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“Check again,” Chloé demanded, leaning over the counter to look at the receptionist’s computer. “That can’t be right. We’ve had the reservation for weeks!”
The receptionist scowled, but Chloé could match whatever sourness she threw at her. It was three in the morning, she’d just gotten off a twelve hour flight, and the only thing she wanted in the world was a bed to sleep in for the five hours before their corporate conference began.
“I’m sorry,” said the receptionist. Her expression said that she was not sorry at all. “Your reservation was for one room, one bed. There are no other vacancies.”
Chloé pinched the bridge of her nose, fighting not to explode. “Check again.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am.” The receptionist’s customer service veneer was beginning to flake. It made Chloé want to bludgeon her with her suitcase. “There’s nothing I can do at this hour. When my manager gets here at five—”
Chloé bit back a scream. Twelve hours in the air, in business class, between an airsick man who didn’t appear to have showered before the flight and the other half of her presentation team, a perfectly polished woman Chloé didn’t dare look at for too long. Twelve hours of hell. If she didn’t get at least an hour of sleep before their presentation, she was going to scream.
Chloé’s presentation partner, who had been checking her email on her phone, stepped forward. “Surely there is a mistake,” Kagami said smoothly, smiling that perfect smile of hers. Even after their hellish flight, she practically sparkled. Chloé didn’t know how she did it.
“No mistake,” said the receptionist with an increasingly bitter smile. “Would you like to take the room or not? I’ll put in a note to upgrade you if a vacancy becomes available.”
Chloé and Kagami exchanged glances, and for a moment Chloé feared that Kagami could see into her soul—that she knew the truth.
One room. One bed. It was so near to Chloé’s dream. From the moment she had laid eyes on Kagami again after so many years apart, Chloé’s heart had been lost at sea. Like her, Kagami was the estranged daughter of one of Paris’s famous, criminal elite, working her way up the corporate ladder from the ruins of her family’s reputation. Like Chloé, Kagami had lost everything when Ladybug exposed Hawkmoth’s corrupt web of allies.
Unlike Chloé, Kagami was flourishing.
Everyone from their cubicle neighbors to the janitors greeted Kagami by name when she came into work. For the security guard’s birthday, Kagami had drawn him a portrait of his childhood dog so gorgeous that he had burst into tears in the lobby and thrown his arms around her. All the hard layers she had worn as a teen were melting away, replaced with kindness, fierce loyalty, and a drive to succeed that none of their coworkers could match.
Chloé certainly couldn’t. She had only volunteered to present at this conference because she was one more bad performance review away from losing her job. Which was all the more reason to get what sleep she could, as soon as possible.
“We’ll take the room,” said Kagami firmly. “Please do add us to the upgrade list.”
Chloé followed Kagami down the hallway and into the elevator. Her exhaustion made it harder to keep her troublesome thoughts at bay.
Kagami’s hair was short, pinned up in a way that left the creamy skin of her neck bare. The troublesome part of Chloé’s mind wondered what it would feel like to kiss and bite Kagami’s neck. What would happen if she threw caution to the wind, pushed her up against the elevator wall, and kissed her, right then and there?
“An HR complaint,” Chloé muttered.
Kagami made eye contact with her in the mirrored wall of the elevator, frowning. “Excuse me?”
“Nothing.”
Chloé checked her email. Email was safe, with no complicated feelings mixed in.
The hotel room was outrageously small. Chloé’s father would have been humiliated, utterly humiliated, to offer it to even a low paying guest. Not that Chloé talked to her father anymore. Kicking off her shoes, she stretched out on top of the covers of the queen-size bed. The pillow smelled faintly of marijuana.
Kagami was still frowning at her. “Do you always sleep in your clothes?”
Chloé felt her face redden. “I always sleep in something. I’m not an animal.”
Kagami’s forehead wrinkled. “You’ll crease your suit,” she said after a moment’s pause.
Chloé stayed where she was, watching as Kagami unpacked her suitcase, hanging a row of perfectly pressed suits in the closet. Tomorrow, Kagami would be as neat as ever and Chloé would be a rumpled clown. Some things never changed.
Chloé had packed pajamas, of course, but they had been selected out of the assumption that she would wear them only in the privacy of her own hotel room. She wasn’t about to let Kagami see her in a state of undress. Her heart couldn’t take it.
Still with her back to Chloé, Kagami untied her shoes, removed her suit, shirt, and bra, and changed into a pair of shorts and a thin camisole.
Chloé’s heart beat a wild staccato rhythm in her chest. What sins from her past had earned her this punishment? She was in heaven. She was in hell.
She couldn’t look at Kagami’s face as the other woman pulled back her side of the bedclothes and climbed into bed, somewhat hampered by the way Chloé’s stiff, fully clothed body weighed them down on the other side. Chloé was frozen. She was burning. She felt like a corpse. She had never felt more alive. She couldn’t move.
After a moment, Kagami asked, “Are you truly planning to sleep in that outfit? With your makeup on? Above the covers?
Chloé had forgotten about her makeup. She couldn’t do anything about it now. Staying perfectly still was the only way she could get through this without doing something that would embarrass them both. “Yes,” she said coldly. “Is there a problem with that?”
Silence. “No,” Kagami answered at last. “Goodnight, Chloé.” She turned off the lamp, plunging the tiny room into darkness.
“Goodnight.”
Chloé stared at the ceiling, doing her best to suppress her traitorous urges. Kagami was so close that she could feel the warmth of her skin. She couldn’t bear it.
And on the other side of the bed, unseen by Chloé, Kagami rolled over, retrieved her phone from the bedside table, and opened the email app. The most recent email, which she had opened that morning, was a confirmation of her reservation for a room with a single bed. Inches from Chloé and utterly alone, Kagami locked her phone, closed her eyes, and descended into a fitful sleep.