Chapter 17: Her Own Bed

Libby's POV

Bev told me the rest at the nurses' station, in four sentences, and then she handed me my coat.

"Go," she said.

"I asked for hours."

"You've had seventy-nine of them. I counted, and I'm breaking my own rule."

Eli's door was open when I got there, which was how I knew he'd stopped caring who walked in.

He was sitting on the floor of the living room with a cardboard box in front of him.

His badge lay inside it, and a lanyard, and a coffee mug with a cracked handle.

He looked up and didn't say anything.

"You stood up in front of fourteen people," I said.

"Fifteen. I counted the chair twice."

"You signed a sheet nobody signs."

"Bev told you."

"Bev told me my father asked if you were sleeping with me, in a boardroom, and you said yes."

He almost smiled.

"It seemed like the moment."

I crossed the room and knelt on the other side of the box.

I put both hands on his face.

His jaw was rough, and he hadn't slept.

"I wanted to know what I'd keep," I said. "I'd keep this."

He closed his eyes.

"Libby, I've lost the shifts. I may lose the license. I can't promise you a clean ending."

"I didn't ask for clean. I asked for you."

I kissed him, and it started as a thank-you and stopped being one almost at once.

"Come home with me," I said against his mouth.

"To Bev's?"

"To mine."

I had never brought anyone to my apartment.

It was a one-bedroom on the third floor, with a sloped ceiling and a radiator that knocked.

I had signed the lease alone, the year I turned twenty-six, and paid the first month's rent in cash.

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