Yeah, something like that, I send back. All good. Kiss Gabe for me.
I put my phone away.
Miles hasn't moved. His face is in his palms and his breathing is ragged and I need to do something useful because if I just stand here I'm going to lose it.
"Okay," I say, more to myself than to him. "Okay. Here's what we're going to do."
"We're not going to do anything. I'm going to ride this out and you're going to—"
"I'm extending the room." I pick up the hotel phone. "The conference is done. We'll stay until this passes."
"Garcia, you can't just—"
"Watch me." I dial the front desk and when someone picks up I'm surprised by how steady my voice sounds. "Hi, this is room 412. We need to extend our stay. Possibly two additional nights." The woman asks if there's a problem and I say no, just a change of plans. I ask about additional towels, extra water, and whether room service runs through the night. She tells me everything I need to know and I thank her and hang up. It felt good to handle something concrete. One thing done. Manageable.
Miles is staring at me from the bed with an expression I can't fully read. Part anger, part relief he won't name.
"You just extended the room without asking me."
"Yeah."
"I'm your boss."
"I know. You can fire me later." I grab the room service menu from the desk. "What do you want to eat?"
"I don't need you to take care of me." His voice is thin and angry, but the anger is wobbling.
"You haven't eaten since the reception. That was hours ago."
"I'm not hungry."
"Miles, you're going into a heat that you haven't had in years and you're going to need fuel. I'm ordering food. You can yell at me about it or you can tell me what you want." I hold up the menu. "They have soup."
He looks at me for a long beat, and I see the fight drain out of him. Not because I won the argument. Because he's too tired to have it. "I don't care. Whatever you want."
I order water, crackers, fruit, soup, some bread. I don't know what people eat before a heat. I order what seems right. While I'm on the phone, Miles gets up and goes to the bathroom, and I hear the faucet running. He comes back with a wet face and damp hair at the temples and sits on the opposite side of the bed from where he was before, like changing positions will change anything about what's happening to him.
"You should call Richard," he says. "Tell him I'm sick. Food poisoning, or a migraine, anything that explains why I'm not at the closing breakfast tomorrow."
"Okay. What about you? Should we call a—"
"No." His voice is sharp. "No doctors. No medical. Nobody comes in this room."
"Miles—"
"If anyone finds out—" He stops. Swallows. "If this gets back to the firm, if they know I went into heat at the conference, after everything, after the presentation—" He's gripping the mattress so hard his knuckles are white. "I will lose everything."
"You won't."
"You don't know that."
I don't. He's right. I don't know how the firm would handle this, and I don't know what the HR policy is on unreported heatsduring business travel. But I know that the look on his face is the same one he had in the hallway after the gala — that exhausted, cornered look of someone who's been performing so hard for so long that the idea of anyone seeing the real thing is more terrifying than the thing itself.
"Okay," I say. "No doctors. No one comes in. Just us."
The knock comes about twenty minutes later. I open the door and the bellhop is young, an alpha, and the second the door swings open his face changes. His nostrils flare. His eyes go wide and then they drift past me, looking into the room, searching for the source of the scent that's pouring out of the suite like heat from an open oven.
I don't decide to do it. I just move. I step forward into the doorway, filling it, my palm on the frame, my shoulders squaring up. I can feel myself getting bigger, taking up more space, blocking his line of sight to the room. To Miles. The bellhop takes a step back.