Chapter 30
“I feel like there are still bugs on me,” I said, rubbing my hands up and down my arms as I sat in the passenger seat.
It was dark outside. The sun had set while we were trapped.
Oliver had called the nonemergency police line and in less than an hour a handful of firemen had pried open the door and freed us.
We got a serious lecture about trespassing.
And had I been less irritated, I might’ve noticed that two of the firefighters were attractive and seemingly single, and that being rescued from a silo would make an amazing meet-cute.
Fine, I noticed. But I didn’t care. I wished I did because that would mean I wasn’t hung up, once again, on someone who was apparently completely wrong for me.
“There aren’t any bugs,” Oliver assured me. He’d already checked twice before we’d even gotten in the car.
“I know, but it feels like it.” I raked my fingers through my hair. “Did you hate every minute of that? The trespassing, the being stuck inside, the lecture from people in authority?”
“It wasn’t my favorite.” He took the turn toward our hotel. “Food first or shower?”
“We don’t have to do everything together,” I said.
“I figured since we only have one car…”
“I can get something delivered. I don’t want to keep you from doing whatever you might want to do here.” Yes, I was pouting. It was more than pouting; my heart hurt and I hated that I’d given him enough of it to affect me this much.
“I’m not as free-spirited as you. I’m careful. I like to calculate risks and rewards of things and sometimes that bites me in the ass.”
“There aren’t enough potential rewards to justify the many risks with me?”
“What?” he said, confused. Then his eyes went wide. “No. That’s not what I was talking about. I was literally just talking about trespassing.”
“Well, I’m talking about us. Stop being so careful and take some damn risks.” And I was back to being mad at him as he pulled into the parking lot of the hotel. We went inside and rode the elevator to the third floor in silence.
We reached our doors and he said, “I’ll probably head down to the bar for a couple drinks.
Text me if you need the car or anything.
” He was obviously mad at me too. Mad that I had dragged him out into the middle of nowhere and was now demanding that he explain why he didn’t like me the way I liked him.
The light on my lock lit up green. “Yep,” I said as the door shut behind me.
I walked straight to the bathroom, turned on the shower, stripped down, then stepped under the practically scalding stream of water.
I scrubbed my skin with the tiny bar of hotel-provided soap, washed my hair with shampoo that smelled more like chemicals than the cucumber-and-aloe scent it was claiming to have, and stayed in the steamy shower until my skin was red and blotchy.
I dried off with a scratchy towel, then pulled on a tank top and a pair of cheeky underwear.
I found the delivery apps on my phone and discovered that at this hour there were no drivers available to take my order in this small town. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t all that hungry anyway. I pulled out my toothbrush only to remember I’d forgotten toothpaste.
I shot Oliver a text. You downstairs already? Can I borrow your toothpaste again?
While I waited for his answer, I opened my side of the adjoining door, then tested the handle for his door. It was unlocked. His room was dark, the only light coming from the bathroom. He wouldn’t care if I just grabbed some toothpaste and went on my way.
I looked at my phone again, but he hadn’t responded.
The image that came into my mind was him at the bar chatting it up with some girl from San Francisco or New York.
Someone who hadn’t slept with her boss or just lost her job, someone who’d known what she wanted to do with her life the second she’d entered college, probably before then.
Someone who didn’t take him over fences and into old rusty silos.
“She sounds boring,” I mumbled to myself, but I knew she wasn’t.
She was probably like my sister. Cool and confident and uber-successful.
Despite what he claimed, it was obvious that those were the kind of people who didn’t make Oliver hesitate, or weigh options, the kind who didn’t make him nervous, I was sure.
Those were the images that were circling my mind as I took my toothbrush and stepped into his room.
A room that after less than eight hours already smelled exactly like him.
I headed for the bathroom. I could see the toothpaste sitting there on his counter, through the open door.
My hand was unscrewing the cap when the sound of water hitting tile and glass…
and most likely skin… rang out behind me.
