Chapter 24
“We have to stop,” Beau says, waking me from a restless sleep. “I can’t keep my eyes open.”
I squint at the clock. It’s after eleven.
After our interview, I tucked a sweatshirt against the passenger window and pretended to sleep before Beau could interrogate my feelings.
It took me an hour to succumb, but when I did, I dreamed of chasing my mother through a fun house; she’d disappear around corners and reappear as countless clones in the mirrors. “Where are we?”
“Middle of nowhere.”
“I can drive,” I say, but my yawn calls me a liar.
“Let’s get some rest. Tomorrow, we’ll wake early to get to the interview in Bend.” Beau’s voice is raspy, as if he hasn’t used it in days. I imagine it’s what he sounds like first thing in the morning, wrapped in sheets, showered with dawn sunlight, when he’s too sleepy and sated for impatience.
We pull up to a motel with peeling turquoise paint, vibrant coral doors, and a flashing crimson vacancy sign. Plastic flamingos stand guard within a patch of bird-of-paradise beside the front office. “Wait here,” he says. “We don’t want you calling the FBI if they don’t have a room with a view.”
I turn to protest but catch a hint of teasing in the set of his mouth, the mirth in his eyes.
I’m grateful he’s bantering with me—it’s more comfortable than an emotional inquisition.
I’m too busy asking myself the questions he’d likely ask—and failing to answer them.
I don’t know how I feel after hearing a story so like my own.
My mom wasn’t a teenager like Abilene. She was an adult and responsible for her own actions.
But Abilene’s story does open the possibility that the reason she left is even more complicated than I have imagined.
Listening to all these confessions creates more confusion than clarity.
I let Beau set off alone and wait a minute, then five, then ten, before I wander in to find him.
I run into the brick wall of his chest when I open the door to the lobby.
He emits a gruff sound, and I apologize, but not before getting a good feel of muscle under my palms—tense ridges and hard angles.
I rebound off as he steps around me and to the car.
“There’s only one room,” Beau sighs as he collects our bags. I reach for mine and manage to secure it over my shoulder after a slight tug-of-war before I follow him down the corridor.
He holds up his sleeping bag. “But I’ll take the floor,” he says. It’s a reminder that whatever almost happened between us at the cabin was a moment of weakness and not likely to happen again. I’m hit with a rush of relief—and frustration.
“You’d rather risk motel carpet microbes than share a bed with me? Haven’t you seen those Dateline episodes where they take a black light to the drapes at places like this that rent by the hour?”
Beau doesn’t respond, and I hazard a glance, but he’s struggling to open the door. The strike plate blinks red and beeps four times before it flashes green. He swings the door open, but it grinds to a halt as he steps through, and he bumps his head with a crack.
“Damn,” Beau hisses.
“Watch out for the door.”
Beau glowers at me as I reach blindly for the switch. The hiss of the fluorescent fixture activates before the room is illuminated to show the door blocked by the bed—a full, a single, or maybe a toddler bed—which eats up the entire ten square feet of the room.
“What the actual fuck?” Beau moans.
I swallow my panic and go for easy. “It’ll be like old times when we slept in that fort in my closet.”
“Jesus, Ophelia, we can’t . . . it’s not . . .” he stammers.
With all my confusing emotions and stressors warring for control, I don’t think I’d survive a close call with Beau tonight, so I’m glad he’s decided to be the sex police.
Sort of. But I wish he didn’t sound so horrified to sleep beside me.
I slip inside, crawl across the bed, and reach the sliver of carpet at the base of the bathroom door.
When I turn, he’s still standing rigid at the threshold.
He blinks over at me, and I take in his expression—dread, distrust, and something else I can’t quite name.
I sigh and open the bathroom door. “We’re adults. We’re exhausted. It’ll be fine.” I’m not sure even I believe me, but what choice do we have?
When I exit the bathroom—showered and ready for bed—Beau is on the edge of the bed. “Bathroom’s all yours,” I say.
I shimmy by him to drop my bag in the closet. When I do, he sighs out a shaky breath and slumps forward with his head in his hands. “Fuck, Ophelia. What are you wearing?”
I glance at my polka-dot sleep shorts and tank top. “My pajamas. I wasn’t aware there was a dress code.” He didn’t like the other ones either, and I only brought two sets. He’s stuck with them.
“And what is that scent?” He exhales an exasperated breath.
I cross my arms over my chest. “Lotion. My skin is dry.”
“It smells like cupcakes,” he grumbles.
“It smells better than the mildew in here.” I bend over my bag to find my sleep mask.
He sighs again.
“What?” I snap. But when I turn to unload on him, he’s staring at me with an expression too pitiful to abuse. It’s the same way he looked at me when I was in the bikini.
He shakes his head, stands, and disappears into the bathroom.
When he emerges ten minutes later, he’s showered—his hair damp and mussed, and his glasses fogged. He’s dressed in baggy sweatpants and a long-sleeve T-shirt.
