CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“Do we need more than one?” Shayla asked, but then immediately backpedaled. “I mean, it’s okay if we do. You know, need more than one room. It’s been a long day. I’m tired of me, too.”

Peter laughed. “I’m not tired of you.”

Yeah, but what was he supposed to say? And God, there was a huge difference between the kind of sex they’d been having—caused by earthquakes and various other aftershocks—and the kind of sex in which they checked into a motel, first, and then slept all night in the same bed, after.

And true, they’d slept all night in what Shay would forever after think of as the Hot Sex Tent, but this was definitely different. This time, they’d get washed up, and brush their teeth, and turn down the bed, and then even actually say good night and fall asleep afterward.

This was relationship sex, and it was not going to help her remember that this thing they shared was not a real relationship.

“And no, I mean, I thought,” Peter was saying, “that you’d prefer two. Rooms. So that it wouldn’t be awkward when you told everyone back at the house that we were staying in a motel.”

“Ah.” Shayla understood.

“Yeah,” he said, “believe me, we are not sleeping in separate rooms. I mean, unless…you’re tired of me.”

She leaned over and kissed him. “One room,” she confirmed. “Because here’s the text I’m going to send.” She recited as she typed. “Contact from Maddie! Plans to meet her tomorrow! Hooray! Staying at Desert Flower Motel, Route 395, just south of Lone Pine. Cellphones on all night, call if you need ANYthing! Love you!” She hit send. “Now imagine if I’d said, Staying at Desert Flower Motel in rooms 214 and 216. The subtext is Note that we are staying in TWO ROOMS, that’s T-W-O, as in two separate rooms, one for each of us, and everyone would immediately know, absolutely, without a doubt, that we’re really sharing a room and having incredibly hot sex, because that was too much information for a text, and clearly I was attempting to misdirect.”

Peter was laughing. “The crazy thing is, you’re right.” He looked out of the truck’s windshield at the motel office, but he didn’t move.

“You know, it’s okay with me if we just keep looking for her,” Shayla said quietly.

He looked at her. “And do what? Drive down every road in every town along 395?”

“Well, we won’t hit them all, but we can make a dent,” she said.

Peter shook his head. “It’s an impossible task. And futile.”

“We might get lucky.”

“The only way we find them is if we get phenomenally lucky. To be effective, we’d need to search on foot. Maddie’s been with Dingo for days now. Even if he’s stupid enough to park where his car can be spotted from the street, she’s not. No, I’m going to use this time to rest, and wake up early enough to get a good meal, so I don’t walk into that meeting tomorrow exhausted and hangry, because that won’t be good.”

But he still didn’t get out of the truck.

So Shay said, “It’s okay with me if we just rest. We don’t have to, you know, have, um, sex.”

He turned sharply to look at her as he laughed. “When do I ever not want to have sex with you?”

“Well, you just seem so worried—”

“I am worried.”

“Sometimes sex and worry don’t go together all that well.”

“In what universe?” he asked, then said, “Oh, is it possible that when I finally have time to finish reading Outside of the Lines, I’m going to find out that Jack’s magic penis doesn’t work when he’s worried?”

Shay laughed despite herself. “Jack doesn’t have a magic penis,” she reminded him.

“I’m pretty sure it’s extra magic if he can’t get it up when he’s worried,” Peter said.

“It’s not that he can’t get it up,” she said.

“What, then? He doesn’t want to? That’s worse. We’ve got about seven and a half hours before dawn, which is when we think Maddie and Dingo are going to wake up and get moving. I can spend that time worried and wandering the streets, running my batteries even lower and becoming stupid and useless, or I can recharge. I’m going to pick recharge—which includes fucking both of us into a very deep REM sleep. In full disclosure, a shower before we do that would be really nice, too.”

“So why are you hesitating?” she asked.

“I’m not hesitating.”

“Do you need…help, paying for the room?” she asked.

“Jesus, no! Why would you think that?”

“Sorry! I’m trying to figure out why you’re…kind of just sitting there…?”

