NINE
Sloane
I almost wished for a nightmare.
That was silly and maybe even a bit immature.
To need an excuse to get close to him, to have him put his hands on me again, to acknowledge what was going on between us.
But I didn't have a nightmare.
My teeth didn't chatter with cold.
I just lay there staring up at the ceiling for hours, saying nothing, doing nothing, trying to think of nothing.
Eventually, I drifted off to sleep.
And woke up to his hand on me.
Well, just on my arm.
But it counted.
"Are we burning daylight already?" I asked, voice groggy as my hand scrubbed at my tired, dry eyes.
"Just about," he said, giving me one of those soft smiles.
Soft smiles when it was too early to have my guards up to fend off the feelings that bloomed in me from seeing them.
"There had better be coffee if you're waking me up before the sun is even up," I warned him, noticing his hand hadn't moved from my arm, that he was absentmindedly - or possibly deliberately, it was impossible to tell - stroking over the skin there.
"There's coffee," he assured me.
"Ugh," I grumbled, finally fully focusing on him. "Did you shower already?"
"Hit the gym downstairs, grabbed coffee and breakfast, and showered, yeah," he agreed.
"You're a robot," I concluded. "That's the only explanation."
"You'll get used to it."
"I'd just as soon rather not," I said, making a little chuckle move through him.
"Don't make me go all drill sergeant on you," he warned.
"I can take it," I insisted.
Then he was on his feet, ripping the sheets off, making the cool air of the room prickle over my exposed skin.
And I mean exposed.
Because I must have been tossing around in my sleep. His tee was all kinds of bunched around my waist, showing off a few inches of my belly... and all of my legs. And the obnoxiously feminine baby pink silk and lace panties I had on.
"Fuck," Gunner hissed under his breath, his entire body going tense, like he was actively trying to keep it under control, like he was doing his best to hold back.
Instinctively, my legs shifted, dragging his attention up the bare length of them, eyes getting more hooded, hand curling into a fist.
And me, yeah, I had no idea what to say, to do, how to react to his reaction.
I mean, on a logical level anyway.
My body, it knew what it wanted, how to react.
My skin flushed, pink taking over the normal paleness down my arms and legs, and while I couldn't see it, I bet my face and neck as well.
My breasts felt heavier, the nipples getting hard instantly.
A deep, throbbing pulsation started between my legs as my breathing went shallow and too fast, matching my heartbeat.
"Just give me a reason," he demanded, sounding almost, I don't know, desperate? A man like him, desperate? That seemed almost impossible.
"A reason?" Was that my voice? It didn't sound like my voice. It sounded throaty, needy, foreign to my own ears.
"Just give me one reason to turn and walk away right now," he pleaded, his breathing seeming to go as shallow as my own.
I meant to stay silent.
I didn't want to give him a reason.
I didn't want him to turn and walk away.
I wanted him to make good on the promise in his eyes.
But my stupid, stupid mouth found words.
Ridiculous, nonsensical words.
"I haven't brushed my teeth yet."
Yep.
That was what I said.
I swear it surprised me as much as him.
He looked blank for a second, then a small smile pulled at his lips.
"Guess that will work," he said, then turned and did what he said. He walked away.
Away away.
He left the room.
Leaving me there on the bed, body in chaos, mind berating myself for being so darn stupid.
What was wrong with me?
Why would I ruin what I really wanted?
Even if making out without brushing your teeth was pretty gross.
"Ugh," I growled at myself, actually kicking my feet against the mattress in frustration.
What was wrong with me?
I wanted it.
He wanted it.
The moment was right.
And I screwed it up.
No wonder I hadn't been laid in years.
I had become completely oblivious in how to handle interactions with the opposite sex that wasn't work-related.
And, chances were, now that I royally messed this up, there would never be another opportunity.
On the one hand, I understood that even wanting to go there was insane for me. I wasn't a huge fan of casual sexual encounters. And, well, he was most certainly not my type.
But maybe that was the appeal here.
He wasn't my type, but I wanted him. This situation I found myself in meant that all it could ever be was a fling, so there was no worry about the repercussions of my actions.
Hell, even as I was trying to justify it to myself, I didn't believe it.
