as I circled around him. “You’re just way too tall.” I looped my arm around his neck, having to press my chest flush to his back to reach. Goddamn, he was warm. And hard. And huge.

I felt his hand on my forearm, demonstrating for the other trainees in my group. His fingertips seemed to dawdle at my wrist as he spoke, casual as a woman might caress a garment at a store, admiring the fabric. Surely I was imagining that.

“Basic move,” he said, and I felt each word vibrating in his throat. “She’s using her right arm, so I’m going to use my left to get free. This isn’t the time to panic. Erin and I aren’t a great example, but usually your head’ll be pretty close to your attacker’s, and thrashing around is a great way to concuss yourself or the patient, or pull a tendon in your neck. Steady and calm’s the name of the game.”

Steady and calm. I could feel the muscles in Kelly’s broad back, feel his heat and his breathing, smell his perspiration. Steady and calm, I repeated to myself. Bet that’s not how you f*ck.

“Pretending she’s got a good squeeze on me,” Kelly went on, “I’m going to turn my head just slightly, to keep blood flowing through the carotid artery.”

He said some other stuff, stuff I really ought to have been paying super-close attention to, but it was hard with us pressed together . . . even in the incredibly unerotic setting, with potentially lifesaving information being imparted, even with a hangover. My body was pretty sure that its very existence balanced on its chances at rolling around with Kelly’s body in a non-training situation, and told my brain to f*ck off.

He got free—who knew how—and when the next person’s turn came to put Kelly in a headlock I tried to take mental notes. But his expression was nearly as distracting as his body, his mean face strained from the exercise and reminding me of how it might look, other times.

The drills went on for another full, sweaty, awkward hour, then we took a five-minute break before switching to self-defense basics.

What if a patient grabbed your clothes? Your hair? Your arms, legs, throat, waist, or tried to gouge your eyes? We learned tricks for all these terrifying scenarios, then got teamed with a fellow trainee or trainer to do some improvisational drills, with Audra patrolling, correcting people’s form. To my equal pleasure and annoyance, I got paired with Kelly. If I wasn’t mistaken . . . had he picked me? We’d been standing fairly close together, but I felt pretty sure he’d chosen me. It’d be just like him to lay claims. And it’d be very unlike me to take such perverse enjoyment from it.

I eyed him as we faced off. “Who’s attacking?”

“We’ll trade. You start.”

“Fine.” I was tired and stinky, and so far the course had left me more overwhelmed than empowered. I circled Kelly and looped my arm around his neck. Again, I felt way more like a dangling kitten than an assailant.

“You’ll never take me alive,” I told him, exhaustion making me punchy.

He nearly laughed, a huff with a smile behind it, though I couldn’t see his face. “You make a lovely psychopath.”

I squeezed his neck a bit harder, and he broke my hold, twisted around, and grasped each of my arms above the elbow. I was relieved to recall the technique without even thinking, but Kelly had a real grip on me, not a loose one like we’d done in the drills at the start of class. He was holding me tight enough to hurt . . . though surely not as tight as a raging patient might. Lonnie’s face flashed across my mind, dropping my stomach to my feet but focusing my energy. I looped my arms up inside Kelly’s. It took four spirited tries to break his hold.

“Not bad,” he said.

I rubbed my sore forearms. “Not great. You could have head-butted me into unconsciousness ten times over, in the time that took.”

“So try it again.”

And I did. Kelly made me do it a dozen times, until my shoulders burned and my face was flushed and my arms tenderized. I’d probably have bruises like his by the end of the three-day course, tattooed all black and blue.

We swapped, and he stooped to curl his arm around my neck. His hold was loose enough, but his elbow was as locked and unyielding as an iron collar. I did everything I’d been taught and everything Kelly’s deep voice reiterated just behind my ear, but he was too strong. Or I was too weak. I felt dizzy from the hangover and the creeping claustrophobia, my muscles more limp with every attempt, noodles turning soft and useless. My pushes grew frantic, and he must have sensed I was beyond trying.

When he finally stepped back and let me rest, I was panting and no doubt red as a brick, my sweat stinking of whiskey and wine. He studied my face, and I didn’t think I’d ever felt so unattractive.

“Well done,” he said.

I glanced at the clock on the gym’s wall, finding it was only a minute until we were due to finish. I waved his compliment away, knowing I looked half-dead, and spoke through my huffing. “Oh yeah, piece of cake.”

Though it never surfaced, I saw a smile lurking behind his lips.

“Great work, everyone!” Audra said with a clap. “See you back here tomorrow at ten for round two! So keep limber!”

