Chapter 18
SIENNA
Rain was pouring down so hard when we exited the strip mall that even Zane couldn’t insist we get on the road to LA right away.
We were soaked through by the time we reached the nearest motel—a shabby place just off the coast road.
It’s nothing like the quaint B&B I had in mind for us earlier.
But I don’t care where we sleep. With every minute we spend together I grow more and more amazed at how I could’ve gone so long without him.
I just wish that with every minute that passes he was more and more on the same page as me on that.
But he’s not.
Our leather jackets, boots and the rest of our clothes are drying on hangers and the backs of chairs all over the room, I’m in my underwear on the bed, not covered by so much as a sheet.
And he’s smoking outside. He’s on his fifth cigarette back-to-back and I’m starting to lose hope he’s ever coming back inside.
But every so often he glances at me through the window. And each time he does I can practically see him decide to continue hating me instead of giving into the lust, love, and connection we clearly still share. Because all that is clear in his bright blue eyes, so I know he feels it too.
He disappears from the window and opens the door. My heart is skipping in joy, thinking he’s finally come to his senses. But he just opens the door a crack and pokes his head in,
“I’ll go find us something to eat.”
“I’m coming with you,” I say, leaping off the bed before he even fully finishes his sentence.
In the split second before I start searching around for something to wear, I see he wants to argue.
But he waits patiently, because he never was very good at saying no to me. And I feel a little like a bitch knowing that, even though it warms my heart too.
But how can I make up for all the pain I’ve caused him if we’re not together?
That would be impossible.
So we have to be together all the time from now on.
We leave the bike parked in the covered parking lot of the motel and run across the street to the nearest diner.
Apart from a couple of sullen-looking regulars at the counter and a waitress that looks eerily similar to the lady cashier at the strip mall that threatened to call the cops on us, down to the piercing in her nose, we’re the only ones in here.
I order the grilled cheese sandwich and fries which is the only safe thing to eat at out of the way places like this, but Zane goes for the full-on cheese burger meal.
“Who knows what kind of meat they have here,” I tell him once the waitress leaves. “You’d be better off with something vegetarian.”
He drinks about half his glass of water, eyeing me nastily over the rim the whole time.
“Are we still pretending you care what happens to me?”
It’s a question I deserve, but it still stings like hell. Especially with all that venom behind it.
For a while I’m stunned into silence, trying to decide whether I should apologize all over again or just work on showing him how wrong he is until he gets it.
“I was a stupid young woman back then,” I say, fraying the edges of my napkin and only glancing up at him, not looking at his face. “But I was also madly in love with you. And that never changed.”
He scoffs and drinks some more water.
“And I never asked you to kill anyone for me.”
There, I said it. He slams his glass down so hard I’m amazed it didn’t shatter. And his anger at my words is a physical force, hotter than the sun in high summer.
I am looking into his eyes now and I don’t see the kid I fell in love with in them. All I see is the hard, ruthless killer he’s become. But they’re both him. The man I love.
“No, you didn’t ask me to kill,” he finally says sounding like each work is a hard piece of rock he’s having trouble getting out. “I did it to protect you. So you’d never have to suffer again. But I guess that was a wasted effort too.”
The waitress returns with our food and is giving him a shocked look as she sets our plates down. She probably heard too much of our conversation, but it can’t be helped. And we’ll be out of this town before she can do anything about it. Hopefully.
“It wasn’t wasted,” I say quietly after she’s gone again. “But all I wanted was to be with you. And I lost that. I want us to make up for lost time now. Not hate each other.”
He scoffs again, shaking his head in disbelief as he takes a huge bite of his burger.
I was hungry when we got here, but picking up my sandwich for a bite seems beyond me right now.
My stomach is coiling and twisting as I wonder why my life always has to be so damn complicated.
Never easy. Never smooth. Always filled with pain.
The only good and easy part was loving him. And that was cut short before it even got started properly.
“We can’t just erase the past,” he says after a while, his voice maybe a little softer than it’s been up to now.
“No, we can’t,” I mumble.
“And we can’t bring it back to life just because that’s what you want,” he adds and takes another huge bite of his burger.
I push my plate away and drink some water to get rid of the dryness and the suddenly very foul taste in my mouth.
I spent my teen years pretending I was fine, pretending what my stepfather was doing to me was nothing, didn’t hurt me, didn’t touch me. But this, the way I feel right now, is how I’d always feel at the dinner table, having to pretend everything was fine while sitting next to the monster.
I never felt that way with Zane before.
And the reason I feel like this now isn’t because he’s a monster, or the things he said. It’s because I’m starting to believe that no amount of pretending will ever bring the happiness we used to share back.
Just like no amount of pretending my life was fine ever made it such.
“The less talking we do, the better,” Zane says, wiping his mouth on a napkin. Maybe his tone isn’t rocky and harsh anymore, but the words are.
He looks past me out the window.
“The rain’s not pouring down so hard anymore,” he says. “We can reach LA by morning.”
I almost tell him I’m staying right here, that I don’t need a ride anywhere anymore.
But he’s right. The less talking, the better.
The little that we’d already done until now has made things so much worse.
I’m not even sure how that’s possible, since things were already as bad as they could possibly get to begin with.
“Eat,” he says. “It’s a long ride.”
I shake my head. If my stepfather or my husband had told me to eat right now, I’d do it. But they were the ones who destroyed my soul. This man, he’s the one who rebuilt it.
“I won’t let you just discard me,” I tell him.
He narrows his eyes, suggesting he thinks I just said the stupidest thing.
“Like I said, the less talking the better.”
And then he finishes his food in silence, while I sip my water, wondering if there’s any way he could be wrong about that. But I can’t find any words that I hope would reach his heart, make it open to me again. And I’m growing more and more afraid that words like that don’t actually exist.