Chapter 10
The door was unlocked. I checked it twice because I didn't believe it.
The handle was cold. The suite behind me was warm and low-lit, the decanters and that cut crystal glass still on the dark walnut table where he'd left them. He'd stepped into the bathroom and left the door ajar, water running, not watching me. On the desk by the door lay the check, folded once, my name written in his sharp hand. Next to it, my phone lit up with signal again. One bar. Enough.
I picked up the check and my phone. I did not pick up my coat. I told myself that was because the coat was closer to the bathroom door.
I turned the handle and pulled. The hallway air hit me. It was cooler, sterile, with that faint lemon cleaner smell hotels use. No guard stood outside. The carpet was thick and gray, swallowing sound. At the far end, the elevator bank glowed.
I stepped out and let the door close softly behind me. It clicked. That small sound landed harder than anything he'd said in that boardroom.
I walked. My flats made no noise. The hallway was empty, sconces humming low. I could hear snow against the windows at the end of the corridor, a soft ticking. Somewhere below, the lobby was silent. No chatter, no cart wheels, no voices. It was after midnight. The tower felt emptied out on purpose.
I pressed the elevator call button and watched the numbers. 42. 41. 40. Slowly coming up. My breathing was too loud. I held the check tight and realized my hand was shaking. The paper crinkled. Three months of my mom's physical therapy. The final payment on my student loans. The contract he'd put in front of me an hour earlier for the gallery job that would keep me employed through spring. All of it stacked on one folded piece of paper.
The elevator dinged. Doors opened on an empty car, mirrored walls, bright light.
I didn't get in right away. I looked back toward the suite door. Still closed. No footsteps inside.
"Miss Merson?"
I turned. Guard One stood by the service door ten feet down, not blocking me, just there. His jacket in his hand, tie loosened. He'd been the one by the windows in the boardroom, hands clasped, neutral. Now he looked tired, human.
"You heading out?" he asked. His voice low, not unkind.
I pulled the check tighter. "Yes."
He glanced at it, then at my face. He recognized me. I saw it flicker — the blonde in the white shirt from upstairs, the question that had been asked, the order to clear the room. A small, awkward shift of his weight. He didn't smirk. He just looked away for a second, like he wasn't sure he should have seen me at all.
"There's a car downstairs if you need it," he said. "Night manager can call one. No snowplows running till four, so it'd be a wait in the lobby."
Lobby. Bright lights. Night manager at a desk, asking my name, watching me wait in the same white shirt I'd worn when that man asked if I was still a virgin. Anyone could walk through. Anyone could see the check.
Shame rose fast and hot in my throat. Not shame about what I hadn't done yet, but shame about being seen deciding. About everyone knowing what my price was.
And underneath it, something else. Safety calculation. If I left now, the contract ended. The check might clear, it might not. He could say I walked out on the terms. My mom's clinic called every Friday for authorization. If I got back into that elevator empty-handed and the deal collapsed, I was back to nothing with everyone having seen me try to sell something and fail.
I looked at the open elevator again. Empty. Safe. Cold.
If I stayed now, it wouldn't be because the door was locked. It would be because I walked back through it myself.
I wanted that. Not the money part — that was the reason I'd come up here in the first place — but the other part. If tonight was going to happen, I didn't want it to happen like in the boardroom, where he asked and I froze and he decided when the room cleared. I wanted to control the ending. To walk back in and make him look at me knowing I could have left.
I turned from the elevator. "I'm not going down," I said.
Guard One nodded once. He didn't reach for me. He just stepped aside.
"Yes ma'am," he said.
The walk back felt longer. My flats sank into the carpet again. I stopped at the suite door, my hand on the cold handle, snow still ticking against the far windows. I knocked once, softly, though it was my room now too.
The water in the bathroom stopped.
His voice came through the door, even. "It's open."
I pushed it open. He stood by the window, not behind the table, his jacket off, sleeves pushed up, looking at the snow-blurred skyline. The whiskey glass was still there between us, untouched.
He turned when he saw me and his face did something I hadn't seen before. He registered it — that I was back, check still in my hand, door closed behind me by my own choice — and he didn't move toward me. He didn't order.
He waited.
"You came back," he said.
"I did," I said. My voice steadied.
May you like
He gestured slightly toward the table, toward the chair I'd been in, but he didn't tell me to sit. He asked with his eyes.
I stayed standing by the door for a second longer, breathing, letting the silence hold, until I decided to move.