“I’m moving very slowly,” Peter said. “I got a little sidetracked before, trying to imagine exactly what that meeting’s going to be like tomorrow. Dad, I need to borrow twelve thousand dollars to pay off the loan shark I used to support my drug habit. Oh, by the way, in Sacramento, I accidentally-on-purpose killed a man for his mocha latte. Have fun raising my meth-addicted baby with your new roommate, Dingo, while I spend the rest of my life in jail!”

Shayla laughed. “Peter, my God, that is some serious, professional-grade worrying.”

“And yet…” He smiled at her. “I need a shower,” he said. He leaned in and kissed her. “And maybe this means I’ll never be a hero in a romance novel, but I desperately need you.”

Smash cut to love scene.

If Shayla were writing this story, after a line like I desperately need you, she would’ve cut immediately to them having literally steamy sex in the shower, skipping over the humorously awkward reality of the too-lengthy check-in that included a key card that didn’t work. Twice.

Yeah, that third trip to the motel office was a hoot.

Harry popped into her head as they finally got the motel room door unlocked and…

Oh, dear, he said, as Peter muttered, “Ah, Jesus.”

“It’s not that bad,” Shay said. But it was. The room was decorated in Quiet Desperation, circa 1972, complete with cheap paneling on the walls, dark green indoor-outdoor carpeting, and a worn-out bedspread that was no longer quite as emphatically flower-power since its yellows and oranges had faded about two decades ago. The “art” on the walls consisted of pictures of owls with big eyes.

Peter went up to one to look more closely. “This is what the desk clerk meant by the Owl Room.”

Harry laughed. I don’t want to know what the other choices were.

“At least it’s clean,” Shay said, attempting to bright-side it as she pulled back that spread to reveal bright white sheets.

“These are paint by numbers,” Peter pointed out.

“That makes it sweet,” Shay said. “Like, someone’s kid or elderly parent painted them.”

“Hmm,” Peter said, as he headed for the bathroom at the back of the room.

A kid with a devil-mutant, crazy-eyed owl fetish at age twelve, who is now in his forties and regularly murders the guests at the motel he inherited after pushing his grandmother down the stairs?

“Shh,” Shay said. Those owls used up the full crazy allotment for this room. Because of them, there was space in here only for even reason and carefully considered sanity.

Like, at least we’re on the ground floor in case there’s another earthquake?

Yes.

But not: we’re doomed if there’s a tidal wave.

Right.

But definitely check to make sure the security lock is on that door.

She did. It was.

The toilet flushed, and Peter came back out of the bathroom and washed his hands in the sink that was out in the main part of the room.

“I’ve been nurturing a fantasy about making love to you in a real bed,” he said, looking at Shayla in the mirror as he dried his hands. “But I don’t think that one counts.” He unbuttoned his white uniform shirt and hung it on one of the bent hangers that dangled from the sad-looking metal rack bolted to the wall next to the sink. He pulled off his T-shirt and hung that, too. “I mean, yeah, it’s slightly more real than an air mattress, but not by much.”

The room looked significantly nicer and way less depressing with the muscles in his arms, chest, and abs rippling—in duplicate, thanks to that mirror. And then it was nicer still as he kicked off his shoes, and stepped out of his pants and hung them up beside his shirt.

Harry didn’t comment—he was just instantly gone.

“So maybe we can plan to extend our little…whatever this is,” Peter continued, slipping out of his socks as he glanced at her again in the mirror. “Friendship, plus. At least until I can take you someplace with room service. Is that okay with you?”

There were two cheerfully decorated Desert Flower Motel Traveler’s Packs on the worn gold-and-yellow-speckled linoleum sink counter, and he pulled out a toothbrush and small tube of paste and, while continuing to watch her in the mirror, he brushed his teeth.

Shay looked at him standing there in his white boxers, and she found herself blurting, “You’re a really good communicator. I mean, really good. You just demonstrated…”

He spit and rinsed and dropped the toothbrush into a glass with a plastic clatter as he turned back to face her.

Her Navy SEAL.