A yelp escaped my lips and my eyes darted to the mirror, where a misty reflection of the shower shone in front of me.
My hand, toothpaste still in its grip, slapped the lights, plunging us into darkness.
Oliver let out a short, strangled shout.
“I thought you were downstairs!” I yelled.
“I was just borrowing toothpaste!” I held up the tube that he couldn’t see.
With the motion, something small and plastic hit my foot, then bounced on the floor a couple times.
I assumed it was the cap of the toothpaste.
I felt around with my foot for a second, shuffling several steps one way and then the other, but couldn’t find it.
A laugh rang out. “You didn’t hear the shower?”
“I really didn’t!” My mind had been too preoccupied to think about what sounds meant.
“Margot, I can’t see,” he said.
“Exactly!” I responded. “Neither can I.”
More water sounds rang out, like he was rinsing off shampoo or soap or something. “Are you really not going to turn the light back on?” he asked, a smile in his voice.
“No. I mean, yes, I will. I’m trying to figure out how to get out of here in a way that neither of us will get an eyeful.” I also didn’t want to run face-first into a wall or have him slip in the shower, but without lights, the odds of one or both of those things happening were very high.
“Are you not dressed?” he asked.
“I am semidressed.” The cold counter against my backside reminded me how little my chosen underwear covered. And the thought of him standing there naked ten feet away made me feel every inch of my thin tank top against my sensitive parts.
He chuckled again and then there was silence. He’d turned off the shower. I heard the glass shower door slide open. “Just getting a towel,” he said. His hand slapped the wall several times followed by the sound of cloth sliding off the metal bar.
“Don’t slip,” I said.
“A light would help,” he teased.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “If you close your eyes. I’ll turn the light back on and leave.”
“And if I don’t close my eyes?” he said, that smile still in his voice.
“Oliver,” I sighed out. “Don’t…”
“Don’t what?” he asked.
“If you don’t like me back, you have to stop saying things like that. You’re sending me mixed messages.”
My statement was followed by silence, and I wished the lights were on so I could see the expression on his face. But they weren’t, and I was literally left in the dark, wondering what he was thinking.
He put me out of my misery by saying, “I do like you, Margot. A lot.”
My eyes stung in confusion. “But?”
“But I don’t know if I’m right for you,” he said.
“You are. So right. I think what’s really stopping you is that you don’t know if I’m right for you.”
Another stretch of silence passed where he didn’t deny my statement. His voice finally cut through the darkness, deep and scratchy. “I need to tell you something about my past relationship.”
“I honestly don’t care about your past relationship. I meant what I said in the silo. We need to leave our pasts in the past. We can’t let the people who hurt us still have such a strong hold on us now.”
“No matter who they were?”
“Even if we were engaged to them or if they were our bosses,” I said, covering both of us with the statement. “I think we have to live in the moment. Do what feels right now because what if nothing feels this right again?”
“ You feel right,” he said. “You always have. From night one.”
My eyes were slowly adjusting to the dark and I saw the glowing white shape of the towel wrapped around him move until he stood in front of me.
The air was hot and muggy. I wanted to reach out and wrap myself around him, but once again I felt like I was talking him into liking me. I wanted him to want me, to not be able to control himself when we were both in various stages of undress. Not to have to be talked into feelings.
I realized I still held my toothbrush in one hand and his toothpaste in the other.
“I’m sorry for cornering you. I came here for toothpaste,” I said softly.
“That’s all.” I squeezed a bead, another spot of white in the darkness, onto my toothbrush, placed the capless tube back on the counter, then rushed for the door that I could now barely make out.
Oliver caught me by the hand before I got far, pulled me back into the bathroom, and backed me up against the counter, like a man who had suddenly discovered what he wanted and was prepared to get it.
He reached over to the wall and the soft light that surrounded the mirror flickered on, lighting him up in a glowy haze.
“What are you doing?” I asked, meeting his eyes, but my voice lacked conviction because whatever he was doing, my body liked it. A lot. “If you don’t want this…”