7. Six Days Until Bonding
Chapter seven
Six Days Until Bonding
Laurel
We drive until there’s nothing but mile markers and endless night. Out here the stars have multiplied until they merge together, a swath of white like an ancient god spilled a glass of milk across the sky.
When Carrson stifles his fourth yawn behind a closed fist, even he has to admit defeat. It takes another twenty minutes, but eventually a hotel rises ahead, glowing in the darkness.
“Let’s stop there.” I squint through the windshield as we draw closer.
Four long buses are lined up against the curb, and the neon sign outside flashes:
WELCOME ALL-STATE LITTLE LEAGUE FAMILIES!
GOOD LUCK, PLAYERS!!!
I stare at it. Then at the buses. “Oh no.”
Carrson glances over. “What?”
“We’re about to be trapped in a hotel with a hundred children hopped up on sugar and adrenaline.”
“Sounds just like Ashford House,” he answers. “How bad can it be?”
“Oh, you sweet summer child,” I say, patting him on the arm, which only makes him more confused.
Little boys in grass-stained uniforms swarm the lobby, chasing each other with cheap plastic water guns and shrieking. Most of their parents have retreated to the bar, which is standing room only.
Carrson edges closer to me as he takes in the sunflower seed shells scattered across the floor and the toddler in striped pajamas eating an ice cream cone on the lobby couch.
We skipped dinner to make better time, but now my stomach rumbles loud enough that Carrson hears it over the chaos.
“You check in. I’ll go get us a table,” he says, heading toward the restaurant tucked into a corner of the lobby. I watch him cross the room and out the window a beat-up truck backs into a parking spot. It has a bumper sticker with a bee on it.
Thankfully, they have a room available. King bed on the seventh floor, the top floor. I get the keycard just as Carrson walks back over. A grin stretches his cheeks.
“We’re on the waitlist,” he says. “Fifteen minutes. I told them my name.”
I stare at him, waiting for the rest of that sentence. “And?”
“And nothing happened.” For some reason, this seems to make him happy.
It takes me a minute to figure it out, then I laugh. “Welcome to the real world, Carrson. The rest of us have been waiting for tables our entire lives.”
“I know.” He practically bounces. “It’s like I’m just some guy waiting for mozzarella sticks.”
That makes me laugh harder.
“Have you ever eaten mozzarella sticks?”
“No,” he grins, “but I’m going to eat some tonight.”
By some miracle we get a booth in the corner that’s quiet enough to talk.
We order quickly, eager for sleep since we still have hours of driving tomorrow.
I pretend not to notice how often Carrson’s eyes drift to the tables around us.
To the father playing tic-tac-toe on the children’s menu with his son.
To another who reaches across the table and ruffles his kid’s hair mid-conversation. Carrson watches until the food arrives.
He’s just taken down his fourth mozzarella stick when he pauses. “I paid Jackson a quick visit today. Had a talk about you.”
I put down my burger. “What kind of talk?”
“The kind that ends with him limping.”
“Oh.” I take a sip of water. “A little limping or a lot?”
“He was slow to learn.” Carrson dips his stick in marinara, then eats it without looking over.
“You know,” I say carefully, “there are other ways to resolve a conflict.”
“Not after what he did,” Carrson growls, reminding me that his protection is possessive and brutal, anchored in pieces of him I’m not sure I’ll ever understand.
I could argue that hurting Jackson won’t undo what happened to me. Violence only creates another injury, more reasons for the Beaumonts and Ashfords to hate each other.
I believe that. So I wait for the disgust to rise the way it’s supposed to.
It’s there, but underneath it, small and unwelcome, is a part of me that’s glad — glad someone made Jackson afraid, glad it was Carrson, glad the message was that I’m not alone, not something to be traded, taken, or used without consequence.
I don’t like that line of thought so I shove it down before it can start to feel like mine.
I pick up my burger again, but I’m less hungry than I was before.
**
After we eat, Carrson goes to the bathroom while I wait for the check. A middle-aged man with graying blond hair tucked under a baseball cap approaches the table.
He stops a foot away. “Excuse me, miss?”
“Yes?” I answer.
“I have the most awkward favor to ask.” He shifts from foot to foot. “I’m here for my son’s baseball tournament. My wife had a work trip and couldn’t make it, so I brought my four-year-old daughter with me too.”
Behind him, Carrson exits the bathroom and pauses, frowning. Then he crosses the restaurant in long strides, like he’s already decided this is a problem.
“Anyway,” the man continues, words picking up speed, “she has long hair, and her braid fell out. I don’t know how to fix it, so I wanted to ask if you could do it? Sorry. I know this is so weird, I—”
“Can I help you?” Carrson steps in front of me, arms crossed over his chest, glaring. I swear he flexes on purpose.
