Chapter 19
WHO GETS THE BED?
Oliver
While I check into the Carter Pillars Hotel in West Virginia’s largest town, Daphne runs to the bathroom off the lobby with two ValuKart sacks dangling from her hands. She’s back at my side by the time the clerk is handing me the single key card into the room.
And she hasn’t said a single word about me not picking the Aurora Gardens hotel across the street.
I’d have to be truly dead to miss the fact that she doesn’t like her parents much.
Not that she should. I don’t particularly like mine either, and they didn’t disinherit me and leave me unprepared for the world without money.
“One key card?” the receptionist repeats as she takes Daphne in.
I nod curtly and leave it at that.
“If you think I’m letting this guy out of my sight for one minute when we have nothing but a hotel room all to ourselves and no kids yelling for us and no parents forgetting to put clothes on before they leave their rooms since they moved in with us too, you can think again,” Daphne says.
“We probably only need the card to get into the room once. There’s room service here, right? Oysters? Dark chocolate? Wine or—”
I grab her by the arm and steer her toward the elevator bank.
“—champagne?” she finishes.
“Can you not?” I mutter to her.
The fish hangover has faded, and I could use another three-hour nap.
Or seven of them.
Back-to-back.
For six days in a row.
“She thinks you’re kidnapping me. At best,” she murmurs back. “The more obnoxious I am, the more they’ll think it’s the other way around, and they’re less likely to interfere. But if anyone asks you if you’re okay or slips you a note while we’re in public, that’s why.”
The elevator doors open, and I hit the button for the top floor, slightly uneasy as I realize I don’t have to swipe my room card to get there.
Anyone can get anywhere inside this hotel.
Including directly to my room. Our room.
No security.
No layers between me and the general public.
The reality of my planned future hits me as I fully take in the idea that people who might want to hurt me could have easier access to me now.
If they figure out who I am.
Daphne eyes me. “You get used to it,” she says.
“Used to what?” Am I that easy to read? Or am I having a normal, natural reaction that she had too?
“Being…alone.” She shoots a look up at a globe in the corner of the elevator ceiling and doesn’t say anything else.
So she’s picking up on my unease and understanding the cause of it.
“How long did it take you to get used to…being alone?” I ask.
If someone overheard us, they’d think we could be discussing anything from a breakup to moving out of a roommate situation.
But I’m certain she knows what I’m thinking.
Shouldn’t be comforting.
Especially not from Daphne.
But it is.
“I still had Lady Catherine Ophelia after my…breakup, but she was old and could only do so much as a…loud companion,” she says.
Right.
Her dog.
Yappy little thing, though it never yapped at me.
It treated me almost like I was invisible.
Hated her father though.
“Had?” I ask.
“She only made it a few more weeks after the grand life change.”
“Sorry for your loss.”
For once, she doesn’t immediately pop back with a grin and a smart-ass comment. Just keeps talking like I didn’t say anything. “And I got some roommates. They knew about my…breakup…so they made sure I wasn’t ever in a position where I felt…lonely.”
This elevator is so slow that I only know it’s moving because of the slight shimmy as we pass the second floor.
“It was probably six months to a year to fully adjust,” she finally says. “Until I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I thought about…him.”
I grunt softly. Long time to adapt to not having security in your life.
Some kind of monitored security system will be a must until I feel comfortable being whoever the new me is.
I don’t feel like a Tom, even though that’s what’s on my fake ID.
I should ask Daphne to call me Tom.
To get used to it.
But I don’t want to.
I want to be me. And part of me will always be Miles William Oliver Cumberland IV.
The part that made me.
Colliding with who I’m meant to be.
Who I want to be.
“It might not take that long for you,” she says. “Or it might take longer. Probably depends on what direction you go now that you’re…out of that relationship.”
I make a noncommittal noise.
She starts to say something else but then closes her mouth.
I side-eye her.
She looks up at the camera in the ceiling corner again.
“But in my opinion, a dog can help when you’re lonely.”
“Did you get another one?”
“Not yet. I might be almost ready again, but…not yet.”