Harry’s words—but Harry had vanished. Those were her words now, God help her. Her Navy SEAL—wearing only white boxers, leaning back against the sink in the motel room where in just a few minutes, they were going to make love.

Shay’s brain stuttered and she started over. “What I mean to say is that some people play games, but you don’t. You ask for what you want. You’re direct, you’re tactful, and you’re honest. I’ve said this before: I don’t know what Lisa’s problem was, but you did everything right—and you still do. You’re funny, you’re smart, you’re kind, and you obviously care. You listen, you pay attention, and you remember details.”

And oh, my God, look at him—although that was just icing on the cake.

“So…is that a yes?”

“Yes,” she said. “Of course. What other answer would there be?”

He smiled, and dropped his boxers on the floor. “Get naked. I’ll be out in about thirty seconds.”

Good communicator. Good communicator.

As the shower went on, Shayla hung up her clothes, too.

Maddie woke up from a nightmare—her father was screaming at her, like a drill sergeant at boot camp, but then he surprised her completely by bursting into tears—to find herself alone in the back of Dingo’s car.

“Ding?” She sat up, careful not to hit her head, but he wasn’t in the front seat, either. “Dingo!”

“I’m out here,” he called. He was sitting out on the hood of the trunk, leaning up against the back window.

She pushed her way out through the door that didn’t stick, but then reached back in to grab a blanket and wrap it around her. “It’s cold.”

“Yeah, but look at these stars. They’re bright enough to keep me warm.”

The sky was pretty amazing, away from the city’s lights, but still. “Are you high?”

“Only on life, love.”

“What time is it?”

He checked his phone. “Around two thirty.” No, wait, that was her phone.

“Are you pretending to be me again?” she asked.

“No, I was just checking messages,” he said. “You got a bunch of texts. Your dad and Shayla tracked you out here, which is a little alarming. They said we shouldn’t go back to San Diego because danger, danger. And although I mock, I wholeheartedly agree. We could call them right now and they’d come meet us, and…I think we should.”

Oh, God. “I’m not ready,” she said.

“There’s really no ready,” he pointed out. “This is just something we’ve gotta do. Band-Aid pull.”

“I can’t,” she said. “Not like this. I changed my mind about spending money. I want to get a motel room so we can take showers. I need to take a shower and wash my hair before we…I have to…I don’t care if our clothes smell. We can get some of that stupid freshener spray and—”

“All right,” Dingo said.

She looked at him. “You’re not going to argue?”

“Nope. But after we check in, before you shower, even, you have to call him. We’ll pick a place to meet for breakfast, and we’ll set the time to meet, right then.”

“You really want to get rid of me, don’t you?” Maddie asked.

Dingo slid down off the trunk. “Not taking that bait, love. Not gonna dignify that shite with any kind of response.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

“I love you,” he told her. “Get in the car.”

The bed was in better shape than Pete first thought.

Of course, the fact that Shayla was in it—with him, beneath him, tightly clenched around him—sure as hell didn’t hurt.

Her fingers were in his hair as her gorgeous body strained up to meet him, and her tongue was in his mouth, entangled with his.

He was glad they’d driven out here—and obviously not just because it meant they’d be meeting Maddie far earlier in the morning than they otherwise might’ve. He couldn’t imagine the sheer frustration of being in Shay’s house right now, surrounded by a crowd, and wanting her with no hope of doing…

Exactly…

This.

“Oh, Peter,” she breathed as she came beneath him, around him, and he came, too, in a rush of heat.

“Jesus, we’re a good fit,” he said when he could finally speak, and she laughed.

“We are very, very good at this,” she agreed, smiling up into his eyes.

Ask for what you want….

“Can we talk—seriously?” Pete asked. “About what really happens to us—to our friendship—if Maddie takes me up on my offer to move to Palm Springs?” Just say it. “Because I feel like we’re just getting started here, and…I don’t want this to end.”

She didn’t answer right away, which wasn’t all that good of a sign. She was choosing her words again, but she was still running her fingers through his hair, so it wasn’t all bad. “I’ve done long-distance,” she finally told him. “Carter traveled a lot, as a musician. That’s partly what split us up. It’s not easy.”

