Chapter Twelve
Dylan
“You should do the last leg with Saint and Syn,” I suggested. Like I’d suggested on the last two stops we made on the way from Shady Valley to the hotel we would be staying at.
Because for some godforsaken reason, Colter insisted on riding in the damn moving truck with Sugar and me.
Actually, no, he’d insisted on driving himself.
I’d put up a halfhearted argument to that. I actually didn’t love driving. I liked riding my bike. Cars and trucks? Not so much.
It turned out I was much more suited to being a passenger princess than I could have realized. I got to fiddle with the radio. Pet Sugar. Eat snacks. Even nod off here and there.
Colter was even a good driver, so I didn’t need to pay attention and yell at him for following too closely or cutting people off.
The back of the truck was loaded down with not only my bike now, but the ones for the guys. And a few essentials for Sugar and me.
I’d been convinced to leave most of my stuff at the motel, everyone assuring me that Jack would make sure it was safe without me.
And I guess the club had paid it up for the next week.
Or, more accurately, Colter had. Since he’d been the one talking to Jack when I’d come out of my room, ready to head over to the clubhouse to get on the road.
I meant to be a bitch to him. I’d given it a valiant try for the first hour or so of the day.
But the damn guy just never rose to the bait.
Which was in stark contrast to the man who had another man by the throat and would seriously have killed him if I hadn’t stepped in.
“I’m good,” Colter said, handing me a coffee. “Black, three of those yellow packets,” he said, answering the question in my eyes.
I’d never even told him that. He’d just seen me get it when we’d stopped at the gas station in Shady Valley to fuel up and we’d gone inside for road snacks.
“Yeah,” I said, taking it. Then, a little lower, “Thanks.”
“The yellow shit doesn’t raise blood glucose, right?” he asked.
Had he… been researching diabetes?
Because of me?
And if so, how did I feel about that?
Seen, a little voice said. Understood.
“Yeah. I used to like my coffee regular. But I learned to like it black with the packets. I figure, eventually, I won’t even remember what it used to taste like.”
“It’s good that you can keep some of life’s simple pleasures without having to inject.”
“Yeah. Hence this,” I said, reaching over to where he had a diet soda tucked in the crook of his arm. It was all I’d asked for. But the coffee was welcome. As was the little container of precut apples and peanut butter dipping sauce he’d grabbed.
Seeing me eyeing it, he handed it over. “Figured we wouldn’t be stopping now, and we’ll be running past dinner time.”
“Thanks.”
“You can’t have my pistachios,” he said, shaking the snack-sized bag.
“Wanna bet?” I asked.
“Fine, I’ll share.”
“You give in easily.”
“You’re hard to say no to.”
The second it was out of his mouth, we both knew it was the exact wrong thing to say.
Because over the last few hours of being stuck in a small cabin together, we’d come to a truce. We’d even chatted casually here and there when I wasn’t napping or singing along with the radio.
But that comment just brought it all back.
Unexpectedly, the sting of the rejection felt just as sharp as it had when it first happened.
“Dylan…”
“Let’s go then. I want to get to my hotel room,” I said, turning and walking back toward the passenger side of the truck.
Syn was just making his way back from taking Sugar for a walk to stretch out both their legs.
“Thanks,” I said, having done the first two walks alone with her.
“She sniffed all her pee-mails,” he said, shooting me a smirk.
“Good job, girl,” I cooed at her before getting her in the truck.
Then I went ahead and cranked up the radio just loud enough to make conversation impossible and spent the next twenty minutes sipping my coffee and picking at my apples and peanut butter. Before, eventually, pretending to take yet another nap.
And maybe eventually I did actually drift off.
Because I assumed Colter would have tried to call my name first. But what woke me up was a hand on my thigh.
I jerked awake, a little disoriented that it was dark out when it had been sunny what felt like just moments before.
“It’s alright,” Colter said, his voice soft. “You were really out,” he said as my gaze slid down, looking for Sugar, who’d been asleep with her head on my lap. But she was gone. “I handed her off to Saint and Syn to walk ten minutes ago.”
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“I just did,” he said.
His hand was still on my thigh. The placement was just an inch too high to be a fully casual touch. And damn if my sleepy body didn’t just thrill at the idea of it slipping just a few inches higher and inward.
My thighs pressed together. And the way his eyes went a little more heavy-lidded told me he knew exactly where my mind was right then.
His fingers tightened.
My breath hitched.