It was more than that.
There was more than that here.
If there were time to do so, I knew that this had the potential for depth. Actual depth. The kind where I could tell him - the only person in the world who would hear this story - that when I got my period the first time at eleven, my mom threw a box of tampons and condoms at me, telling me that the boys would be sniffing around me like a bitch in heat, and that she wasn't raising No brat of mine because I didn't make him wrap it up.
Or about how when I was sixteen and coming home from a pool party at a friend's house in my modest bathing suit, she had backhanded me so hard that I flew into the end table in the living room, cutting up the side of my face, because I had come in with my tits all out in front of her boyfriend, giving him all kinds of ideas.
Or maybe even about the time she told me when I was eighteen how I completely ruined her life and scared her man - my father - away, that she wished she'd never had me, or had dropped me off at the fire station, or had drowned me in the bathtub.
Maybe I could tell him that.
Maybe I could get it off my shoulders.
Maybe I could know what it felt like not to keep all that to myself.
To open up.
To let him in.
As I got up and brushed my teeth, put on my makeup, my clothes, got myself safely behind my masks again, there was a deep, undeniable sadness at the idea of that lost opportunity.
Why?
I couldn't say.
There could be other men.
Someday.
That came into my life.
But that being said, history had shown me that none had seemed to get it, to understand the persona, that there was a reason for it, that if they just showed me that it was safe to do so, I could open up, I could let it all fall away.
So far, Gunner was the only man who saw through me, who knew there was something painful underneath that I tried to keep hidden, who wanted to see what the other parts of me were like.
"Coffee is getting cold, duchess," Gunner called, as though he knew I had been done for a long time, was just standing there looking at myself until my own reflection became foreign and ugly to me.
"Coming," I said, shoving all my makeup and products back into their bag, slipping on my heels, then moving back out into the main area, finding he had already packed everything else up and left a tip for housekeeping on the dresser. "I can just eat on the run," I assured him, gesturing toward the plate he had set out on the desk.
"And deprive you the use of your beloved table? I think not," he teased, smile curved up, but it somehow didn't quite meet his eyes.
"I didn't use the table last night," I objected.
"You used the nightstand," he shot back.
"Where else was I supposed to put the container?"
"In your hand. On your lap. Seen chicks balance those fucking things on their tits," he informed me, making me snort as I drank my orange juice, a bit worried it might come out of my nose very elegantly in response to that image.
"I don't have much of a shelf here," I informed him, waving at my body. I doubted I could balance a candy bar on my breasts, let alone a takeaway container.
"Got enough," he informed me in that offhand way he talked about basic facts.
It certainly was no high praise, but I must have been starved for compliments, because it made me feel oddly warm inside to hear that.
I picked at the fruit, yogurt, and granola parfait he had gotten for me, liking it too much that he had chosen exactly what I would have chosen for myself out of the many options I knew the hotel would have set up, from omelets to French toast.
"Ready?" he asked when I had tossed what was remaining, grabbed my coffee, and stood.
"Yeah. Can we get my pad out of the back before we take off?" I asked, knowing that whatever I worked on would be a bit shaky depending on the roads, but needing something to keep my focus on other than him, and me, and the chances we would never get to explore.
"Sure," he said, not looking back at me as he hauled up the bags, and made his way to the door.
It was something I would notice for the whole day as we drove.
He watched out the window.
The rearview.
He looked at his phone in its mount to check his course.
But he wouldn't look at me.
Not even when I started shifting in my seat, finding my stomach bothering me more than I thought it should have, enough to wonder if something was maybe wrong.
He didn't even look when I rummaged in my purse to find my pain medicine I knew he knew I hated taking, and popped two.
Not even a look from his peripheral.
Or so I thought anyway.
I woke up to him growling at me, not sure how or when I had fallen asleep, but blaming the pain medicine on principle.
"The fuck is this?" he asked, making me jump, looking over to find my sketchpad in his hands.
"I didn't say you could look through that," I half-shrieked, reaching for it, but he just yanked it back away.
The first few pages were purses I had drawn back in my old life. Then my apartment. The cabin. A bit of the hotel room that I didn't finish. One of him giving me a raised-brow look he wore so often.
