AllFreeNovel
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I was teaching there at the time.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck—
“Miss?”
My head snaps up. An older woman is in front of me with glasses perched on top of her silver-blonde hair. She’s got a lanyard around her neck with an ID.
She works here.
“Sorry.” I rub at my eyes under my glasses. “Sorry, was I talking out loud?”
“You were hitting yourself in the head…”
I drop my hands immediately, pressing them palm down to the table. “Was I? Um… it’s been a weird day, and I didn’t really have anywhere else to go.”
Her expression is nothing but sympathy and understanding. She gestures to the chair across from me, and I nod slowly. She takes it, folding her arms in front of her.
“Anything I can help with?”
I press my lips together. I came here because I don’t really know what the fuck I’m supposed to do or where I should go—which is ninety percent of my problem. The ten percent is all Jacob Rhodes.
“You don’t happen to know a cheap place to stay around here, do you? Motel, hotel…”
I have the money from the loan Thomas and Natalie gave me. Money I’ll eventually have to pay back. But this qualifies as an emergency.
The woman writes down the name of a motel and slides the paper toward me. “I hope that helps.”
"It does. Thank you.”
She gets up and wanders away.
Around noon, she finds me way in the back of the library, by the glass-walled conference rooms. “I was checking in with the motel,” she confesses. “And then four others. But with the hockey playoffs, everything is booking up. So, until that clears up, I can offer you a room in the back of the library. It’sverytemporary, but it could do for a night or two.”
“Oh.” I stare at her. Standing, she’s quite a bit taller than me. “No, you don’t have to do that.”
“You look like you need help. Where else are you going to go?” She sets off.
I follow. Because I’m curious, not because I’m going to take her offer. She unlocks a door and leads me down a rather narrow hallway, then unlocks another door. She steps aside for me to enter first.
It’s a whole-ass apartment. Well, like a studio apartment. There’s a kitchenette, a twin-sized bed, a two-person table. Even a television.
“This…”
“Used to be our break room,” she supplies. “Until we converted it to help out one of our graduate students last year. She was here for about a month.”
“I was expecting something creepier,” I admit.
She tuts. “It has its own entrance, too.”
We go around the corner, where there are two doors. One for a bathroom, the other a thicker door that must lead outside.
She presses the key into my hand.
“I don’t have any clothes or toiletries or—”
“There are supplies stocked in the bathroom. I can’t do anything about the clothes, unfortunately, but you’re welcome to the laundry in the basement.” She backs away. “Just for the night. It’s okay.”
The door swings shut behind her.
