I stared in the direction I'd last seen them. “I guess we'll find out soon enough."
JACE
"Am I allowed to point out that it's weird and foreboding as hell that you're pulling me away from everyone to talk to me for the first time in...uh, years," I muttered as she led me up a flight of stairs. Most guests preferred to use the elevators, considering the rooms accessed from these stairs were mainly for staff.
"You are," she said. "And it's been nearly nine. C'mon, into the office with you."
"Wow, the manager's office too?" I asked in surprise. Now I was starting to feel a genuine sense of foreboding. Our breakup hadn't been ugly, but it wasn't often that a breakup was gentle and easy for anyone involved, and we had been no different.
There hadn't been any cheating or ugly fighting, though we'd had our fair share of arguments in the time we'd been together, and I’d left the relationship without resentment or bitterness toward her. There were hard feelings, of course, we had liked each other and had been planning a future together, but overall, I would have said things had ended as well as they could.
Our lives had not…meshed well and showed no signs of working in the future. From what I’d learned about Mason, against my will, he was different than his sister in many ways. She had been far more prepared to settle in, already takingresponsibility at the hotel, while I had been...and as much as I hated to admit it, more like Mason. I had wanted to experience things, worry about the future later, and try to live my life as best I could. The idea of settling down and making a life like that work at that age had been...well, not for me.
"Take a seat," she said as she led me in, reaching for the shade on the window looking down over the lobby and stopping short as she stared into the thin crowd. I followed her eyes to see a small figure sitting at one of the tables near the front desk with a plate of food.
"He's, uh...an interesting kid," I said, not quite sure what to say. Kids had never really been something I was all that good with, especially considering most of them found me intimidating.
She snorted at that. “He's a weird kid, you can say it."
"Weird seems a little mean."
"He's weird, pretty rude sometimes, and most of the time I have no idea what’s going through his head. But if we can get him through his childhood in one piece, then maybe he'll end up going places."
"It's a little rich, you talking about someone being rude sometimes."
She flashed me a little smile as she sat behind the manager's desk, which now bore her name and was considerably neater than when her mother had held the title. "I never said he didn't get it honest."
"True," I said, easing into the seat and looking around. The chaos that had defined the room the last time I'd seen it had died down, but there was still plenty of color. The Jackson Pollock style paintings were gone, replaced with prints that were hard to define. Still, I found myself distracted by the defined lines of clashing colors and the almost glowing spots of light, absurdly making me think of seeing a rainbow through the low-hangingbranches of a weeping willow. Moira wasn't as...eccentric as her mother, but she had always loved art in all its forms and styles, because among the weird stuff was also a vase that looked quite old and made me think of the pictures I'd seen in a book on Greek mythology from my childhood, and a bonsai tree in fine sand sitting near the window, clearly meticulously taken care of. "So...why do I feel like I'm being pulled in here to get written up again?"
"Again?" she asked, cocking her head. "Misbehaving at work, are you?"
I snorted. “I was a little...overzealous with a perp today."
"You were rough."
"Not really, but he's trying to claim police brutality anyway. His legs are fine."
"Are you a medical expert?"
"Moira."
"What?"
"Don't scold me. You know how much I hate that."
She reached down into her desk and pulled out a bottle. “And you know I was never a fan of your refusal to accept that maybe you should listen to something other than your temper."
"The guy has a sheet that could paper the walls in this office, and he's not getting any better. He pepper-sprayed Kayden, tried to shoot me, and was willing to keep firing even though we were near a street," I told her with a frown. "That wasn't my temper...okay, notjustmy temper. He is and was a danger, and I didn't need people, innocent people, to get hurt because he thought that not getting caught was worth it. Maybe I should have listened to orders so it didn't get that far, but it doesn't change the fact that he needed to be brought in."
She poured a couple of glasses of whiskey, sliding one over before snorting and looking out the window. “Gets it honest indeed."
"What?" I asked in confusion as I took the glass.
She ignored me for a moment before downing the contents of her glass and gesturing toward me. “Drink your drink."
"You know I'm not big on drinking."
"And you know I wouldn't hand you liquor unless I thought it was for a good reason."