But then, as my mind had been seeking things to focus on that didn't involve him, I started to sketch other half-finished things. Scenes from my childhood, adolescence, things that maybe I should have purged onto paper a long time ago like this guy a friend of mine was dating who was majoring in psychology had suggested.
Pictures of booze and pills on my kitchen table.
Empty cabinets.
My father smacking around my mother.
My mother smacking around me.
And the one his eyes seemed to be so fixated on.
The one of me fishing something out of the neighbor's trash bin at the street.
An old McDonald's box.
There had only been a few fries in it.
But it was more than I had had all day.
"Gunner, please," I said, voice thick with an emotion I almost didn't recognize at first because it was so new to me. Vulnerability. Complete and utter exposure, and the fear and insecurity that came with that.
"Sloane... what the fuck?" he asked, looking up at me finally. His voice was thick too, lower, almost quiet.
"We were between Food Stamps that week," I supplied, humiliation - though it was certainly not my fault - welling up inside, making my face feel hot. "There was nothing in the house."
"Jesus Christ," he said, sounding genuinely sad for little nine-year-old me. "Why didn't she take you to a food pantry or soup kitchen or some shit?"
"I imagine because she was too drunk to realize I was starving," I said, hearing a snippiness in my tone, not knowing why it was there. I certainly never wanted to defend the woman, excuse her actions.
"Where'd the money for alcohol come from?"
"Honestly? I don't know. I don't want to."
"I get it, baby," he said, the endearment making my belly wobble a little. Not duchess. Baby. It somehow seemed more personal. Especially as his hand went to my leg right above my knee, and gave it a squeeze.
"Get what?"
"This," he said releasing my leg to wave at me. "You. I get it. But this shit, this doesn't define you. You don't need to be embarrassed about it. You were a kid. Your mom was a bitch. Your dad was useless. None of that reflects on you."
"The people in my world... they cared about things like pedigree."
"Fuck them. Like their shit don't stink. Rich people from quote-unquote good families have just as much dirt as the rest of it. They just pay other people to sweep it under the rugs." He closed the book, putting it back on my lap, but kept his hand on the closed black cover. "Don't let this define who you want to be now, Sloane. You have a chance now. To reinvent. If you aren't completely happy as Miss Blythe-Meuller, be someone else. Not many people get that chance. Sure, it sucks that you didn't choose it for yourself. But if you were being honest, would you have ever taken the opportunity if it wasn't forced on you?"
"No."
"And were you happy - genuinely happy - being who you were pretending to be back in that life?"
As much as it hurt to admit it, as much as my belly coiled at even voicing that tiny little nagging voice I tried to keep gagged and bound inside, I told him. "No."
"Life's short. Don't waste it unhappy. Take the chance you have now to be happy. You've done the making a big name and lots of money thing. It didn't do it for you. Find what does. Do that."
I nodded a bit at that, feeling a tad too emotional to say anything - or even make eye-contact - right then.
"You want to eat first, or drop off your shit here?" he asked, making my head snap up to the strip mall we were parked in where there was a pizza place and a dry cleaner.
"Seems most sensible to drop it off, then eat while we wait."
"Yes. We must always be sensible," he said in a tone clearly meant to mock me. But where I would maybe - just even a few days ago - have bristled at someone doing that, I smiled at him, acknowledging the fact that those words were a very Miss Blythe-Meuller thing to say. And maybe Sloane Livingston wasn't going to be quite as sensible and snobby as that.
"It means you'd have to run back out to pick up the dry cleaning," I reasoned. "After we get to the hotel."
"Yeah, fuck that. Sensible it is."
So we dropped off my dry cleaning.
We had pizza.
He made fun of me for liking mushrooms and onions on my pizza. I told him my arteries appreciated that I didn't order three types of meat on mine like he did.
We went to the hotel, slightly less fancy than the one we had stayed in the night before, but this was likely due to the fact that the town was smaller and more blue-collar. There was no need for some five-star hotel here. But it was still nice with dark decor, clean linens and bathrooms, and its own small restaurant and bar.
"I'm fine," I objected when he thrust the cocktail menu at me.