Kelly and I headed for the door together.

“We’ve missed lunch,” I said as I realized it. My stomach growled, eavesdropping.

“We missed lunch service. But there’ll still be something to scavenge, if you didn’t pack anything.”

“I didn’t.”

“Better get you introduced to the kitchen staff. Good friends to have around here.”

“Oh?”

He nodded as we exited, and his eyes looked different outside. Nearly blue, like a thick, antique glass bottle. “The residents in the locked ward get so few luxuries, food’s a big deal. Sometimes having the power to score somebody an extra brownie is enough to avoid a meltdown.”

“I’ll make a note.”

We strolled in the warm June sunshine, its heat burning off a bit of my exhaustion and angst, if not my sweat. The drills were flipping through my mind like flash cards, and I hoped I wouldn’t have stress dreams about them all night. My legs yearned to slow down, dawdle so the walk took an hour, just me and the spring air, no responsibilities, flanked by a hulking man capable of defending me against any number of deadly attacks.

It would’ve been too strong to say I felt a bond with Kelly. My body was curious about his, but I didn’t have any urge to hold his hand as we walked, or to imagine he was my boyfriend. He’d shared too much about his romantic MO for me to waste my time mooning over him . . . but there was something there. Something not quite familiar, but comforting. I could see how he had a calming influence on the patients. If he ever got over his my-way-or-the-highway machismo, he’d probably make one hell of a dependable husband for some tough-as-nails woman.

We reached the entrance to Starling and I swiped us in. Kelly led me up a back stairwell to the third floor, and I knew we were near the kitchen from the smell. Tater tots.

Kelly swung one of the double doors in. “Knock knock,” he said to someone I couldn’t see, then slipped inside, holding the door for me.

It looked like a scaled-down version of my high school cafeteria. Lots of steel surfaces and steam and big freezers and plastic bins. Kelly introduced me to the man in charge, a short black guy my age named Roland. Before I knew it, we were carrying trays to a break room I’d never been in before, just me and Kelly and a softly droning portable television propped on a pile of textbooks in the corner.

Kelly opened a can of seltzer. “So. How is it, living in the transitional residence?”

I swallowed a bite of turkey burger and shrugged. “It feels like a dorm. I think. I’ve never actually lived in one. Quieter, probably. But you know, communal showers, identical rooms, shared kitchen. It’s cheap. It’ll do the job until I’ve got my head wrapped around everything and know the area a bit better.”

“Before you decide whether or not to stay,” he translated, but incorrectly.

I shook my head. “I’m staying, barring a seriously traumatic experience. It’s close to my sister, and it pays pretty well. I have to settle someplace, and get some clinical experience. And if I can handle a locked ward, I’ll know I’m capable of working just about anywhere.”

“Why’s it so important to stay near your sister?”

“I just need to. I sort of raised her, and I worry about her. She’s got a toddler and really bad taste in men. She requires a lot of maintenance, to keep from going off the rails.”

“Maybe you’d be surprised, if you left her alone to fend for herself.”

I laughed. “I tried that, when I moved in with my grandma. I didn’t think I could look after her, and my sister. And occasionally my mom. So I told Amber—my sister—that I was done bailing her out all the time, and she was eighteen, and it was time for her to find her feet and all that.”

“And?”

I shook my head. “Within six months she’d run up eight grand on a credit card, got evicted, and turned up on my grandma’s doorstep with her rear windshield smashed out.”

“Wild child?”

“By herself she’s not that bad. But she falls for the most horrible guys. I think part of her enjoys the drama, like she’s in her own reality show. But she’s got a son now, you know? You don’t get to star in your own show when there’s a kid around.”

“So what, you’re just going to babysit her until your nephew’s safely off to college?”

I slumped, exhausted by the thought. “I dunno. I just know it’s too soon to disentangle myself. I lost my grandma this winter and my mom’s barely in the picture, so Amber’s my only close family, really. And vice versa. I know it sounds codependent. I know it is codependent . . .”

“You’re just doing your best,” he offered.

“Yeah. Yeah, I hope so.”

“That’s all any of us can ever do. And a lot of us don’t even do that.”

As depressing as Kelly’s wisdom was, it cheered me. I was doing my best. That was all anybody could do.

“What do you think you’d be doing, if you didn’t have your sister to worry about?”

“Jeez, I dunno. I wound up here, because of her moving, and I wound up in nursing because of my grandma. God, it’s so depressing to think about it that way.”