But then he pulled his hand away.
“Let’s go check out our rooms,” he said, turning, grabbing the keys, and climbing out of the truck.
Alone, I slammed my head back into the rest, taking a few slow, deep breaths. It was no use. The desire was already flooding my system. It was the buzzing sensation just beneath my skin, the heavy pressure on my lower stomach, the way I was hyperaware of the brush of my clothes as I moved.
“Get a grip,” I grumbled to myself before gathering my bag and Sugar’s stuffed animal before climbing down.
With that, we checked in and waited for Saint and Syn before going up to our rooms.
We’d managed to all end up on the same floor, with Saint and Syn down near the stairwell and Colter and I almost on the complete other end.
“Let us know if you guys decide to order anything for dinner,” Saint said before disappearing into his room.
Unsurprisingly, it was a major upgrade from the motel.
Which wasn’t hard. But this was a legitimately nice room, seemingly redone in faux white oak nightstands and desk, beige and white distressed carpet, and thick linen drapes.
It was a single king-sized bed with crisp white bedding that seemed like it had seen the inside of a washing machine recently. The TV? Not a tube.
The bathroom wasn’t huge but seemed recently renovated too. The floors and walls were covered in a warm tile that had an almost sand effect. The shower was a glass walk-in, and there was a floating vanity with warm golden lighting all around and under it.
“This’ll do, huh?” I asked Sugar, who was already sniffing around the room.
I set my bag on the desk and was about to pull out my monitor to test my sugar when there was a knock. From… inside the room?
I stiffened and waited.
It came again.
But it wasn’t really inside the room.
It was from the other side of a door that I figured was another, smaller, closet.
Upon closer inspection, though, there was no reason for a closet to have a deadbolt and a swing lock.
You only needed that kind of security if that door went to another room.
And that other room?
That was where Colter was staying.
I stalked over there, flipping the swing and undoing the deadbolt, then yanking it open.
“You can’t be serious. Connecting rooms? I didn’t even know connecting rooms were a thing anymore.”
“It’s actually a big feature for a lot of people. Parents and kids can get separate rooms without having to go into the hallway to get to each other. It’s a safety thing.”
“Fine. Sure. We’re not a family.”
“No, but we will likely need to be able to talk. This makes it easier. Saint and Syn have a connecting room too.”
“Why didn’t Saint or Syn connect with me then?”
“I can switch with one of them,” Colter said, holding up his hands.
Calling my damn bluff, and he knew it.
If there was anything worse than a man being right, it was one knowing he was right.
“Wait, Sugar…” I called when she pushed past Colter to check out his room.
“She’s fine,” he said, shrugging. “The more she sniffs, the more tired she’ll be. Syn clearly spent some of the drive looking into local eateries. He sent me a list of options. Want me to run them past you?”
“I honestly don’t feel like going out,” I admitted. Despite having a lazy day of napping and watching out the window, I felt bone-deep tired.
“Okay, I’ll let ‘em know to head out without us.”
“What? No. You can go.”
“Don’t really feel like going out either.”
“I wasn’t inviting you to eat with me,” I told him.
“I wasn’t expecting that. But I can run down to the lobby to get the food, so you don’t have to.”
Damn him, he knew my Achilles’ Heel: my love of laziness.
“Fine.”
“Were you going to test?” he asked, nodding toward the case of lancets in my hand.
“I… yeah.”
“Want me to read you take-out options while you do that?”
“Uh, fine.”
It was.
I mean, I wasn’t exactly used to testing or injecting in front of people, since I’d been all alone in the world after Roach took my club from me. If I had to do either in public, I tended to go into the bathroom since blood and needles freaked a lot of people out.
But Colter just moved into the room, casually leaning against the wall, looking down at his phone. His nonchalant reaction to it made me a lot more comfortable as I went through the motion of testing.
“You sure?” Colter asked when I agreed that Chinese sounded good.
“Yeah, why?”
“Kind of notoriously carb-heavy food.”
“You have to just… live sometimes,” I said, shrugging. Granted, I did it rarely because it was easier to get my insulin right when I ate from a very strict menu of options. But every once in a while, you just needed comfort food.
“I get that. We could share the most carby option,” he offered, “so you’re not tempted to eat all of it and struggle to correct.”
I hated (loved) that he picked up on the general management of my diabetes so quickly. And that he had the perfect solution to me not overdoing it and struggling to fix it.
“It has to be lo mein.”