FOUR
DEBT
SERA
How could it still be raining? Water droplets pelted at the windows, the sound of fingers insistently drumming against a table top, and weak, greyed morning light eked through the yellowed net curtains that had been hung from a cheap length of plastic coated wire, suspended haphazardly from hooks screwed directly into the ceiling. I closed my eyes, groaning internally. What time was it? I’d been getting up early my whole life—my internal body clock typically woke me at around six in the morning. Judging by the sun’s anemic attempt at dawn, today was no different. I reached out for my phone, patting my hand against the surface of the nightstand before locating the device and dragging it underneath the covers with me. Cracking just one eye, I inspected the screen, already prepared to be angry at whatever was displayed there. The clock read twelve minutes past six. Great. There were two text messages from Amy, asking me to call and let her know what was happening as soon as I could, and three missed calls from Ben, who was probably having an apoplectic fit by now. No messages from the office, though. None from Colby, my dog sitter, and none from Sadie.
I threw back the covers, resisting the urge to nurse my skull. It was my own fault that my head was pounding. That’s what happened when you smashed a whole bottle of tequila. Only…
Oh shit.
I hadn’t finished that bottle alone. I’d shared it with a dirty mouthed ingrate named Fix, and…oh my god. I’d fucked the bastard.
I laid as still as I could for a second, figuring out my options. The mattress next to me was cold, which meant he hadn’t slept beside me. That was a relief. But it was early—he was probably still crashed out in the other bed. Fuck.
This was so, so typical. I was my own worst enemy; without fail, I was blessed with the uncanny ability of taking a bad situation and making it even fucking worse. Time to get all my crap back into the rental and get the fuck out of here. And before my ass hat roommate woke up, too. Only, when I spun around, ready to sneak into the bathroom to quickly brush my teeth before heading out, Fix was nowhere to be seen. His bed was untouched, his sheets only rumpled a little from where he’d placed his bag on it last night. The bag which was now gone. Turning over, I saw the indention in the pillow next to me, the comforter thrown back on the other side of the bed, and I growled to myself. He had slept in the bed with me. He’d just gotten up and disappeared already. I didn’t know why, but it irked me that he’d managed to leave before me. It would have been far more gratifying to have been the one to sneak out on him, not the other way around.
I got dressed, treated myself to a two-minute shower, and dashed to the car, swearing loudly at the fact that I was, yet again, getting drenched by rain. It took thirty seconds to toss my bags into the trunk of the rental. I hadn’t eaten last night and my stomach was grumbling loudly. The Liberty Fields Guest House sign outside the building claimed the motel offered a continental breakfast between the hours of seven and nine, but I wasn’t going to hang around to check out whatever paltry of offering was going to be laid out in the lobby. Hell no. I’d grab something on the road, once I’d left Liberty Fields far behind, and the nightmarish place had disappeared from my rearview mirror altogether.
Twenty-two hours and seventeen minutes: the amount of time it was now going to take me to get to Fairhope, when I plugged the location of the church into the navigation app on my phone. The ceremony was a late one—two pm—and last night Aims had said she could push back the ceremony a little to accommodate my tardiness if she needed to. So there was time. Against all the odds, I was going to make it. Thank fuck for that.
I started the engine, spun the wheel, hit the accelerator, and a loud, offensive grinding sound assaulted my ears. What the hell was that? The car lurched forward, but it felt uneven. Wrong. Oh, no. Oh, no. This wasn’t happening. Was. Not. Happening.
I sat very still for a moment, staring straight ahead out of the car, my hands gripping hold of the steering wheel, while my mind did back flips. I didn’t know a thing about cars. I didn’t have a clue what was wrong with the vehicle, but it didn’t sound good. It certainly didn’t sound like something that was going to go away all on its own. The world outside was a blur of grey, and blue and brown as sheets of water streamed down the windshield. I had Triple A. I could call them and someone would come and resolve the issue for me for free, but how long would it take them to arrive? In this weather, with so many people struggling to get from A to B, it would be hours, and I didn’t have hours.
A knock on my window startled me, disturbing my downward descent into despair. I nearly screamed with frustration at the dark, distorted figure standing next to my car, but instead I growled under my breath, slapping my palm against the center console of the rental. A gust of wind blew into the car when I buzzed down the window, and the freezing cold blast of rainwater hit me square in the face. It was Fix. Of course it was Fix. He was wearing a black t-shirt and shorts, and both items of clothing were water logged, plastered to his body. He was covered in mud, his sneakers so badly caked in the stuff that I couldn’t even see what color they were, and his bare calves looked like they’d been sprayed down with dirt. His face was blank as he ducked down, resting his forearms against the driver’s side door of the car.
“What have you been doing?” I hissed at him.
“What does it look like? I went for a run.” His hair was spiky with water, the longer strands on top of his head slicked back out of his face. It was ridiculously unfair: he’d been too sexy to resist last night, and now, looking like he’d just completed an assault course, soaked to the skin, he was even sexier. Dark, brooding, and delicious. I railed against the way my heart rattled at the bars of my ribcage, letting me know exactly what it thought about Felix Marcosa, post run. I was doing my best to master my features into an expression void of any emotion, but I was giving too much away, I could tell.