Kelly shrugged. “I wound up here because my old man was a raging drunk. We’re all just pinballs, getting bonked around wherever our upbringings kick us.”

“So much for free will.”

“Free will’s whatever you do when you punch out for the night.”

“Then my free will’s got narcolepsy,” I said, and as if illustrating my point, a massive yawn unfurled from my lungs.

“You’ll adjust. And tomorrow you get to sleep in.”

I nodded. “Until ten, when I have to go back to wrestling practice.”

He cracked a smile, cranking my internal temperature up a few degrees. “I went easy on you today. Tomorrow and Thursday, I won’t f*ck around.”

“Oh, yay.”

“You’re good, though.”

“At what? Restraints?”

He nodded. “A natural.”

“Yeah, right. You had me in a headlock for at least three minutes and I couldn’t even budge your stupid arm. And don’t you have tomorrow off?”

Another nod. “We’re on the same rotation. But I’ll be in, just for the morning. The overtime’s always appreciated. And it’s a piece of cake teaching restraints, knowing you debutantes won’t pull a pen out of someplace and stab me in the eye.”

I sipped my pop. “Only if you give me a good reason to.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Well, I’ll look forward to that,” I said snidely, and finished my burger and downed the last of my drink. Kelly did the same, and we dropped off our trays in the kitchen and thanked Roland.

“Back to the fray,” Kelly said as we signed in downstairs. He wrote spec obs Don beside his name, and I couldn’t be sure if I was disappointed or relieved that I might not see him again that afternoon.

The second half of my shift proved quiet, borderline boring. Having Kelly as a distraction wouldn’t have gone astray.

As a psych professional you have to pay attention constantly, not just for signs of danger, but while taking a zillion sets of vitals, in making notes in the right files, doling out the right meds in the right dosages at the right times, making sure the right patient actually swallows them . . . Nothing dynamic, but I swear the sheer constancy with which you have to be alert is as tiring as any physical chore. By the time dinner hour was over and we met with the next shift for the hand-off meeting, I felt like I must be dreaming. I staggered down the stairwell on aching feet.

I wiped my name off the duties board and ran into Jenny while I was changing.

“Got plans tonight?” she asked, dialing her combination lock.

“No, none at all. Just finish unpacking and pass out.”

“You’re more than welcome to come along to a little party across the road. Retirement bash for one of the veteran RNs in our geriatric ward. Free eats. You know where the transitional residence is?”

“Yeah.” I stripped off my scrubs, not feeling compelled to tell her I was in fact living there for the time being.

“You should come. Get off campus, enjoy a drink. I’ll introduce you around to some people from the other departments.”

I wouldn’t have minded meeting the geriatric staff. I had experience with that, after all, and wouldn’t say no if a chance to transfer out of the locked ward should present itself.

“Starts at seven thirty,” Jenny said. “Bring your staff ID—they’ll be rigid, what with alcohol being served.”

“Okay. Sure.” Why the hell not? It was my birthday. There’d be drinks, maybe a cake, and even if they weren’t in my honor, it’d be nice to do something special. Restraint training had been the highlight of my day, and that wouldn’t do. Exhausted or not, I deserved a bit more. I could top getting tossed around and banged up by Kelly Robak. Then I pictured his body, and wondered if maybe I couldn’t.

With twenty minutes to kill, I strolled through campus and crossed the road, headed up to my little apartment and changed into the only dress I owned. Nothing glamorous, but it gave me a bit of a figure, and that was a luxury after two days in nothing but yellow pajamas. As I clasped a pair of earrings, I hoped there’d be wine. Against my better judgment, I hoped there’d be Kelly as well. But he didn’t seem the type to carouse while still basically on the institute’s grounds, nor one to cut loose in front of colleagues and ruin his stoical façade. Though he’d allowed me a glimpse of his after-hours self, at the bar. And surely I wasn’t so special that it’d been some one-time peek.

On the first floor, a series of construction-paper signs pointed the way to the party, in the large basement rec room—the unglamorous venue surely picked for its proximity to work, and because alcohol wasn’t allowed anywhere inside Larkhaven’s gates. I didn’t recognize anyone when I arrived, but I was pleased to spot a motley selection of beer and wine lined up on a ping-pong table; crackers, cheese, veggies and dip, and an uncut cake on the other side of the net.

What I wasn’t so pleased to see was a room full of scrubs. I wasn’t the only one who’d changed, but the majority of the partygoers seemed to have come straight from a shift. Instantly I felt dumb and overdressed, some newbie weirdo in a wrap dress and heels—no matter how short they were—surrounded by sneakers and clogs. The folks who weren’t dressed for work wore jeans.

