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My lips part with a barefaced lie ready to spill out.
“Don’t.”
I snap my mouth shut.
After stepping into the room, he nudges the door closed behind him but keeps a big enough distance between us that makes me think he’s guessed how nervous I am.
With a handful of tall silver lockers lining one side of the room, and a cluster of two and three-seater tables and chairs taking up most of the space on the other, it’s not the biggest room in the world, and the lack of windows makes an already small space feel like it’s closing in on me.
“That I’m even agreeing to this in the first place goes against every instinct in me,” he says, brow creased in a frown.
What instincts is he talking about?
“But I understand the need to have a purpose, to want to have something to do, so tonight, you’ll work three hours. You won’t pick up any heavy trays, and you’ll stay away from big tables. At the end of those three hours, you’ll come to me.”
“And then?”
“I take you home.”
I startle. Not because of his order—because it’s nothing less than an order—but because it’s not home. At least, it’s not mine. “I can work more than three hours.”
He nods. “Maybe you can, but that doesn’t mean you should when you don’t have to.”
I have no idea how much a bus ticket is going to cost to get out of the city, but I doubt what I make in three hours will be enough. Not nearly. “But I—”
“I’ll pay you for working a full shift,” he interrupts, proving to be a mind reader.
I blink. “What?”
Did I hear him right?
“But first, you’re going to let me tape up that wrist or you’re not setting one foot out that door, and if you are, it’s to go back to the apartment.”
There’s no sign of the smiling, easygoing guy from the grocery store, and I don’t know why. Now his face is all harsh lines and eyes glinting with enough determination that warn me he’s not backing down anytime soon. “Why do you even care?”
His expression gentles. “I’m a hound.”
I raise my eyebrow. “That would only make sense if the thing you were guarding was me.”
“And what makes you think it isn’t?”
Before I can respond, he stalks over to a metal box emblazoned with a red cross hanging on the wall and snaps it open. Items scatter across the floor as he rummages through it, all of which he ignores before he finally emerges with a white, plastic-wrapped elastic bandage.
“I can do it,” I tell him as he crosses toward me, fighting the urge to back up.
“Do you have first aid training?” His gaze is on the bandage he tears from the plastic packet.
I remember spending nights dodging Dad’s empty bottles, fists, or whatever else close at hand that he’d hurl at me. “No, it’s just a fractured wrist, that’s nothing compared to—”
He jerks his head up, his expression completely still. “What?” he breathes.
And then I realize what I just let slip out. “I mean, it’s nothing. It doesn’t even hurt.”
If I thought he looked determined before, it’s nothing compared to now. “Hand.”
I stare at him, and as he stares back at me, an unexpected urge to laugh sneaks up on me. “You’re bossier than I thought you’d be,” I mutter.
Some of my urge must sneak out because a smile tugs at the corners of his lips. “I’m the easygoing one,” he says. “You should meet the others.”
