Chapter 12
Tegan
We check into a motel tucked behind some bushes on the side of the road.
My gaze drifts up the single-story building.
Gutters overflow with debris, and trash skips across the parking lot with every puff of breeze.
This place doesn’t look to be in much better shape than my mom’s trailer, to be frank.
Ace pulls me into his chest. “Some motels are better than others, pup,” he whispers.
“Is this worse or better?” I ask, afraid to know the answer. I haven’t stayed in very many motels, but this one is the worst I’ve seen so far.
He just smirks at me, the rise in his lips lifting that anti-eyebrow piercing on his cheek. I notice the subtle motion of that bar and the two silver balls. It’s hypnotizing.
“I gotta go clean up,” Ace says as he releases me.
“Clean up from . . . ?”
And with that, he disappears.
He leaves me with a few members of the crew. Delia, of course. A guy Ace calls Rolo stands nearby, and a guy I haven’t had the chance to talk to kicks a rock near his shoe. I catch his gaze every so often, but he’s pretty unreadable. I can’t tell whether he likes me.
“Hey,” I say to him.
He looks up with a soft small. His dirty-blond hair catches a glint from a streetlight, and his blue eyes sparkle just a little. “Tegan, right?”
“Yes, and you are?”
“Tye. I’m Ace’s friend.”
“Have you guys worked together for a while?” I ask, trying to make idle conversation with yet another man who is way too good-looking to talk to me. Not in the same rugged way as Ace, but Tye is still handsome.
He laughs. “Me and Ace joined at the same time. Probably almost ten years ago now. But we’ve always known each other. We grew up in the same trailer park.”
Ace has been through a lot, so I imagine Tye has too. Maybe we all have. Maybe that’s how we all wound up in this fucked-up little profession together.
Tye brushes his hand through his messy hair before putting an arm around me. “Welcome to the crew, T,” he says with the most reassuring smile I’ve ever seen. For the first time, someone aside from Ace makes me feel welcomed.
And that feels nice.
Stacks exits the motel lobby and approaches us with some room keys. Actual keys, too, not the key cards most places use nowadays. He also informs us that we have to share rooms, and as luck would have it, I get to bunk with Delia.
Joy.
I guess it makes sense to keep the men and women in separate quarters, but we’re adults. Barely, but we are.
Delia pouts as she takes the key from Stacks. She doesn’t say a word to me as I follow her to the room. It’s clear the girl dislikes me, but she has no reason to. I’m not anyone’s competition, least of all hers.
She opens the door and sets her bag on the old wooden dresser. I step in behind her and look around the room before slipping my backpack off and setting it on the chair.
“The rooms are a lot nicer than I expected them to be,” I say, trying to start some kind of dialogue between me and the woman who has done nothing but give me dirty looks since moment one.
“It’s all right, I guess. If we sell better, we get better rooms. This is the worst one we’ve stayed at in a while. Since you came along, actually. Weird, right?”
Yeah, I think I’m already over trying to converse with her.
Delia throws me the biggest eye roll I’ve ever seen and begins to dig through her purse. She pulls a roach from the side pocket, then a lighter from her pocket. Good. Maybe she’ll be nicer once she’s high.
Delia holds the roach to her lips, lights it, and takes several long puffs before gesturing toward me, her pointer finger aimed at my chest. “You know Ace is a player, right? Always has been. Always will be. There’s not a single crew member who hasn’t taken a turn with him.
” She puffs again. “Don’t think you’re special or nothing. ”
I swallow. I won’t let her words get to me.
She seems like a mean girl at heart, but I’ve also seen how she looks at him.
She could be telling me lies out of jealousy.
Or the boldest truths that I just don’t want to hear.
She’s not saying it to protect me, though.
That’s for sure. She just wants to rub my nose in the fact that she had him first.
Which is fine. It’s not as if I’ll ever have him at all. Not like that.
Because I’m fat. Fatter than these bitches, at least.
I sit down on the bed, and the room fills with more smoke as she exhales another puff.
“Not that I think he’d go for someone like you,” she adds.
Tears tease the backs of my eyelids, and I will them away. I want to scream in her face that he’s already kissed me, but I don’t bother. Nothing I say will change her mind about me.
Unfortunately, her nastiness sets off anxiety within me, and I only know one way to quiet the nasty voice in my mind.
“I’ll be back,” I say. Not that it matters. I snatch the key from the dresser and exit the room in search of a vending machine. Even dumps like this have to have one.
I turn the corner and follow the alleyway between the two buildings. A few vending machines stand beside a staircase, like bright, boxy guards protecting the path. Stepping closer, I study what each machine has to offer.
Most of the drinks are sold out, and the snack options are just as shitty, but I insert a dollar and select a bag of cookies, followed by another dollar in exchange for a bag of chips. As soon as they pop from the sticky bottom tray, I rip them open and stuff my face.
“Tegan?” someone says behind.
I yelp as one of the bags flies from my hand, and chips spread around my feet.
Ace steps into the light thrown by the vending machine. “Rule number one: don’t go anywhere by yourself in places like these.”
“Well, I needed to get away from the welcoming committee I have to share a room with.”
“Is Delia being . . . Delia?”