“The only easy day was yesterday.”

She smiled at him. “Hoo-yah!”

He nodded. “Hoo-yah.”

“You SEALs can be pretty freaking pompous.”

“Maybe,” he said, laughing, “but we’ve earned it. You should come see what BUD/S training looks like, up close.”

She looked startled. “Are you inviting me to visit you at work?”

Pete nodded, but then shrugged. “Assuming I’m not in Palm Springs.”

“Yes, that,” she said. “How does one day at a time sound?”

Pete nodded. “It sounds good,” he said, shifting off of her and carefully pulling himself free.

She made a little noise—a little murmur of dismay—and he had to smile as he quickly disposed of the condom he’d been wearing. “And that sounds even better,” he said as he came back to her and kissed her. Her lips, her throat, her breasts—he got distracted, but only temporarily, because he was a man on a mission.

Shayla shivered as he kept going, all the way to the soft insides of her thighs. He stopped there to say, “You know, the woman in your book—Loretta—she’s missing out. Jack’s magic penis means that he never has to go down on her.”

She laughed and propped herself up on her elbows. “Has to go down on her,” she repeated. “Not the best collection of words in the Giant Lexicon of Romantic Words. I have to go down on you, Jack told Loretta as he checked his to-do list of weekend chores. But first I have to clean the refrigerator, pick up the dry cleaning, and wash the dog.”

Pete smiled as she laughed. “You’re just saying it wrong,” he told her, and lifted his head. He met her gaze and just held it and held it and held it until she finally stopped laughing. And when he spoke, he didn’t have to work very hard to make his voice low and rough. “I have to go down on you. I have to. See?”

Shay’s laughter was now breathless. “I was definitely saying it wrong,” she agreed, and then sighed when he lowered his head and kissed her. “As far as the book goes…Jack and Loretta get there. Keep reading.”

“I will,” he murmured. “But I’m a little busy right now.”

One day at a time meant not worrying about tomorrow—about what the future might bring.

So Pete surrendered to right now—which was pretty fucking great.

Dingo picked a national chain over one of the more quirkily named mom-and-pop-type motels. The Ride On Inn. The Desert Flower. Nope. Not going to stop there. But the chain with its bored-to-death, minimum-wage-earning night clerk behind the front desk…?

“I’ll be right out,” he told Maddie as he parked by the doors. As he got out of his car, he patted his pocket to make sure he was still carrying the wad of bills they’d taken from Fiona’s room. He was holding it for Maddie, for safety’s sake. Right.

He had to hit a buzzer—and really lean on it—to get into the motel office due to the “night lock.”

A man finally appeared behind the desk—middle-aged, balding, puffy-faced—and looked hard through the glass at Dingo and then over at Maddie, who was visible in the car. Whoops, maybe it was a mistake parking there.

She was his adopted sister; they were traveling together to meet their dad. Yeah, that would work.

The lock finally clicked open, and Dingo went inside. The scent of industrial-strength insecticide didn’t quite cover the musty blend of ancient mildew and dust. God, working here would be a living hell.

He cleared his throat and prepared his smile. If the clerk had been a woman, he would’ve automatically gone Australian. But the accent didn’t always work with men—sometimes it did, but sometimes it really backfired. So Dingo stayed silent as he approached the desk, looking at the obviously cranky man with his swollen eyes, sagging jowls, and disheveled, barely there graying hair.

“How can I help you, mate?” The man’s voice was thick with a Down-Under accent that had to be real.

Didn’t it? Or…? Wait…

Dingo’s first coherent thought was that he was encountering himself, from some terrible and depressing future. Oh, God, he looked awful.

“Well, speak up! You woke me—best make it worth it. Come on!”

“Yes,” Dingo said, in standard Southern Californian. “Sorry, dude, it’s late, and you…remind me of someone. Is your name Rick, by any chance?” Okay, that was stupid, as Maddie would say. This man was definitely not him, from the future. That kind of technology didn’t exist. Still, morbidly curious, part of him wanted to know. “Or Richard…?”

