Chapter Fourteen
The Hotel Room
Wilder
I know we’re on a road trip to meet Cash’s pen pal or whatever. But it didn’t stop him from starting at Ingrid all through dinner.
His face made that perfectly clear.
Oh Ingrid, remember the time my parents took us to the lake house for spring break?
Or the time we took that safari ride at the zoo?
I was noticeably absent from every single “memory” he brought up.
I know I shouldn’t care, but there’s a part of me that knows Cash will always have a piece of Ingrid that I never will.
He was her first love.
And apparently that’s supposed to mean something forever.
My mom always says some weird shit about a girl never forgetting her first love.
I hope that’s not true.
It’ll kill me if it is.
As if she can sense the storm brewing in my head, Ingrid lays a hand on my arm.
“Do you want to take a shower?” she asks, her big brown eyes soft and warm.
Do I want to? Yes. But I feel guilty. Guilty that she’s talking about living in a new city with me and I have an acceptance letter from NYU hidden back home in my bedside table.
Doesn’t matter. I can’t go.
She needs to finish school, and I’m not leaving her.
I know she’d give it all up for me, but I love her too much to ask her to put anything on hold so I can chase my dreams.
“Earth to Wilder,” she chuckles softly as she snaps her fingers in front of my face. “You in there?”
“Yeah,” I tell her. “Still here. Just thinking.”
“About what?” she asks.
About Cash eyeing her like a rare steak all through dinner. And how I refuse to fuck this up.
I can’t lose her.
Which means I can’t keep lying to her either.
At least about Margot.
But not tonight. I’ll tell her in California. We’ll be too far for her to insist we turn the car around.
Ingrid loves her family. She may want to love them from a distance in another city, but she’d never understand why I can’t be there for Elowyn.
I can’t carry my half-sister’s shit and mine. It’s taken me years to find the shoreline. I won’t let her drag me out to sea. Not when our dad has always chosen her.
“A shower sounds good.”
“Yeah?” Ingrid presses.
I nod. “Yeah.”
Her phone vibrates and she visibly stiffens.
“Just talk to your mom,” I say. “You know you want to.”
“It’s not that,” she replies, chewing on her bottom lip. “Jason and Jill are incapable of standing up to Isla. If I keep telling them how to do it, they’ll never learn.”
“What happens when you come home and your room has been turned into a nursery?” I counter.
Ingrid grins. “I don’t plan on living there much longer. We have that bet going, remember? And I fully intend to win it.”
Trust me, the idea of living alone with her is tempting. Too tempting. But money is the problem. I took the summer off to be with her, and that might have been a mistake.
I could ask my grandpa for a loan. Just for one semester. I could work overtime on the weekends and pay him off in a few months.
“Would you work full-time at Loretta’s?” I blurt out.
Ingrid’s face lights up. “Yes. I was planning on it, anyway. I need out of my house, Wilder. The sooner, the better.” She swallows hard. “I’d just prefer living with you than alone.”
I exhale through my nose. “It’d be hard.”
Her hand snakes down my stomach and she gropes me through my shorts.
“Then again,” she whispers, “you’re always hard, aren’t you?”
I blow out a breath. “You’re a tease, Blondie.”
“You taught me well,” she playfully retorts. “Now, get your clothes off—”
The hotel room phone begins ringing.
Ingrid’s body goes rigid.
“I’ll get it,” I tell her.
The moment I pick it up, I can already hear the shit show going on in the Winthrop house.
“Hello?” I say into the phone.
“Oh, Wilder,” Jill exhales into my ear. “I really need to speak with Ingrid. Is she there?”
“How did you get our hotel room—”
“Cash,” she replies instantly. “I called his cell and he told me what hotel and room you were in.”
Of course she has Cash’s cell number.
“So,” Jill continues. “Is she there?”
Ingrid’s eye twitches when I look at her.
“She’s in the shower,” I lie. “Can I help?”
Isla screams in the background.
Yikes.
“Well,” Jill begins, “I was hoping Ingrid could tell me where she left her spare key.”
I know Jason has it. I guess he’s kept his word.
“She brought it with us,” I say. “Why do you need it?”
“Isla really needs to measure the walls for wallpaper,” Jill groans.
I take a deep breath. Isla has been given everything because she throws a temper tantrum. But she’s not going to take Ingrid’s room.
“Can you give the phone to Grandpa Harvey?” I ask Jill.
She clears her throat. “Uh… yes.”
Ingrid mouths What are you doing? at me, but I turn my back to her and sit on the edge of our king-sized bed.
“Hullo?” I hear Harvey on the other end.
“Harvey.”
“Who is this?”
I roll my eyes. “It’s Wilder, Ingrid’s boyfriend.”
“What can I do for you, young man?”
I hold in a laugh.
“You’re a grown ass man, right Harvey?” I say.
He coughs. “I am.”
“And you have a job, right?”
“I do.”
“Then, call the goddamn insurance company and have them put you in a rental,” I snap.
Harvey breathes heavily. “I didn’t have insurance on my house. It was paid for. The fire destroyed everything. Even my safe with all my savings in it.”
That’s convenient.
I’m starting to think the whole burned-house thing is bullshit.
“Well, find an apartment, Harvey,” I say. “Living with your girlfriend’s parents who are a decade younger than you is embarrassing.” I pause before adding, “For all of us.”
Harvey sniffles. And for a split second, I think he might actually start crying.