"Order a drink," he insisted.
"I have water."
"An alcoholic drink, duchess."
"Why?"
"Why not?"
"That's not an answer."
"It wasn't really a question. Order an alcoholic drink because you're over twenty-one, they taste good, and they--"
"Will loosen me up?" I cut him off, feeling my chin raise, knowing it was haughty, and seeming unable to stop it. Because it bristled against my insides that he thought I was uptight. Especially because I had been... more loose around him than anyone else I knew.
"Didn't say that. Don't put words in my mouth. Especially the wrong ones that give you that stink-eye look."
"I don't have a stink-eye look."
"Sure as shit do. I'm looking at it right now."
"You're kind of an ass."
"Only kind of?" he asked, smirk going downright devilish. "Order something, or I'm ordering it."
"And what? Forcing it down my throat?"
"Doubt me?" he asked.
And, well, I didn't.
"Oh my God," I groaned when he went on a rant about 'girly drinks' after I finally ordered one. "You want me to order something, then give me lip about what I order."
"Shit. I give you shit about what you order. Lip is what a five-year-old gives his old man when he doesn't want to do chores. And, hey, you order something like Sin On Wheels, you have to expect to hear it."
What I really wanted was something they so poetically named Lick Her Right or, in second place, Dirty Whore's Bathwater. Why this place had their entire cocktail menu named scandalous things - I didn't even mention the Thai Me Up, Leg-Spreader, or classic Sex on the Beach - was beyond me. This did not seem like the right venue for such a thing. Though as to what type of venue would suit those drinks, I was still not sure. I guess maybe a swinger club. Or singles club.
Jesus.
Singles club.
What was I, fifty?
"What's that look?"
"Did you see the drink names?" I asked, pushing the menu back to him.
"Mountain Dew Me," he said, looking up with a smile that met his eyes, erasing the tension that had been there a good part of the day. "Sin On Wheels is the tamest name on here," he observed, clearly knowing my game. "You're gonna down that bitch-ass drink, and then order something that makes your face bright red." And then he read through the names, conjuring up all kinds of ideas, looking at me each time. "Screaming Orgasm it is," he concluded, looking like he was enjoying this way too much. "Though that was close with the Blowjob Shot," he added.
"If you're done teasing me," I said, wanting to get the ideas of screaming orgasms and blowjobs... with him out of my head. "I really don't drink hard liquor. I think just the one drink is enough."
"Nope," he said, shaking his head.
"What is the end game here?" I asked, it being a phrase I used with my employees - my former employees - all the time, wanting to know what made them decide to do what they did, where they saw their ideas going, forcing them to think beyond the moment. "To get me to loosen up?"
"To get you to stop giving such a fuck what other people think. You think the waitress hasn't heard someone order a Blowjob Shot or Screaming Orgasm before? Her reaction is determined by your delivery. Nothing else. If you're hesitant or embarrassed, she will laugh and make you more uncomfortable. If you order it like it's the most normal thing in the world, she will treat it that way too. You're making yourself uncomfortable for no reason. Order your Screaming Orgasm like a boss," he told me as the waitress came back.
And, somehow, it clicked. It made sense.
I swallowed back my fear - and a large amount of nervous saliva - and I ordered a Screaming Orgasm from a waitress who reminded me of my fourth grade teacher with a mostly confident voice that was convincing even if I didn't truly feel it.
And Gunner was right; it wasn't a big deal.
Neither was my third drink.
A Slow Comfortable Screw.
After three drinks, I was too fuzzy and swirly to feel anything even akin to embarrassment.
"I thought you were fucking with me," Gunner said, arm around my hips, guiding me back toward our room.
"Fucking with you how?" I asked, reaching out to run my hand over a silk plant as we passed it, wondering what would possess anyone to decorate with silk plants when real ones would work as well.
"When you claimed you were a lightweight," he clarified, hitting the button for the elevator, dragging me backward away from the door with him. "Three drinks and you're hammered," he added as though it was ridiculous.
"I don't have a lot of time to drink. My tolerance is low. And I just... don't indulge much, y'know," I told him, turning inward toward him, resting my head on his chest because I wanted to, and I knew it would feel good. And it did. It felt so good.