“Umm, it’s about 80 degrees in here,” I say. The wall-mounted air conditioner is gasping and gurgling as if it has a terminal lung condition.
He ignores me and walks to the opposite side of the bed. I attempt to scoot to the far edge, but there’s nowhere to go. This will be intimate. He tosses the covers aside and snarls, “I don’t think I’d fit on this bed even by myself.”
I flip over, curling into a long C. “Sure you can. We’ll just have to be creative. I’ll keep my hands to myself this time, I promise.”
“Goddamn it, Ophelia, I’m not spooning you. Especially with you in that outfit.”
I sit up in a lurch. “There is nothing wrong with my outfit.”
“If you were performing tonight, it’d be just the right amount of fabric,” he snaps.
Beau’s irritation with me is the best reminder to avoid touching. We may be drawn to each other, but Beau is attracted to me against his will—and we’re made of combustible material. I mumble about slut shaming and tug on his hand until he drops beside me on the bed with an “Oomph.”
I hit the light switch and pull my sleep mask over my face. “It’s okay, Beauregard, you have enough fabric for the both of us. It’s like you’re wearing a full-body condom.”
He exhales a shaky breath. “Please. Stop. Talking.”
Beau shifts. I turn. I get an elbow to my lower back, a knee in my calf. He mumbles an apology before settling behind me so that we’re back-to-back. There might be an inch or two between us, but the void is a chanting, wailing siren.
He lets out a breath. “You smell like vanilla cupcakes.”
“What’s wrong with cupcakes?” I snap.
“Nothing, Ophelia. That’s the point.”
I sigh and murmur, “Go to sleep, Beauregard. It’s been a day.” Between almost kissing him and losing Juniper, the house buyer, and all my money, I’m spent. I don’t even know how to process that I sat in a dingy strip club to hear about a family secret reminiscent of my own.
I feel like an open wound and can’t deal with Beau’s internal conflict. I know his self-control is saving us from disaster, but I wish it didn’t make me feel so unwanted. Discarded. As if that wasn’t already my prevailing emotion these days.
My exhaustion is deep in my bones, but my restlessness is in charge. My foot falls asleep, so I shake it alive before my hip begins to tingle. When I shift to my back, I knock Beau’s shoulder before rolling away and tucking my legs into my chest.
“Ophelia,” Beau groans. He probably wants to forcibly still me, but then he’d need to touch me. Finally, he whispers, “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Talk about what?” I sigh.
He doesn’t answer at first, and I think he might back off, but finally he says, “How you’re feeling after that interview with Abilene.” His voice is sandpaper against my raw heart.
“I’m fine,” I say.
He turns toward me and props himself on his elbow. “Really, Ophelia? Fine?” His tone is calling me a liar.
I lift my eye mask but can only see his outline as my eyes adjust. I squint until he comes into focus. “I don’t know what to say. It hit close to home and made me feel shitty. Is that what you want to hear?” My tone is calling him an asshole.
“I don’t want anything, Phe, except for you to know you can talk to me.” His words are cajoling and kind, and it’s clear I’m the asshole.
I sink into the pillow, pinching my eyes closed and letting my caged fears free. “I feel confused, I suppose. Who was the villain? Dad for lying to me? Mom for failing to fight for me? Me for being a fool?”
“You’re not a fool. And maybe there is no villain.”
When I open my eyes, he feels closer, a wall of heat and heart enticing me to forget he’s not a wall I should scale.
“And what if I never find her and don’t know what really happened? How can I reconcile my love for Dad without the truth? How do I start or finish grieving?”
He’s so close that I feel the brush of his breath against my temple.
“What if something had happened to Dad when I was still a kid—like with that poor baby? Would my mom have abandoned me to the system?” I steady my breathing.
“I was so vulnerable and didn’t know it.
And now I really am an orphan, and it makes me feel”—I brace myself for this hardest truth—“really alone.”
I pinch my eyes closed again, scared of the admission. Deflection is the shield over my emotional soft spots. But I’ve dropped my armor, which is terrifying and freeing.
When Beau pulls me into him, wrapping his strong arms around my spine and enveloping me against the solidity of his chest, I have no defenses left. When he kisses my forehead and whispers, “You aren’t alone, Phe,” I’m lost. I’m done. I can no longer resist my need to be near him.
I snake one hand around his neck and tuck my face in his collarbone.
He pulls in a breath but clutches me tighter, his exhalations accelerating, and his heartbeat hammering against mine.
We hold there, time suspended as my focus shifts from emotional confusion to physical longing.
I’m no longer thinking about anything but the nerves he’s set on fire—all of them.
It almost hurts—this feeling—to be close but not close enough.
To have him wrapped around me but not inside me.
We’re teetering on the edge of a very bad decision. But oh, he’s warm. Warm as sunlight or a crackling fire, hot sand, or a bubble bath. More comforting than all the defenses I’ve built to keep vulnerability at bay. More tempting than I may be able to withstand.
I shift to my back, and he clears his throat and releases my waist. But before he can retreat, I thread my hand in his hair and pull him onto me.