The man sighed heavily. “You want a room, but you don’t have a credit card. Well, it’s your lucky day, we take debit cards, here at Bedbugs R Us.”

Okay, that wasn’t good. But since they only wanted to use the shower…“I have cash.”

“That we also take,” the man said. “With two forms of ID.”

“Two forms?” Dingo said. “I have a driver’s license, but…” Nothing else.

“Credit or debit card’ll do it.”

“Well, that’s stupid. If I had those I’d use them to pay, and I wouldn’t need a second ID,” Dingo pointed out.

“No, you’d still need your driver’s license,” the man said. “Can’t have criminals and ne’er-do-wells checking in.”

“Do I look like a criminal or a…?” Dingo stopped himself. Okay, stupid question, particularly smelling the way he did.

Future Dingo looked at him hard, then pointedly turned to look at Maddie, waiting out in the car. “How old’s your lovely little morsel out there, twelve or maybe thirteen?” He laughed. “Oh, I know, I know, she just looks young, right? Or wait, she’s your sister.”

Sis-tah. His accent was awesome, but then again, with another few decades of practice, Dingo’s would be, too.

He tried straight-up bribery. There was little he wouldn’t do for a quick fifty bucks. “Look, I’m sorry. Can we bend the rules? We’re not going to stay long—an hour, at most—”

“Hourly rental, eh? Fuck her and run?”

“Nope,” Dingo said. “Don’t want bedbugs, aren’t gonna—nope. We just want to use the shower.”

“Off-the-books hourly rate is five hundred, cash, the timer starts now.”

Dingo choked. “Five hundred…? An hour?”

“Take it or leave it.”

“Dude, come on. We just want to get cleaned up. We’ve been living in the car, and we’re meeting her father for breakfast—”

“God, you’re a terrible liar.”

“It’s the truth!”

The man smiled. “Clock’s ticking.”

“Five hundred dollars is insane,” Dingo said. “I’ll give you a hundred, and we’ll be done in a full hour, with the clock starting only when we walk into the room.”

The man laughed in his face. “Price just went up to six hundred, mate, with fifty-seven minutes left on the clock.”

“Fuck you!”

“Seven hundred.”

“God, you’re a douchebag!”

“I’m the douchebag?” The man suddenly seemed to expand and get taller and broader. “I’m the douchebag? Said the pathetic little man-boy who messes with children?” He reached for the phone. “Deal’s off, I’m calling the police.”

Fuck! Dingo ran for the door.

“Yeah, run, run, as fast as you can, pathetic little man-boy!” his future self called mockingly after him. “But you can’t run fast enough, because wherever you go, there you are! Give my love to your sister!”

Dingo jumped into the car, turned it on with a roar.

Maddie was startled. “What happened?” she asked as he pulled out of the parking lot with a spray of gravel.

“They don’t take cash,” he said flatly.

“What? Who doesn’t take cash? Wait, we should try someplace else—maybe one of the smaller motels…Where are you going?” she asked as he blew past both the Desert Flower and the Ride On Inn, heading south on 395. “Dingo!”

“It’s you, all right?” he said. “The guy took one look at you, and said he was calling the police. He looked at you, and then he looked at me, and just like the entire rest of the motherfucking world, he thinks I’m a loser and a creep. So, no, I’m not going to try someplace else, thanks.”

“I want a shower!” Maddie said.

“I fucking know that you fucking want a fucking shower!” he shouted back at her. “I’m gonna get you your fucking shower at a place where I won’t be arrested, and then I’m going to bring you to your father and be done with you! For once and for all!”

“You said you love me,” she whispered, and when he glanced over, her eyes were filled with tears, her face aghast in the dim glow from the dashboard’s light.

Dingo hardened his heart as he blasted toward his parents’ house in Van Nuys—the one place he knew he could get her cleaned up without having to run a gauntlet of shame, derision, or scorn. His folks were out of town—his mother had emailed to let him know.

“There are limits, love,” he told Maddie quietly. “To everything. And I think I’ve finally hit mine.”