"You don't want to be like your mom," he guessed correctly, giving me a squeeze.
"Yeah. Can't have that," I agreed, my hand sliding across his chest to his arm where a particularly intricate tattoo was half-hidden by his sleeve.
"You'll never be your mom, Sloane. You can have a few drinks, let down your hair."
"Ugh," I agreed, my mind immediately leaving the idea of exploring his tattoo, going upward to yank at my updo. "It's giving me a headache," I explained when I saw him smirking down at me.
"Pretty sure that is all the fucking sugar in those sex drinks of yours," he informed me. "But I like your hair down, so I'm not fighting this."
I was only half-distracted by untangling my hair from the tie, conscious enough to feel that newly familiar warm, gooey feeling inside at the compliment.
"You like my hair down?" I asked, finally feeling it freefall around my shoulders.
"Yeah, duchess," he said, reaching up to run his fingers through it, tucking some strands behind my ear. "I like your hair down," he finished just as the doors chimed and opened to our floor.
"Let's just stay here," I suggested, resting my head to his chest again, somehow knowing that the second we left this elevator, the spell would be broken, the dreamy possibilities my brain and body were entertaining would be gone.
Things would go back to normal.
What a depressing thought.
"Got water and aspirin in the room for that headache of yours," he reasoned, pulling me with him.
And it was exactly the second I felt my foot step out of the doorway that his arm fell from my hips to dig for the keycard.
The loss was a strangely poignant thing, something I felt too deeply, something that sober-me would likely blame on the alcohol, but I knew better.
It was the sadness of losing something I knew deep down I had wanted my whole life.
A real, genuine connection.
And everything in me seemed to know that the only chance I had for it was to be found within Gunner.
"Alright, you first," he said, waving toward the bathroom. "I have a feeling you'll be dead on your feet in ten minutes. Get today's taste out of your mouth before you hit the sheets."
With that, I did.
Brushed my teeth.
Washed my face.
Changed into my now clean pajamas, all the while wishing it was his tee again.
I climbed into bed and watched as he disappeared into the bathroom after me, the shower turning on just seconds later.
He was in there for a long time too.
A part of me was convinced he was just trying to get away from me, remove temptation, let me pass out before he came back out.
Or maybe that was just my own wishful thinking, my projecting my feelings onto him.
The door whooshed open a long while later, just as sleep was starting to pull at my eyes.
As such, I was sure I was dreaming when he moved into the doorway.
Because he had forgotten to grab clothes.
And was standing there in a towel.
Just a towel.
Slung low.
My heart started to hammer as I realized I wasn't asleep, that he was genuinely five feet from me, all but naked, the towel situated directly below the sharp juts of his Adonis belt muscles, showing off the wide breadth of his chest. Tattoos wove up his arms and across his chest, sneaking around the back. There was an odd spot almost to the center of his chest where the tattoo looked odd, distorted, almost puckered or something. But he was too far to make it out. And my eyes - and other body parts - were too greedy to focus on that when there was so much more to explore. Like how his deep abdominal muscles tapered downward to reveal a small happy trail that disappeared into the towel, making me want to rip it off and explore more.
I didn't realize that the low, pained, animal sound that I heard came from me until Gunner's head jerked up, looking taken aback at finding me there, ogling him like a dog in heat.
"Don't look at me like that," he demanded softly, almost looking pained as he just stood there. And I just sat there. Both of us knowing what was on the other's mind.
"Why?" I asked, swallowing hard.
"You know why."
"I can't help it," I admitted, feeling the way need was coursing through my system, knowing it was likely plain as day on my face as well.
"Try."
"Why?"
"You're drunk, duchess."
"I'm not so drunk," I told him, knowing it was only half true, but even stone cold sober, I wanted him. He knew that. I knew that. And half-drunk me, well, she was refusing to accept that this was a bad idea.
"Sloane, please," he asked, tone doing that low, sexy rumble thing that made my sex clench hard even as I registered the frustration sparking off of his skin.
"Why are you fighting it?" I pressed, apparently finding out I was tenacious after a few drinks as well. "I wasn't drunk last time."