It’s been four years.
That’s a long time to mourn a canine companion.
Not an observation I’ll make out loud though.
I don’t want to know why she hasn’t gotten another dog.
What exactly she meant when she said I did something that gave her purpose.
Where she lives.
Who her roommates are.
If she finished college somewhere.
What her life is like.
We ride the rest of the way in silence, and the doors finally open to the seventh floor.
The suite I booked as Tom is at the end of a swampy-smelling hall, and when I push open the door, I’m startled to find it’s a single room.
I wasn’t expecting a penthouse—I’m well aware I’m not in New York anymore, and there was no listing for penthouse suites anywhere in this town—but the listing did say suite.
There should be at least two rooms if it’s a suite, shouldn’t there?
Does the hallway with the microwave and sink seriously count as a full room?
What kind of crap is this?
“Dibs on the couch,” Daphne announces, breezing past the bed covered in a bleach-white comforter to drop her ValuKart bags on the yellow-and-pink striped loveseat.
Not a full couch. “I love sleeping on couches. I thought about getting a couch for my bedroom in my apartment, but that’s not the best when I have guests over. Know what I mean?”
I give her another side-eye.
She spreads her hands. “Fine. You got me. Couches aren’t my favorite. But until I look as old as you look, and until I’m paying for the hotels and the food and the gas and my own new wardrobe, fair is fair, and fair is you getting the bed.”
The bed is king-size.
We could both fit.
I don’t offer to share though because I don’t want to.
She’s not supposed to be here, but now that she’s here, I can’t let her go without worrying she’ll blow my plans up, and the only place I can hide from her in this hotel room is in the bathroom.
Unless I get her a separate room.
Where I can’t keep an eye on her.
“What do you need from the car?” I have to get out of here, and grabbing stuff from the car is my only option for a brief reprieve.
She points to the two ValuKart bags. “Got clean clothes, a toothbrush, and all of my leftover gummy bears right now. I’m good.”
“I’m going to get my bags. Stay here.”
“You know the first rule of hotels is that whoever grabs the TV remote first gets to pick the channels, right?”
My eye twitches.
She grins at me. “Still too easy,” she murmurs.
And I’m out.
I need five minutes to myself to untangle everything I’m feeling right now.
The elevator is somehow slower going down to the car than it was going up.
You’d think gravity would help it.
I know the family who owns this chain of hotels.
I could tell them they have a hotel with an elevator problem.
And a carpet stink problem.
And a false advertising problem.
That is not a suite.
But then I’d have to tell someone else what I’m doing, and I don’t want to.
The room we’re in doesn’t overlook the parking spot for the car, so I take an extra minute to fire up my secret cell phone while I debate what I want to take inside with me.
Only one bag of cash. I don’t give two shits if someone steals the rest. If they need it that badly, they’re welcome to it.
Fuck knows I have access to more.
Even divesting all of my M2G shares after the investor meeting next month won’t come close to wiping me out.
Unlike my father, I’ve diversified. Into real investments that have real returns. I have more non-Miles2Go money than what my stock shares are worth.
I was proud of myself for that until I realized I don’t want it anymore. And now I need to figure out how to give it all away.
Preferably to causes that will truly put it to good use.
The phone blinks at me with a text notification from Archie.
Proof of life? is all it says.
Sent this morning.
I dial him back.
It’s a Sunday. He might be golfing. Might be on a date. Might be in the office catching up on paperwork.
He’s due to step into his father’s shoes in a few years too, but unlike me, he’s excited at the prospect.
It takes five rings before he answers. “Dude. You catch that race today? Unbelievable.” A door clicks, and his voice echoes more.
“Hold on. Signal’s bad.” One more door click.
And a third. “I’m at my parents,” he finally says quietly.
“Grandmother’s doing her thing again. Talk to me. You survive so far?”
“Fucking Daphne Merriweather-Brown stowed away in my car.”
Silence stretches over the miles.
So much silence.
“And yes, I’ve survived so far,” I mutter into the continued silence.
