Chapter 21 Bellamy
TWENTY-ONE
BELLAMY
Gage slows the car as we pull into the lot, gravel crunching under the tires, and something in my chest tightens before I even register why.
I turn toward him. “We’re at a motel?”
He glances over, completely unbothered. “You said our next sleepover shouldn’t be at Coco’s.”
I stare at him for half a second, then huff out a laugh. “This is not what I meant.”
Cruz shifts underneath me, his breath warming my neck as he says, “You sure? It looks real… cozy.”
Gage ignores him, easing the car into a spot with a clean line of sight across the street to a small strip center.
A laundromat anchors one end, fluorescent lights humming behind plate glass, a row of machines visible through the window.
A tax prep office sits dark beside it. Hand-lettered signs. A parking lot with two cars in it.
Gage throws the car in park but doesn’t turn it off.
I lean back against Cruz, lifting one leg to tuck my ankle underneath my knee. He grunts as I shift around, but I don’t take it as a protest about me moving on his lap. His hand finds the outside of my knee for just a second before he seems to think better of it and lets it drop.
“Alright,” I say after a second. “What are we doing out here?”
“I have a plan.” Gage leans forward over the wheel, scanning the strip center across the street.
I follow his cue and look around too, but nothing is really jumping out at me, so I don’t know what’s going on.
“Is the motel the adventure?” Cruz asks. His fingertips move along the seat in that unhurried way, grazing my thigh with every pass. I feel the shift in his attention before I turn my head—the way he goes still, just slightly, waiting.
Gage jerks his chin toward the motel. “Found this place about nine months ago.”
“How?” Cruz asks.
“Remember when Coco had us scouting properties last year?”
“Hm.” Cruz’s fingers go still for a second. “Yeah.”
“She wanted a foothold outside of Hollow Beach. Sent us all over the desert looking for something she could use.”
I look at the motel. One floor, exterior corridors, the kind of place that can hide a lot of cash. I find myself doing the math before I mean to. “Did she end up buying it?”
“Nah, she went in a different direction. But it did give me an idea. See that laundromat over there?” Gage waits for us to look across the street.
Cruz puffs out a breath. “Your hair,” he mutters, and I feel his fingers sweep across my neck to tuck a wayward strand over my shoulder.
“I spent a few days scouting the motel. Middle of fucking nowhere, so I had time to poke around. Got to talking with one of the night managers. She just—started telling me things. How much they pull in. How often they deposit.”
“She could’ve been lying,” Cruz says. “Trying to trap you or some shit.” But he’s already leaning forward slightly, chin angled toward the window.
Gage dips his head. “Yeah, that’s what I thought too. So that’s why I kept coming back. I wanted to see if her story checked out.”
“And did it?” I sit up a little straighter as my heart beats a little harder, the familiar feeling I usually get when discussing possible jobs.
My eyes cut back to the laundromat. The fluorescent light behind the plate glass. The two cars in the lot.
The grin Gage sends me is infectious. My own mouth curves upward as if they’re tied together.
“Yeah, Bell, it fuckin’ did.”
“So we’re here to, what? Get five hundred pounds in quarters? I don’t know where that would even fit, man.” Cruz shakes his head, his fingers doing that fluttering thing again, only this time directly on my bare thigh.
Gage’s grin dims a little, but his eyes are still bright. He points at Cruz. “See, that’s what Bishop said too, when I tried to pitch it to him. But I’ve done the recon, man. And it all checks out. They’re sitting on thirty, forty grand—”
“In quarters?” Cruz asks incredulously.
I look back at the laundromat and the machines lined up behind the glass. My mind is already working, spinning and connecting dots.
And the way Gage’s brimming with anticipation—I think I know where he’s going with it.
“When’s the last time you went to a laundromat?” I turn my head toward Cruz. Our faces are too close, and I have to lean back to see him properly.
He’s already shaking his head. “Never? I don’t know. Years, I guess.”
“Okay, so you wouldn’t know that there are bill changers inside every laundromat.”
“Bingo,” Gage says, snapping his fingers and pointing at me. “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”
My brows rise. “That’s the reason?”
His hand lands on my knee, covering it with warmth. “Nah, I’ve got about a hundred of ‘em.”
