“I need an assistant.”
“Okay,nowyou can kill me.”
“Upside?” she asked, glancing between us, and when we winced, she chuckled. “You’ll be moving out of your respective cabins. But considering we don’t have anyone to room with you, you two will share the same Tier Two cabin. So suck it up princesses, your life hasn’t ended, I still like you both, and now you can go get some damn sleep, and maybe I can find some peace.”
We stared at her for several seconds until Mr. Isaiah raised his hand with a chuckle. “And that would be your cue to leave. Nice seeing you gentlemen again, oh and Reed?”
“Yes, sir?” Reed asked as he stood up.
“Glad we’re going to keep you around and that you were the man we all thought you were.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And I apologize that you went through all this, I hope it doesn’t sour you on this place.”
Reed gave a soft smile. “No sir, it hasn’t. In fact, after I’m off probation, I’d like to talk to Mona about something.”
“Me too,” I said.
“Oh?” she asked, turning back to the conversation. “Such as?”
“We’re going to take our leave,” I said, earning a frown from her and a chuckle from Mr. Isaiah. “Do we have our new cabin now or?—”
“Go to whichever. I’ll deal with that sometime this week,” she said grumpily, waving us off, which we took and left the office.
“You know,” Reed said once we entered the foyer. “I think that’s the first time I’ve ever seen her get shut down by someone.”
“She’s the one who wanted me to start acting almost like her equal.”
“You’re going to take her up on the offer of the job here, aren’t you?”
“And you’re going to ask if you can come back and work at the clinic as a fully licensed doctor after you graduate, aren’t you?”
He chuckled, taking my hand as we descended the stairs. “We know each other quite well, don’t we?”
“We do,” I said, stopping at the bottom of the stairs. “Fuck, we did it.”
“We did,” he said.
I didn’t care what anyone might or might not see. I pulled him in close for a kiss. I let some of the relief flood through me as I realized we werein the clear. It might not have looked good there for a minute, but now we were free, and after being punished for savaging the rules, we would be even closer to being truly free.
“You know, even with all this,” he said as we pulled apart and kept walking. “You’re probably still slated to graduate from the program before I do.”
“Okay, so?” I wondered as we reached the double doors.
“You’ll be an employee here, and I’ll still be in the program. That’s definitely against the rules,” he said.
“That’s very true,” I said as I grabbed the doors. “But you know what?”
“What?”
“We’ll figure it out.”
“You know, I think we might.”
And I pushed open the doors, walking out into the welcome embrace of the sun as I held his hand.
EPILOGUE