“You came!”

I turned to find Jenny behind me, holding a gift bag bursting with pink tissue paper.

“Oh, hey.”

“You look great. Trying to put the rest of us to shame?”

I tailed her across the room to a table laden with flowers and presents. I eyed them with envy. It was my birthday, after all. Standing there with no one to realize that fact, I felt lonely, deep down to my bones.

But it wasn’t as though I were used to my birthday being special. My grandma hadn’t been in a state to remember it in recent years, and I considered it a banner year if my mom thought to call. Amber had offered to have me over for pizza and cupcakes, but since I got off work so late and my nephew would already be asleep, I’d asked for a rain check.

I followed Jenny’s lead and poured myself a cup of wine. She introduced me around, largely to staffers my own age. I smiled a lot and forgot everyone’s names, wondering if they’d remember mine or just think of me as That New Girl Who Didn’t Get the Dress Code Memo.

Shyness had me drifting out of conversational orbits twenty minutes into the party, and I was about to up my wine dosage when someone set an empty cup beside mine. I knew it was Kelly from his oversized hand and its misleading wedding band, and my heart thumped as I tilted my face toward his. In an instant, I was drunk.

“You look awful fancy.”

A blush warmed my cheeks and I tried to hide it by filling my cup. “I know.”

“Special occasion?”

I shrugged, looking around to indicate the party. It’s my birthday, I wanted to tell him. Make a big deal of me.

“You promised me a glass of wine this morning in restraints,” he said.

“True. Though I don’t see any funnels.” I filled his cup. He tapped it to mine and gave my body an open, brief up-and-down, at once businesslike and predatory. I took too big a gulp and felt my face burn brighter still.

Kelly had changed, but only into jeans. “How you feeling, after this morning’s workout?”

I flexed my left shoulder and it swore in protest. “Pretty dinged up. Can’t say I’ll be sad when your days of throwing me around are over.”

He faked a jab to his ego and gave me a wounded look, but there was mischief in his eyes. He hadn’t missed the double entendre I’d accidentally lobbed his way. “Be grateful there were gym mats.”

“And witnesses,” I cut back, and yeah, it sounded pretty bad—like we were agreeing things would’ve evolved into something scandalous, had the setting been different. Damn it.

“And Audra, barking corrections,” Kelly added.

“Yeah. That’d be a mood killer.” Oh f*ck, why had I said that? His resulting smile was as dangerous as ever, a shot of pure, liquid stupid plunged straight into my bloodstream.

He answered my flirtation with another assessing look. It wasn’t terribly professional, but I was grateful for that. I’d spent my first two shifts feeling like a newbie, a jailer, a waitress, and a wuss. Felt good to feel like a plain old woman, something enticing enough to bring a little heat to Kelly’s cool gaze. The wine suddenly tasted very expensive, and I decided it was everyone else’s loss, not taking the opportunity to dress up a bit, not my folly.

A small group of people came by and we made room for them to get drinks. I wandered toward the middle of the party with Kelly, praying no one could see the comical lust lines vibrating from my body toward his.

He’d worked at Larkhaven for years so he knew everyone, and as long as I stuck by him, I was never at a loss for conversation. It seemed perhaps he did shed that cold façade alongside his gray uniform, and tonight he was as warm as I’d yet seen him. He introduced me and goaded our colleagues into recounting old war stories—funny ones, not scary ones. I was even invited to join Larkhaven’s softball team, though judging by the way my coworkers put away the boxed wine, recreational drinking was the institution’s official sport.

After an hour’s mingling I felt relaxed, even a little charming. I also felt dangerously attracted to the man on my left. But I wouldn’t ever act on it, so what was the harm? It’d been more than a year since I’d made out with a guy or had a date or even a crush, and I’d forgotten how fun infatuation was. Like being continuously buzzed on champagne. You just have to know when you’ve had enough.

By ten I was yawning uncontrollably, and as nice as it was to feel cheerful for the first time since arriving here, it couldn’t top the promise of bed. I got to sleep in a bit the next morning before restraints, and I could use all catch-up rest I had coming to me.

“You want a refill?” Kelly asked me, nodding at my empty cup.

“No, I better get to bed. It’s been a long couple days.” Walk me up, I wanted to say. Walk me to my door, and give me a look that said he wanted to kiss me, but not actually do it. Send me to bed with no thoughts of attacks or paperwork or antipsychotic dosages.

But he didn’t. He drained his own cup and took mine, tossing both in a nearby garbage can. “You’re taking all the glamour away.” He said it like I ought to feel guilty, and gave me a final assessing glance.