The man gulps. “Ah…I was just, um, asking your—”
I lean around Carrson and give him a reassuring smile. “It’s fine. Get your daughter. I can help.”
Mumbling thanks, the man rushes off.
Carrson turns to me. “Daughter?”
“He doesn’t know how to braid his daughter’s hair, so I’m going to do it.” I raise an eyebrow. “You can stand down now, Romeo. Not every interaction is a knife fight.”
Carrson glances after the man, then back at me. “Try telling that to my father.”
Before I can respond, the man returns with a little girl in pink leggings and a baseball jersey that hangs to her knees. Her hair reaches halfway down her back in a tangle of loose waves and one sad, unraveling braid.
“This is Macie,” the man says. “Macie, this nice lady said she’d help.”
Macie peers up at me from under a curtain of blonde hair. “Daddy made it lumpy.”
Her father winces. “Daddy did his best.”
Carrson steps aside, looking deeply suspicious of the entire exchange, but he doesn’t interfere when I slide out of the booth and gesture for Macie to sit in my chair. Her father hands me a brush, three elastics, and a purple ribbon like he emptied half a drugstore into his palm in a panic.
“I watched a video,” he says.
“That was your first mistake,” I tell him.
Macie giggles.
I start at the bottom, working through the tangles as gently as I can. “Tell me if I pull too hard, okay?”
“Okay.” She kicks her sneakers under the table. “Are you a princess?”
“No.”
“You have princess hair.”
“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me all day.”
Carrson makes a low sound from behind me.
I glance over, expecting a joke, but he isn’t smiling.
He’s leaning against the edge of the booth with his arms loose at his sides now, all the fight gone out of him.
His attention is on my hands as I divide Macie’s hair into three sections, then on the girl tilting her head back, then on her father hovering close by.
Each tangle dissolves under patient strokes of the brush.
The man crouches beside his daughter. “She pulling?”
“No,” Macie says. “She knows how.”
“I’m glad one of us does.”
I work the sections of hair, crossing one piece over the other, making sure to catch all the flyaway pieces and tuck them in. The entire time, I’m aware of Carrson’s eyes on me. The quiet, intense way he watches as I talk and joke with Macie.
I tie the purple ribbon around the end of the braid, noting how Macie is sitting taller, proud of herself for no reason except that someone made her feel pretty.
“There.” I give the braid a gentle tug. “Tournament ready.”
Macie twists around, trying to see over her shoulder. “Is it lumpy?”
“Not even a little.”
Her father exhales like I’ve performed brain surgery. “Thank you. Seriously. Thank you.”
Macie hops off the chair and throws her arms around my waist in a quick, fierce hug before running off with her dad.
I watch them, thinking of my own father, until they disappear into the lobby. When I turn back, Carrson’s still staring at me with his head cocked to the side.
“What?” I ask.
His mouth parts, then closes again. “Nothing.”
“That’s not a nothing face.”
He steps closer, his hands finding my waist. “She trusted you.”
“She’s four. Her standards are low.”
“Not that low.” His thumbs move once against my shirt. “You’re good with kids,” he says it thoughtfully. “I didn’t know.”
“There are many things you don’t know about me,” I say, aiming for mysterious.
“Mmm. Apparently, I like it,” he smiles, “watching you be kind.”
My heart does a silly little flip. “That’s because you spend too much time around people who think kindness is a tactical error.”
“It usually is.”
“Carrson.”
“I said usually.” He leans down and gives me a soft, quick kiss. “Not always.”
**
Carrson doesn’t talk much after dinner. We go upstairs to our room, and I tuck myself into bed, propped against the pillows with the book I brought from home open in my lap.
Carrson goes to take a shower, but when I don’t hear the water turn on I look up.
He’s standing in the bathroom doorway, watching me.
Emotions wash over his face too quickly for any one to stay: worry, sadness, then longing. Fondness is the last emotion to appear, and the only one he lets remain.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Yeah.” He smiles, but his eyes stay sad. “I just like seeing you like this. In bookworm mode. Waiting in bed for me.”
I put my hand to my chest, as if I can hold in the warmth he just put there. “I like it too.”
Bookworm Laurel. Art by: Momo Mitsuko
He leaves the bathroom door cracked after that. Steam spills into the bedroom while he showers, carrying the clean scent of soap with it.
I must doze off because the next thing I know it’s past midnight and I’m blinking awake. I search the room, but Carrson’s not there. The balcony door stands open, curtains billowing in the cool night air.
I push through them, expecting to find him sitting outside. Instead, a pair of bare feet dangle in front of me.