"This is a job for me," he said, and had my stomach not been dropping at that, I might have heard something in his tone, something that said he regretted that it was work. "That's it." He turned away, giving me a view of his back - and more tattoos I wanted to learn about - as he reached for clothes. "And you're not thinking clearly. In a week or so, I'll be gone. You'll never see me again. You don't want this. Not really."
I did.
I wanted it.
But he - this man who was more action-based than practical - was voicing all the logical arguments I had running through my head for days.
And even drunk-me couldn't argue with it.
So I rolled away.
I pretended to sleep.
I listened as Gunner pretended to as well.
Eventually, we both did for real.
Then went back to the usual the next day.
Driving.
Not talking.
Me sketching.
Both of us trying to ignore each other in an impossibly small space. Like a couple of children instead of the rational adults we really were.
"Oh my God. I can't take it anymore," I growled sometime around one that afternoon, battling a hangover that was hammering in my temples and behind my eyes somehow at the same time, reaching over to jab my finger into one of the other saved station buttons.
"You're bright and chipper today," Gunner said, and I imagined he was smirking like he usually was.
"How do you listen to that day in and day out?" I asked, ignoring the comment on my obvious misery. "Is there anything worse than talk radio? A bunch of people focusing on the most negative things going on in the world."
"If you didn't like it, why didn't you change it three days ago? Or is it just your epic hangover talking?"
"Epic is pushing it," I half-lied. I had only drank to the point of drunk a handful of times in my life. Only once did I have a worse hangover than this. But I was attributing the intensity of this one on the fact that I wasn't twenty-one anymore... and I had horrible sleep thanks to my sexual frustration the night before. "I just ignored it the first few days. But my head hurts, and listening to all the arguing is getting to me."
"Drink the water, you stubborn ass," he told me, tone light. "I've been suggesting it for hours."
"I don't want to have to make a dozen pitstops."
"Then take one of your pain pills. Your stomach should be mostly better. You won't need them for that."
"I'm fine," I insisted. "I just need to move around, get some food, maybe a nap. I think being in the car is getting to me too."
"Only another day and a half after this," he assured me, but his tone was oddly distant.
That night, we were staying in Wyoming.
The next night would be Utah.
And then we would be in Carson City.
In my new life.
No more long drives stuck beside one another.
No more sleeping in the same hotel room, just feet from each other.
I tried to tell myself that that was a good thing.
A little distance would do us good.
But nothing about even the idea of it felt good.
It was the exact opposite actually.
"It's not the Ritz," Gunner said almost apologetically after we had checked into a hotel that obviously did not fit his standards. Honestly, I couldn't figure that his tastes ran toward the Ritz Carlton, so I had no idea why this seemed to be bothering him so much. But I had come to accept that Gunner was just an unpredictable kind of person.
"But it isn't a sleep-and-fuck either," I offered, shrugging off the outdated and overused red, white, and black oriental-style rugs that ran down the center of the halls toward the elevator. The art on the walls was mass produced and too matchy-matchy. The wallpaper must have been an off-white at some point, but was currently settled at aged yellow.
Dated, sure. But it was clean, kept with pride in a clearly bad economy in a town that - as I saw on our way through it - likely did not attract much tourism.
"Well, there's that," he agreed without enthusiasm as we exited the elevator to the third floor that looked much like the lobby - same carpets, wallpaper, art. The doors even had good, old-fashioned keys instead of keycards.
"This is better," I announced as we moved inside, the light streaming through the blinds on the sliding door to a very tiny balcony out back. The carpet was a deep brown, as was the stain on the head and footboards of the two full-sized beds. The sheets and comforter were stark white, telling anyone who happened upon them that the owners were quite fond of bleach. Which was always a comforting thought. The TV across from the bed was newer, flat, and though it was on the small side, a good brand.
"Probably trying to redo the place room by room," he agreed, waving at the seemingly freshly painted striped brown and off-white wall behind the beds.
"Oh, wow," I breathed out as I pulled the blinds on the sliding doors, seeing the view for the first time. "I never would have realized how pretty Wyoming is if not for this," I remarked as Gunner moved in beside me, both of us looking off at the mountain range in the distance. "It's strange."
"What is?"
