Chapter 14 #2
She looked at her reflection in the cracked mirror.
Her hair had collapsed into something tangled and dull, the pink uneven, darker at the roots where sweat had dragged it down.
Her eyeliner had smudged into hollows beneath her eyes.
She didn't look like the version of herself she sold under neon lights.
She didn't look like the version she pretended to be at home, either.
“Dante,” she called.
He appeared in the doorway. He'd taken off his jacket, and his t-shirt was damp with sweat, clinging to his chest in a way she made herself not notice.
“I don't have anything,” she said, gesturing at the bare counter. “No toothbrush. No face wash. I've been in this dress for hours and I still smell like the club.”
He leaned against the doorframe. “I didn't exactly have time to pack your vanity kit.”
She rolled her eyes. “For fuck’s sake, I'm not exactly asking for a spa day.”
He pushed off the frame and stepped in, the space shrinking around him. He reached into the small duffel he'd carried from the car and pulled out a folded t-shirt, charcoal grey, soft from wear.
“Santiago's,” he said, setting it on the edge of the sink. “It's clean.” Then he reached back in and produced a toothbrush still sealed in plastic and a half-used tube of toothpaste. “I grabbed a couple of these too. He keeps spares.”
He backed out and closed the door.
Jessica stripped. She threw the sequined dress into a heap in the corner and stepped into the shower.
The spray was lukewarm and stinging. She used the tiny paper-wrapped bar of Palms Motel soap to scrub her skin until it turned pink.
She washed her underwear with the soap too and hung it over the shower rail.
After she dried off, she pulled the t-shirt over her head.
It covered the tops of her thighs, which meant she didn't have to put damp underwear back on.
The fabric was soft and warm and smelled like someone else's laundry detergent, but it was somehow better than anything she'd worn in months.
She brushed her teeth and left the toothpaste out for him.
When she opened the bathroom door, the room was dark except for the sickly green glow of the neon sign bleeding through the curtains.
Dante was sitting on the edge of the bed, his back to her. He'd stripped down to a black tank that showed the heavy dark work of the tattoos across his shoulders. He was checking his pistol, the metallic click-slide the only sound in the room.
She stood in the doorway, bare toes curling into the thin carpet. “Your turn.”
He didn't turn. “I'll wash up after.”
“After what?”
“After you're asleep.”
The word choice was small, but she heard what was underneath it. Not in bed. Asleep. Like he needed her unconscious before he could let his guard down, and she wasn't sure if the guard was against what was outside or what was in here.
“Dante.”
He stilled. He set the gun on the nightstand and turned his head.
His eyes started at her feet and moved up—the bare legs, the hem of the shirt, her damp hair – and she watched him take it in and watched him try not to.
The effort was visible. It was in his jaw, in the way his hand tightened on the edge of the mattress, in the half-second where his gaze caught somewhere around her collarbone and stayed there before he pulled it away.
“Get some sleep,” he said quietly.
She didn't move. “Are you going to sit there all night?”
A pause. Then, “I’m going to stay where it’s safe,” he said, his eyes still on hers, “for both of us.”
The bathroom door opened with a soft click.
Jessica lay on her side facing the window, eyes closed, breathing slow and even. She wasn't asleep. She wasn't close to asleep. But she'd gotten good at pretending—months of lying next to Trent had taught her how to make her breathing sound like something it wasn't.
She heard Dante pause just inside the room. The faint scent of motel soap reached her first, then the damp heat of skin that hadn't fully cooled. She tracked him by sound—the soft thud of his bag being set down, the creak of the plastic chair as he lowered himself into it.
He lasted about two minutes.
She heard him shift, heard the chair protest, heard him exhale through his nose, like his body was telling him something his pride didn't want to hear. Then silence. Then the chair again, another shift, another breath.
Then the mattress dipped.
The movement was careful and controlled. He lowered himself onto his back like he was trying not to disturb the air between them. But the bed was old and the mattress sagged toward the center, and the dip pulled her an inch closer to him whether either of them wanted it to or not.
Close enough that she could feel him without touching him. Heat, presence, the weight of a body trying very hard to hold still.
He lay there, and she lay there, and the room was quiet except for the sound of the highway and the drip of the bathroom tap.
“You're not asleep,” Dante murmured.
“No.”
Silence.