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“It’s one of the last original doorknobs from before the big renovation they did to this office a few years back. I’ve called the janitor staff, and they’ve been too busy to get to a non-emergency item with all the long list of items they need to get to in the stadium before the playoffs.”
“I’m guessing this isn’t the first time you’ve got locked in here?” I ask.
“Yeah… that’s why I asked you to make sure the door doesn’t close,” she says, rolling her eyes as if I locked us in here intentionally.
This wasn’t my intention, but now that we’re stuck in here for God knows how long, she’ll have to hear out my apology. There’s nowhere else for her to run.
“I guess that means we have some time to discuss what happened four years ago—” I start, but she cuts me off.
“I don’t want to discuss this with you, Slade. It’s in the past. Nothing you can say will fix it, so… just forget it, ok? If you want to make it up to me, you can do it by pretending that we don’t know each other.”
That stings harder than I want to admit.
“Penelope—” I say, turning away from the door and facing her straight on.
She moves around me to try to avoid this conversation, going back to the printer and pulling out a copy of my driver’s license. There isn’t much room to move around in here, so I don’t know how she thinks she’ll run away from hearing me out.
The sound of the outside office door opens, and Penelope’s ears perk up instantly.
She pushes past me towards the closet door and starts pounding an open palm against it.
“Help! Help! We’re locked in here!” she yells and starts to jiggle the handle again.
I stand behind her as she rails on the door handle, and within a second, the door rips open while Penelope is still holding on.
I quickly grip her waist and pull her back before she faceplants from being pulled forward abruptly by the person on the other side of the door.
It’s a knee-jerk reaction, and I pull too hard that she whacks hard against my chest, and we fall backward.
I pull her protectively to me so that she doesn’t hit her head as my back smashes against the front of the printer.
I hear the loud crack as my back connects with the printer plastic, and a small groan escapes my lips, but it’s not even close to the hardest hit I’ve had in my life as a hockey player.
“Penelope?” I hear a familiar voice say.
I look up to find Sam Roberts standing in front of us with the door pulled back and the handle still in his hand. His eyebrows stitch together in confusion at the scene in front of him.
His daughter, who hates me, is sitting in my lap on the floor with my arms wrapped around her.
Then his eyes connect with mine.
“Matthews?”
Penelope pushes out of my lap and quickly stands out of my grip. “They still haven’t fixed the door,” she huffs.
She immediately exits the printer closet as fast as she can, whizzing past her father and taking a left towards the exit instead of a right to her desk. “They’re going to hear from me in person… right now,” she says in a grumble and stomps off with the copy of my driver’s license still in her hand.
Sam watches her for a second until I hear the door to reception slam closed.
She left.
His eyes revert back to me.
“Matthews… in my office,” he says with one eyebrow downturned like I did something wrong.
A look I know well enough after playing for him for all those years in college that means he’s disappointed in me.
“I didn’t do anything. It locked us in, I swear,” I say, scrambling to my feet.