“You’ll cope.” I smiled wearily and offered a wave before heading for the stairs. I wanted so badly to turn, to see if he was watching me go. But if he wasn’t, I’d be disappointed. And if he was, he’d know I cared.

Upstairs, I changed into pajama pants and a tee shirt and checked a voicemail from my sister—no crisis brewing thank God, just “Happy Birthday” sung into the phone, with Jack shrieking gleefully in the background. I hung up, smiling.

A knock at my door interrupted my search for a washcloth. 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.

F*cking 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 p-ssy 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 f*ck 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 yet.”

“After four years, I never really do. Not ’til I’m through those gates and halfway to Darren.”

What a grim thought. Happy frigging birthday.

Kelly stood and strolled around my cell, taking stock of what little there was to note. He stopped before my bed, staring out my window with his hands clasped behind his back. “Nice view,” he said, gaze on the dark woods.

“Even better when the sun’s out,” I said dryly.

He looked down at me and smiled—the first real smile I’d seen from him all day, even during the party. It heated me just as it had at the bar, filled me with bad ideas.

“What?”

He took a seat beside me, dipping the mattress. “We got a little something between us, don’t we?”

Caught off guard, I deflected. “How little?”

Another smile, a deeper one with a flash of teeth. “Cute. But I’m not imagining it, am I? There’s something here,” he said, wiggling his fingers between our chests. He stared pointedly at the Red Wings logo on my shirt. “Plus you clearly dressed to seduce me.”

“If you say so.”

He winced like I’d just tried to knee him in the balls. “Okay, we can be like that.”

Behind whatever blank expression I’d managed to slap on my face, my common sense and my libido were rolling around, pulling each other’s hair, slapping and spitting and fighting to come out on top. Or to come out underneath Kelly Robak, in the case of my libido. Luckily it ended in a draw.

“No, there might be something,” I admitted. “But not the kind of something I want to do anything about with a colleague. Not my first week at a new job.” My p-ssy had added the caveat, opportunist that it was.

Kelly’s expression went cool, more calm acceptance than bruised ego, I hoped. He nodded. “Understood.”

And with that, what could have been quite a memorable twenty-eighth birthday present rose and headed for the exit, bouncing the mattress beneath my butt.

“Enjoy your flowers.”

I followed, frowning. “Wait. Did you really come here thinking you’d get laid? Off some stolen lilies and thirty seconds’ smooth-talking?”

Another smile. “Haven’t known you long enough to have expectations. Maybe I’ll try back again with roses sometime. I’ll be sure to bring a receipt.”

“Oh, f*ck you,” I said through a laugh. The f*cking nerve. But I was only half-insulted, the rest a mixture of flattered and amused.

He opened the door and I held it. With the possibility of witnesses strolling past in the hall, we both shrugged into semblances of friendly professionalism.

“Happy birthday.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

He gripped the door frame and leaned in real, real close, close enough to kiss. But his lips offered nothing but a smarmy-ass grin. “This is your room, so I’m letting you get your way—”

“Letting me?”

“Come by my place some weekend and maybe I’ll show you mine.”

“Your way doesn’t sound like it takes no for an answer.”

“You’re welcome to find out.”

“Good night, Kelly.”

He straightened. “See you beneath me on the gym floor tomorrow.”

Eyes narrowed, I watched him disappear around the corner, listening until the sound of his boots clomping down the steps faded to the thrum of my thumping pulse.

I shut the door, opening and closing my fists to quell a faint shaking.

He’d just said all that, hadn’t he? Not those cocky parting quips—that there was something between us. Something he wasn’t opposed to acting on.

Was I opposed? Yes. Definitely. Probably.

I didn’t know. I wasn’t even sure what Larkhaven’s policy was, on office romance or whatever. Ward romance. Not that Kelly Robak seemed the type to let institutional mandates dictate whom he may or may not deign to make his conquest.

And he so was the conquesty sort.

That settled it—I would not be acting on anything with Kelly. No contact beyond the bounds of restraint training. From what he’d told me at the bar and just now by the door, he probably treated women like gas stations, in and out and on his way, thanks for the lube job. I glared at the flowers he’d left behind, annoyed that he’d taken me for someone whose professional dignity could be bought for a secondhand bouquet.

“Nice try, Robak,” I told the flowers.

I went down the hall to scrub my face and brush my teeth, deciding it had been one of my lousier birthdays. And if I went to sleep imagining Kelly restraining me with his shirt off, it was entirely by accident.