“How the hell did she—”
“Still piecing that together. I think she fell asleep in the back seat waiting to talk to me about something, and I didn’t see her until she woke up and said something when I crossed into Pennsylvania.”
“Shit. You need me to send someone to get her?”
“No.”
“No?”
I pull the pack of undershirts out of my original suitcase, spot the very large writing announcing they’re Youth Large size—dammit, I’m a disaster—and toss them into the back seat, then throw three more pairs of boat pants next to them.
Travel plans? Success.
Internet shopping for my new wardrobe? Fail.
Need to start batting better than five hundred soon here.
“What do you know about her situation?” I ask Archie. He’s her age, a couple years younger than I am, grew up with all of us, and he’s the only one of the original crew of friends I hooked back up with after college who stuck after my father’s sentence.
“Completely cut off from her family except Margot, living somewhere upstate, not getting arrested anymore—”
“You’re sure?”
“If there’s one thing her father loves, it’s bitching about Daphne when she screws up. If she got arrested, I’d hear about it from one channel or another. Tell me again why I’m not immediately sending someone to get her.”
“I can’t keep an eye on her and make sure she doesn’t blow this before I’ve even started if she’s not here.”
More silence.
Archie thinks I’m a dumbass. Don’t have to be in the same state as he is to feel that coming through the phone right now.
I sigh. “And she knows how to do things like pump gas and how to get in and out of ValuKart as fast as humanly possible when you need new clothes.”
“Why’d you need new clothes?”
“Sizing error.”
More silence.
Archie’s not usually the silent type.
“You alone?” I ask him.
“Yes. I’m refraining from asking for pictures.”
“I’m refraining from flipping you off.”
“Have you flipped Daphne off yet?”
“No.”
“Have you wanted to?”
“Is it possible to know her and not?”
“Where is she right now?”
“Hotel room. I’m in the parking lot. Getting my luggage. I have her phone so she can’t call Margot or anyone else.”
“Last time I was in a hotel, they still had landlines. Think she knows how to use it?”
Fuck.
Now I have a headache and indigestion, when a minute ago I merely had a pebble in my shoe.
I dump the ValuKart bags with my clothes straight into the suitcase, shut the door, grab one of the duffels from the trunk, and head for the hotel.
Then remember to lock the car.
Then double-check that I’ve locked the car.
And triple-check it.
“I’m sending—” Archie starts, but I cut him off.
“She’s staying. We made a deal. She’s…possibly…unfortunately…what I need. With me. For this part of my trip. Because…just…I’ve got this.”
“You convincing me or yourself? You haven’t been this hesitant about anything in at least three years.”
I grimace.
I don’t miss who I was before I was thrust into the head role at M2G, back when I’d second-guess everything and let other people order me around—but I don’t want to be who I am right now either.
And it’s not because the person I’m meant to be isn’t somewhere inside me.
It’s more that I’ve never had the freedom to find myself.
To find what I love enough to fight for it.
And while I haven’t been at this road trip more than twenty-four hours yet, I’m already realizing Daphne’s right.
I need help.
And she has something that I’ve never had.
She has fun.
“We stopped for fast food, and these sixty-year-old women had rented the place out and thought I was their birthday stripper,” I say to Archie. “One of them slapped my ass.”
“I hear the words you’re saying, but they’re not computing.”
“And it was hilarious.” I drop my voice as I approach the door. “I don’t—I wouldn’t have picked her, but chaos follows her, Arch. And I think—I think I need a little of that.”
The silence is shorter this time. “That makes unfortunate sense.”
My shoulders relax.
“Call if you change your mind and want me to pick her up. And keep her somewhere for a few weeks.”
“She says she could ride squirrels home if she needs to.”
He snorts with laughter. “That’s Daphne.”
Another bout of pride swells my chest.
That wasn’t Daphne making a joke about squirrels.
It was me.
Look at that.
I can be funny.
And I’ve needed that too.
I approach the elevators. “Have to go. She doesn’t know I have a phone, and I need to make sure she’s not using the landline.”
“Be safe.”
Be safe.
That’s the last thing I’m doing.
With every aspect of my life.