“She’s so mean,” he barely says loud enough for me to hear.
“Mrs. Winthrop?” I frown.
That doesn’t sound like Jill. She’s the nicest person I know.
“No,” Harvey whispers. “Isla.”
Despite myself, I laugh.
“It’s not funny,” Harvey continues, voice low. “She’s a nightmare.”
Touche, Harvey. Touche.
“Listen, man,” I say to him. “You’re stuck with her for… the rest of your life. You had your fun and now you’re bringing your first child into the world.”
“Third,” he corrects me. “This will be my third child. I also have a granddaughter who just turned three.”
I slap my palm to my forehead.
This is just getting worse as the minutes wear on.
Harvey sighs. “I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t know if I can do this.”
The thought of a child—even Isla’s child—being abandoned by their father sends a flash of anger through me.
“You should have wrapped it up then,” I harshly retort. “Get a fucking apartment in town, Harvey, and quit terrorizing Jason and Jill. Isla is your problem now. You shouldn’t have been sleeping with a student and now you’re stuck with her. Best of luck.”
Then, I slam the phone down.
Ingrid sits beside me, letting out a long sigh.
“That didn’t go well, did it?” she asks softly.
I shake my head. “Grandpa Harvey wants to leave Isla.”
“Doesn’t surprise me,” she says. “They didn’t know each other. Not really. And he’s so old, Wilder. So. Old.”
“He has a three-year-old granddaughter,” I reveal.
Ingrid drops her head into her hands.
“And this will be his third child.”
“Don’t,” she groans. “I don’t want to know anymore.”
“Good news is that your dad hasn’t told anyone he has the spare key for your room.”
“Jason is the stronger of the two,” she laughs.
“Jill means well,” I reassure her as I rub her shoulder. I can feel the tension in her muscles. “Let’s take a shower, Blondie.”
She falls back on the bed. “I just want to let out a good cry.”
“I’ll get the shower started,” I murmur before kissing a quick kiss to her lips. “You have five minutes to cry.”
She smiles. “Why do you always make everything better?”
I wish that was true. But there was a time when I made things harder for her.
Every time Fanny Allred was nasty, I should have stood up for Ingrid.
It’s hard to stand up for someone when you don’t even know how to stand up for yourself.
My fingers find her jaw. “I love you, Ingrid.”
“I love you more, Wilder.”
I shake my head. “That’s not possible.”
I leave her and start the shower, hoping the distraction will be enough to calm the anxiety swirling in my chest.
The door creaks open as I check the temperature on the water again. Perfect.
When I turn to face her, her arms are crossed and she’s leaning a hip against the doorframe, a smile on her lips.
“What?” I grin.
“Why call a truce so soon after the wager?” she asks me.
Long story short: I want her. Always.
“I think you know why, Blondie.”
She sighs. “Because you feel the same way about me that I do you. Like there’s never enough time and still all the time in the world.” She sighs, then glances down at her lightning bolt tattoo. “I never thought much about the future when I was with Cash,” she continues. “I let him lead.”
A spear of heat creeps up my neck. I hate talking about her relationship with Cash. I hate being reminded that she loved him.
“Where is this going?”
Her eyes meet mine. “I’ve never thought much about my future, Wilder. I hate that.”
I nod. “I know.”
“I’ve never lived anywhere else,” she adds. “This is the furthest I’ve ever traveled from home.” There’s a long pause as she mulls over her thoughts. “Why did I think I’d be happy as an Allred?”
Something in me breathes a sigh of relief.
“Maybe you were never supposed to be an Allred,” I offer. But I don’t say what I really think.
Maybe you were always supposed to be a Cox.
“Being with you is like waking up from a really bad dream,” she starts.
I reach for her, unbuttoning her shorts. “Yeah?”
Her hands rest on my shoulders as I help her get out of them.
“Except I didn’t know it was bad,” she says softly. “I thought I was happy.” Her fingers tighten on my shoulders. “Then you happened.”
Guilt knots in my stomach as she tugs her shirt over her head. I hate lying to her. I hate keeping things from her.
Her hand finds my cheek. “Did I do that for you?”
My eyes flick to hers, and in them I see the fear that she’s not enough for me. The fear that I’m just like Cash.
Even now, she still looks at me like I might leave.
“In a way, yeah,” I admit. I have a lot of baggage. Baggage that could hurt our relationship if I’m not careful. But she did save me—not from a nightmare. From something else entirely. From the lonely, sad existence I lived.
She smiles. “I’m glad.”
Ingrid doesn’t say much after that. She pulls me to the shower, the steam cocooning us in warmth as the outside world and all its worries disappears.
She kisses me, her tongue sliding into my mouth. I savor the taste of her, my heart pounding as her hand reaches between us and she strokes me gently.
“For the record,” she coos, “I’m glad you called a truce.”
“Yeah?” I ask her as I pick her up. She shudders as I press her back to the cold tile. “Why is that?”
I push into her, watching as her eyes squeeze shut and she lets out throaty moan.
“God, I missed the feel of you, Wilder,” she says.
I kiss her, ignoring the warning signs blaring in my head that if I don’t tell her about NYU—about Margot—I might lose her the same way Cash did.
But as I open my mouth to tell her everything, she kisses me, swallowing the words as I rock back into her.
I can wait a few more days.
Tonight, in this hotel room, I’m not letting anything stop me from proving to her how much I love her.