"How eye-opening this whole experience has been," I admitted. "I lived in such a shell. I mean, yeah, there is a lot of culture in the city. It's a real melting pot. But you don't get to see things like this, experience small-town hospitality, see the hard work and pride people put into their small businesses. Like this hotel. I never would have thought of myself as sheltered before. But I guess I was."
"Tomorrow you'll get to see some of the red rocks in Utah," he told me, sounding like he was excited to show that to me. Or maybe that was my imagination. It was getting hard to tell what was true and what was wishful thinking as time went on.
"Have you seen them before?" I asked, wanting to know more about him.
"Yeah. You'd be hard-pressed to find much of this country that I haven't seen at least once."
"Do you like traveling?"
"Depends on to where. And the company." He made the comments sound final, but a moment later, went on. "I'm not a fan of the south in the dead of summer. They have a different fucking sun down there, I swear. And the bugs and snakes and shit. Not my bag. But aside from that..."
"So no Alabama in August. What about the cold states in winter?"
"Snowboarding in Vermont is the shit. Haven't done it in a few years, but I will take the cold over the scorching heat any damn day. Besides, ever have real apple cider donuts from an actual cider mill?" he asked, waiting for me to shake my head. "Gotta try it at least once in life," he told me, then his face fell when I felt mine do the same.
Because I wasn't going to be allowed to travel.
At least not for years.
Maybe not even then.
It depended a lot on what happened with Rodrigo Cortez.
"Maybe there is a cider mill in Nevada somewhere," I said, but there was skepticism in my voice. I mean, most apples came from the east coast, not the midwest. But they had to have some, right? Hopefully. Because now I was sure life would never be complete without an apple from a real cider mill.
"Tomorrow we got to start work on your identity. Learn the shit like the back of your hand," he told me, moving away. And it felt like a wall.
As the night and the next day would show, that was exactly what it was.
The only speaking we did was about Sloane Livingston, about her past, about her likes, her interests, her friends, family, previous work experience.
About eight hours into getting quizzed about her, I could feel myself starting to resent this person that didn't actually exist, that I would have to learn to be.
Silly, yes, but undeniable.
It was like my mind had decided to hate her in defense of Sloane Blythe-Meuller, the person I had always been allowed to be, for better or worse.
"Alright. I'll let it drop for a while," he told me as we settled into a hotel in Utah.
This one was clearly recently redone. And maybe just a tad bit too modern. I hadn't been sure there was such a thing. But when the bed didn't look like someplace that you wanted to rest on, you knew you took your HGTV obsession a step or five too far. Everything was stark, eye-aching white with very sharp lines - and corners. I actually rammed my leg into the side of the bed, creating a decent gash that bled like crazy, and put me in an even more surly mood.
Gunner seemed to be faring no better, mumbling under his breath as he tried to unmake the bed a bit so he could get in it.
"Not a fan, huh?" I asked as I put a on band-aid that Gunner had provided from a small first-aid kit he apparently carried at all times.
"It's like a fucking hospital. Who the fuck would want to live in a room like this?"
"You're a fan of a more... lived in look," I assumed.
"I'm a fan of a place where I can prop my feet up on the table. And where the goddamn sheets don't crinkle when I move them."
I smiled at that, silently agreeing.
While my place was on the modern side, it was still warm and homey. At least I liked to think so. And I always made sure to use softener in my wash.
"So... tomorrow," I said after I had changed and settled into bed, when the show Gunner had been staring at - though, I thought, not actually watching - went to commercial.
"What about it?"
"Everything changes," I said, half to myself.
"Guess you could say that."
"What else could you say about it?"
"You get to start over," he said, refusing to look my way, making my stomach feel tight and uncomfortable.
I didn't say it. Not aloud. Not to him. I didn't want him to think I was silly or ungrateful or even just bemoaning my fate.
But I thought it.
I thought it until the words stopped even making sense in my own head.
I thought it until it made a deep, sad sensation settle in my stomach.
I thought it until the TV turned itself off, leaving me with nothing but the sound of Gunner's breathing, steady, but not asleep.
I thought it until I fell asleep and couldn't think it anymore.
What if I don't want to start over?