“My question still stands,” Cruz bites out, shifting again.
A fissure of worry worms its way through the buzzing excitement. “I can move to the back now if you’re uncomfortable or if I’m getting too heav—”
“Absolutely not,” Cruz interrupts me, his hands clamping on my hips like he’s going to physically hold me there if he has to.
Gage clears his throat. “It’s not quarters.”
I lick my lips and pull my attention away from the way Cruz’s fingertips press into my skin. And how much I like the way it feels. How, for one second, I wondered what it would feel like if there weren't layers of fabric between us.
“What?”
“The laundromat. They use tokens, not quarters. And their bill changers—” He pauses, and something in the pause makes me look at him. He’s watching Cruz’s hands too. “They have the potential to hold tens of thousands.”
“The potential?” Cruz asks.
Gage nods, his gaze straying to the way Cruz hasn’t removed his hands yet. “Yeah. I haven’t been to check on it for a couple of months, but if everything’s the same, our window to pull it off is at four o’clock.”
I glance at the dash. It’s already three-thirty in the afternoon. “That’s not a lot of time for recon. Why four?”
“In the morning, Bells.” Gage turns in the driver’s seat to face me fully, one arm hooked over the headrest. “We’re having a motel recon sleepover.”
“We didn’t say yes yet,” Cruz says.
Gage looks to me, and I think about what he said to me when we surfed San Onofre last month.
I already know what my answer will be.
“You know what?” I look at him, letting my smirk grow wide. “Hell yeah.”
He lets out a short whoop and leans over the console, catching my mouth with his—quick and hard—before pulling back with a grin that refuses to dim. When he pulls back his eyes are bright and restless, his hand finding my knee again, squeezing once.
“Brother?”
We both turn to Cruz.
“We can do it without you, but it’d be more fun if the three of us were in it together,” Gage says.
“As if I’d let you two have all the fun.” He rolls his eyes, but the corner of his mouth gives him away.
Gage reaches over and shoves Cruz’s shoulder once, hard enough to rock him. Cruz shoves back. “Hell yeah, man.”
“Alright.” I hold up my hand. “If we’re going to do this, then we need to do some serious recon. We don’t have a lot of time either. And we need a solid plan.”
“Of course, Bell. This is supposed to be a quick, fun job that puts some cash in our pockets while we wait on other things.” He nods toward the office at the front of the building. “I’ll get us a room. We’ll hang out and watch, see if everything still lines up.”
He doesn’t wait for a response. Just pushes the door open and steps out.
The warm air billows into the car in a cloud of dust, enough to spur me into motion. I get out, Cruz following closely behind me.
I stretch my arms over my head and look around. Not much out here—the last rest stop was thirty miles back. Could work in our favor or fuck us, depending on how much through traffic this place gets.
I guess we’ll find out.
Cruz leans his ass against the passenger door, hands tucked in his pockets, watching me.
“What?”
He slides his baseball hat back on, brim flipped backward. “I’m surprised you said yes.”
“Are you though?”
“Nah.” He flashes me a grin. “But I probably should have been.” He says it lightly, but his eyes don’t move off me when he’s done talking.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You always say yes to him.” A shrug, loose and easy.
I move to stand directly in front of him. Look up. “Do you want me to say yes to you more? Is that it?”
He doesn’t answer right away. His jaw shifts. Something moves behind his eyes and then goes still, the way a curtain drops just after someone steps back from a window.
I hold his gaze. “You don’t have to do this job, you know. I would never ask you to do something you weren’t comfortable with.”
He pushes off the car, leaning down so our faces are separated by mere inches. “It’s not about the job.”
I tilt my chin up, and I swear I feel the air crackle around us. “Then what’s it about?”
His nose brushes against the tip of mine in the barest touch. My breath catches.
“I think you know—”
“Got a room,” Gage calls as he jogs across the lot, key dangling from his fingers.
Cruz rocks back on his heels and meets Gage at his trunk.
I exhale through my nose. Look at the sky for a second. Look back. The moment folds in on itself before it can go anywhere else, and I don’t know if that’s devastation or anticipatory hunger gnawing at my insides.
Cruz takes the duffel when Gage shoves it into his chest without a word.