“Don’t say it like that. You must have liked her at some point,” I say as I walk past him. “According to her, you liked everyone at some point.”
I clutch my prized cookies to my chest and head toward my room, but I dread going back in there.
When the pool catches my eye, I head there instead.
I slip past the black-barred fence and the sign that says Closed so I can eat my snack in fucking peace.
I plop down on one of the beach chairs and stare at the blue water in front of me.
The pool doesn’t look that bad, surprisingly.
The gate opens and closes behind me, and I shake my head because I know exactly who it is.
“Tegan,” Ace begins. “Can we talk?”
“Talk all you want. I’m not stopping you.” I shove another cookie into my mouth.
“What did Delia tell you?”
“Oh, you know, just how man-whoreish you are. It’s a very attractive trait. Really turns me on.”
“You’re being—”
“I just had to listen to that woman tell me how you’ll fuck anything with a vagina, so I deserve to be anything I want to be.”
“We’re a crew.”
“What the fuck does that have to do with anything?”
Ace exhales. “That’s just something that happens.”
“Ah, so that kiss we had was just some kind of hazing? Got it.”
Ace leans over me and puts his hands on the arms of the chair. “Come to my room, pup.”
“I’m good, thanks.” I stare at a goddamn tree to the right of us to avoid looking at his face.
“You aren’t going back in there with Delia tonight.” He plucks my cookies from my hand and crushes the bag in his fist. “You’re compulsively eating because of her. Have you felt the need to binge in the last couple days?”
No, which is weird, but that doesn’t matter. I’ll happily lie to his face. “Yes. But I can only eat when the rest of you do.”
Being away from home has helped with the anxiety, but now that I’m thinking about it, it’s all I can think about. It’s literally consuming me. I can’t stop thinking about the last few cookies that were left in that fucking bag.
Fuck.
“My. Room. Now.”
Can he see my quickening breaths as the panic chokes me? It makes me feel like he’s lying on my chest and suffocating me.
And just like that, I’m in a full-blown panic attack. I train my attention on the oak tree in the distance, but it’s ripped away from me as he grabs my chin and forces me to look into his pretty fucking eyes.
He grabs my hand and drags me to my feet.
I dig my heels in as he walks me across the grass to his door.
It feels too much like home at this moment, and I can hardly take it.
He doesn’t mean it, of course, but my body knows no difference.
I focus on my breathing as he fumbles with his key until the door finally pops open.
By the time we step inside the stuffy room, I feel like I’m going to pass out.
Black lines my vision. And then I’m gone.
I wake up in a queen-sized bed. I don’t feel like I’ve been out for long, though I have no way of knowing. As I look around, trying to orient myself to the room and remember where I am and how I got here, a toilet flushes nearby.
Ace comes out of the bathroom and puts a hand to my head. “You okay? You hit your head when you passed out.”
I didn’t even notice until he touched the goose egg right above my eye. Beauty and grace, ladies and gentlemen.
I push his hand away and touch it myself. Yeah, I definitely hit my head. The pressure from my fingertips is enough to send a shot of pain through my skull.
“I’m fine,” I say as I get out of bed. A wave of dizziness flashes through me. I take a clumsy step forward, and his hands are on me, holding me upright.
“You need to lie down, Tegan,” he says.
Three snide responses spring into my mind, but I shut my mouth. He’s right. I feel like shit now.
I step back and let myself fall onto the bed. “You get a room by yourself?”
“I’m their best seller.”
“Are you sure you didn’t fuck Stacks for this privilege?”
I mentally high-five myself for that zinger. Dizzy or not, I’ve still got it.
Ace climbs over me and pins my arms above my head, and my confidence wanes.
He smiles down at me, and it’s more dizzying than me knocking myself out.
“I’m not some monster with a dick, fucking anything and everything around me.
” He runs his tongue along his teeth, which I’ve come to notice is a nervous habit. “Have I tried to fuck you yet, pup?”
I shake my head but focus on the keyword in that statement.
Yet.
That means he intends to fuck me, and that thought absolutely sends me through twenty different emotions. They must flash across my face, because Ace releases my arms and his fists fall to either side of my head.
“If I tell you something fucking embarrassing, will you stay with me tonight?” he asks.
“Maybe.”
“Then I’m not telling you shit.”
Curiosity gets the best of me. “Fine.”
“Remember when I said I had to clean up earlier?”
I nod.
“I came in my fucking pants to you.”
My mouth drops open. Excuse the fuck out of me, but did I hear that right?
“You . . . what?”
I expect that from a fucking fifteen-year-old, but not someone older and more experienced like Alec. But all the signs back in the van were right in front of me. Well, behind me. His writhing. The gripping. Dragging me back into him so he can whisper in my ear.
I like when you dance.
It all makes sense now, and I can’t tell if I’m completely repulsed or blind with arousal at the thought. Is it possible to be both? Fuck, I need to get out of this room.
“That is pretty embarrassing,” I say, “but not embarrassing enough for me to stay the night.”
I move to get up, but he doesn’t release me. He just holds my hands and looks down at me like he can see inside me, to my thoughts. I mentally will him to let go of me before I do or say something I shouldn’t.
But his grip only tightens.