She’s right. I am prolonging my time with Wyatt. I’m savoring him, feeding my addiction until the very end, and it’s twisted and unhealthy. But it’s also something that I need. I drop my hand away from her arm. “Heidi, I’m good.”
Instead of arguing with me—or giving me her typical “I’m right because my last name is Wright” line—she only blinks and nods. There’s a dangerous moisture building up at the corners of her blue eyes, and I have to look away from them as she says, “Let’s go to Albuquerque then.”
***
After we grab breakfast at a restaurant Heidi swears she has to try (she saw it on Food Network), we get on the interstate toward New Mexico. Cal drives this time, but instead of sitting in the back with me, Wyatt opts for the passenger seat to keep him company.
Thanks to all the pancakes she ate at breakfast, and her lack of sleep, Heidi immediately passes out in the back of the SUV. I stretch out in the second row, placing my feet against the door, and slide my earbuds on. A moment after I put The Kills’ playlist on shuffle, the powerful beat of Future Starts Slow pumps into my eardrums. I close my eyes, softly humming along and tapping my fingers on my thighs in time with the rhythm.
I’m not sure when I fall asleep, but the next thing I know, Wyatt’s touching my shoulder, shaking me awake. He’s standing with the door opened wide, leaning back as his eyes skim over me. “Cal needed a Red Bull. You want anything?”
I blink up at him a few times until my dark brown eyes adjust to the light. Groaning, I shake my head and pull my earbuds out. “I’m good. I’m just going to go back to—”
He reaches into the car for my hand, brushing my breast in the process. It’s an innocent touch, but it’s still enough to me shiver “It’s a long drive, beautiful. Come out for a few minutes.”
“There’ll be another stop.” I yawn. But then I realize that I don’t hear Heidi’s soft snoring from the backseat, and I sit up. She’s gone. Which means I need to get my ass up too. “What time is it?”
“Noon.”
Reaching around on the floor for my aviator sunglasses, I glimpse up at him and lift an eyebrow. “Cal couldn’t even last two hours without having to stop?” Wyatt’s lips quirk up, and I laugh, scooting to the end of the bench seat. “God, maybe I should drive.”
“We’ll probably get there faster.” Holding my knees between his legs, he slides his fingers down my forearm until they find my hand. I swallow hard as he lifts my fingers to his mouth, rubbing his lip ring along my knuckles.
“You shouldn’t do that.”
“Believe me, beautiful, I know. It’s been hell not climbing back there with you after the shit you started this morning.” He drops my hand and begins to help me out of the Suburban.
“How long are we stopping—” I start, but I’m unable to finish as I step around him. Instead of a convenience store, I’m facing the front door of a crappy motel room. Clenching my fists, digging my nails into my palms so deep pain shoots up my wrists, I take a hesitant step forward. When I speak, my voice is strained. “Where are Heidi and Cal?”
Wyatt comes up beside me, and I feel the lines of his body press against my side. I stiffen and turn my face away from him a little. “Where are they?” I repeat.
“At the convenience store across the street. We need to talk.” Despite my cold shoulder, he grabs my hand and leads me to the front of the Suburban. He leans against the grill, but I stand with my back straight, glaring at the door to the motel room as if it’ll fly open at any second and slap me across my face.
In a way, it already has.
“Why would we stop here?” I demand. “Why would you want to talk here?”
“You remember this place?”
How the hell can I forget? This is the same motel where we first made love. It’s the place where he found me at after I divorced Brad. While I was asleep, our trip had taken a detour, and now we’re in Livingston.
“Do you remember?” he asks again. I nod slowly, and each tiny movement of my head makes me feel like I’m going under.
“I stayed in that room down there”—I point my finger left, to the room at the end of the row of identical doors—“the first time. And in this one the last.” I incline my head to the door in front of us, room number 32. It’s sad that I still remember both. “You play so f**king dirty.”
“I told you I was going to remind you why you fell, Kylie.”
My breath hitches. “By bringing me back here? Do you think it was worth adding extra time to your trip?”
“I have so much to say to you. Seemed like it would be the best place to do it at.”
“We’ve already said enough here.”
He’s quiet, and I know he’s thinking. Thinking of how I told him everything about myself in the room at the end of the row—how I showed him each tiny scar, five of them in all, and tried my best to explain why I did it. That same night, he told me how he aspired to be a better man than his father. A womanizing drunk who hadn’t made it as a guitarist, who flaunted women in front of Wyatt’s mother until she took off.
“I didn’t even mind him beating the shit out of me,” Wyatt had said, pulling me closer and inhaling my scent. At the time, it was Ralph Lauren’s Romance. He was quiet after that, and the only sound in the room was The Red. He waited until the song finished to say, “But the way she left without saying goodbye . . . it still f**ks me up, Kylie. She didn’t give a shit about me.”