“Optimistic, were you?” I ask.
Gage glances over his shoulder. “Nah.” A beat. “Hopeful.” He grabs the cooler, then my hand, lacing our fingers together like it’s nothing.
I let him.
Our room is right in front of the car. I take the key from Gage before we reach the door, unlock it, and step inside first.
The room is exactly what it looks like from the outside.
Old carpet. Faded bedspread. A TV bolted to the dresser. One bed.
I count the chairs without meaning to. Three. At least there’s that.
Behind me, Cruz drops the duffel onto the table with a dull thud. Two more steps, and he lets himself fall back onto the bed, arms spreading wide, ankles crossing like he’s been here a hundred times before.
A slow grin pulls at his mouth. “Looks like we’re gonna be cozy tonight.”
Gage drops the cooler on the end of the dresser. “You hog the bed, I will push you off it.”
“Me?” Cruz tilts his head toward me. “You should be worried about her. I’ve heard she steals the blankets.”
I turn around. “Who told you that? Because my sister is known for her dramatics in at least three different counties.”
Cruz lets out a quiet laugh, one arm still stretched behind his head. “Nah, it wasn’t her.”
I swing my gaze to Gage and plant my hands on my hips.
He grins. Crosses the room. Slides his hands around my waist and pulls me in until there’s nothing between us.
“I would never,” he murmurs against my mouth.
He kisses me again, quick and light, then turns to the cooler.
He unloads the contents onto the small, battered table by the window.
Bottles of water, a container of fruit, bags of chips and pretzels, three sub sandwiches, and one giant red velvet cupcake in one of those single plastic cupcake holders.
I blink. “You—packed us dinner?”
“‘Course. I know how my brother gets when he doesn’t eat dinner.” He winks, then plops a stack of napkins in the middle of the table.
“Jesus, one time I was an asshole because I hadn’t eaten in like ten hours, and boom!
I’m forever known as hangry,” Cruz huffs, rolling his eyes as he gets off the bed.
He drags one of the chairs over to the table, angling it so he can keep eyes on the laundromat without sitting directly in the line of sight.
“It happens to the best of us,” I console, taking the middle chair.
Gage sits on the other side of me, and the three of us start eating.
Cruz steals a chip off my sandwich wrapper. I don’t say anything. Gage refills my water without being asked. Across the street, the laundromat glows steady—fluorescent lights, idle machines, no movement at the front. The occasional car drifts past and keeps going.
I watch the window. Somewhere behind me, Cruz says something that makes Gage laugh, low and easy, and I find myself almost smiling before I’ve decided to.
I take a bite of my sandwich and watch a woman fold the same shirt twice before setting it down.
At some point the cupcake gets split three ways without anyone suggesting it. Cruz takes the smallest piece without being told to. Gage gives me the piece with the most frosting without acknowledging that he’s doing it.
The laundromat doesn’t change. Neither do we.
Hours pass. The caffeine Gage packed is mostly gone. I’m nursing the last of mine, rationing it against the dark hours still ahead.
“Remind me: why four a.m. again?”
“Two-hour gap between shifts. Inside that, there’s a thirty-minute window where it’s dead. No customers, no employees, nothing,” Gage says.
“And cameras?” Cruz asks, his gaze fixed on the building across the street.
Gage’s already shaking his head. “The owner is more analog. No cameras, keypads, or alarms.”
“And how are we hauling home those bill changers?” Cruz asks.
“I borrowed Rafe’s kit,” Gage says with a wide grin. “It’s in the trunk.”
Cruz huffs a laugh. “Man, I hope for your sake that you asked him first.”
“Beg forgiveness and all that. Besides—” he looks directly at me— “I think we’ll be alright.”
A yawn splits my attempt at an eye roll.
“Go lay down,” Gage says. “We’ll post up again in a few hours.”
I don’t argue. I push back from the table, shimmy out of my jean shorts, and pull the blanket from the duffel—the soft one, the one he packed on purpose. I stretch out on top of the covers and pull it over me.
The lamp on the nightstand throws a wedge of yellow light across the ceiling. Behind me, one of them says something too low to catch. The other one laughs.
I watch the light until the edges go soft.