Chapter 9: After Hours

At nine on Monday night the fourteenth floor was dark except for the light over the fridge.

I had stayed late because I could not stop looking at the label.

DON'T OPEN THIS ONE.

I stood in the little kitchen with the fridge door open and the cold on my legs, and I read it for the tenth time.

"It's not for opening," said Killian behind me.

I did not jump, because I had been waiting for his steps for twenty minutes.

"You're not supposed to be here. You're on sixteen."

"I'm on fourteen for two more weeks. I still have a key."

He had a sleeve of crackers in one hand, and he held it up.

"I figured you'd be here with the tin."

"I'm here to read the label."

"And?"

"It reads as a threat."

"It's installment three," he said. "But it's not that one."

He reached past me, and the heat of his arm went across my shoulder, and he took the other tin from the shelf, the one with no label.

"Tin five," he said. "You haven't had any."

"I'm not allowed to open anything in this building without a date."

"Today's date is on my phone."

He peeled the lid off with his thumb and held out a cracker with a small, dark spoonful on it.

I looked at his hand and not at his face.

"If I eat this, it's a gift," I said. "Gifts need a receipt."

"Eat it and I'll write one."

I ate it.

It was salt, and cold, and a little sweet, and the best thing I had ever put in my mouth.

I made a sound I was embarrassed by.

He heard it.

I watched him hear it.