“Who goes for a run in this kind of—ugh, never mind.” I shook my head, slapping my palm against the steering wheel. “My car’s broken.”
“Not your car. Your wheels. You have a flat.”
“Oh. Is that it?” That was a relief. A flat was easy. A flat was actually something I could take care of myself. “I have a spare in the trunk.”
“One isn’t gonna cut it,” Fix said casually, tapping his fingernail against the lip of the window. “You have three flats.”
“What? Three? How can you tell?”
Fix looked down, a ghost of a smile lifting at the corners of his wretched, perfect, talented mouth. Lord, the man was divine. “Well. You’re sitting on the rims. But it was the huge, 6-inch gashes in the rubber that really gave it away.”
“That is not possible.” I unfastened my seatbelt and scrambled out of the car, gasping when I saw the state of my tires. They were completely deflated on this side, and just as Fix had said, there were huge, deep tears in the rubber. “How?” I squatted down, sticking my finger directly into the tire, through the gaping hole. “There’s no way a rock did this.”
Fix leaned his ass against the hood of the rental, folding his arms across his chest. “Yeah. You can safely rule out accident on this one.”
“You mean someone did this on purpose?” As soon as the words left my lips, I rocketed to my feet, my mouth hanging open like a Venus flytrap, waiting to catch its dinner. “You!” I jabbed him in the chest with my index finger, rage spilling out of me. “You did this!”
Fix let out a rumble of laughter, his head tipping back as he roared. “Why the fuck would I do that? I like my balls hanging right here between my legs, Angel.”
“Gross. Don’t talk about your balls.”
“Why not?” He practically purred the words. “You seemed to appreciate them plenty last night when they were slapping your pussy as I fucked you from behind.”
“Holy…” He was such a pig. I shook my head, then cocked it to one side. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Just…stop. Don’t bring up last night again. There’s no need for us to rehash my drunken stupidity.”
“But I’d love to rehash it.” He was leonine. A consummate predator. I didn’t stand a chance against him—not with his soaking clothes displaying every outrageous curve and line of his muscular chest.
“Just quit it. You’re the only person here who’d slash my tires!” I cried. It had to be him. It had to be.
“Last night was pretty fucking phenomenal, Sera. I very much appreciated your incredible body, not to mention your talented mouth. As of right now, I’d say I’m probably the only person in Liberty Fields who wouldn’t want to slash your tires.”
I set my jaw, glaring at him with the force of a thousand volatile suns. “I thought we just agreed we weren’t going to talk about last night.”
Droplets of water coursed down Fix’s face. He licked his wet lips, and my mind transported me back to his naked form last night, and the way he’d run his hand up and down his hard-on, looking like he wanted to sink his teeth into me. Oh, for crying out loud…
He smirked, as if he knew exactly what I was thinking about. “Maybe you should just be less rude to people you meet in the middle of a storm.”
“This isn’t funny, Fix! My sister’s going to kill me. I swore I wouldn’t let her down, and now I’m going to do exactly that. I’m the only person she’s ever been able to rely on. I’m the only person in her whole entire life that hasn’t continually dropped the ball. And now I’m going to break a promise I made to her, and it’s all your fault.”
Fix held his hands aloft in the air, pushing away from the car. “This has nothing to do with me. I swear it. I did not touch your car.”
The worst part was that he really did look like he was telling the truth. It would have been far more convenient for me to blame him, because he was standing right in front of me. I could have taken my anger and frustration out on him, and I might have felt a little better at least. But with him apparently innocent of the crime… I dragged my hands back through my hair, fighting back tears. How many more things could possibly go wrong on this trip? It didn’t even bear thinking about.
“All right.” I scrutinized his stupid, handsome face out of the corner of my eye. “If you’re so good at fixing things, Felix, fix this.” My voice was small and pleading. “Please. I really need some help right now, or I’m going to lose my mind.”
The smile on Fix’s face slipped a little. His shoulders dropped at least three inches, and a strange look formed on his face. A look that resembled quiet surprise. “I have an appointment to keep this morning,” he slowly. “An appointment I can’t break.”
“Then go! Take care of your appointment, and I’ll meet you in Liberty Fields. I just need a ride to the next town over. The next place I can rent another car. Anywhere. Please! Just get me back to civilization. I’ll forever be in your debt.”
Fix seemed to think this through. For a second, I was sure he was going to say no, and my eyes began to sting like the miserable traitors that they were. Eventually, he said, “I gave you the best fucking of your life last night, Sera Lafferty. You’re already in my debt. But I’ll give you another ride,” he said, mischief and arrogance flashing in his eyes. “And you’ll owe me a favor, to be repaid at a later date. Do we have an accord?”
“You sound like a pirate,” I grumbled.
“Sera…”
“Yes, yes, fine. I’ll owe you a favor. I don’t see how you’re gonna cash it in when we live on opposite sides of the country, but whatever. You have yourself a deal.”