SADIE
THE VOICE OF MY FATHER spoke to me. It was all cigarette-growl and whiskey-tongued. “You’re not that different from me, after all.”
I wasn’t like him.
Just because the same genes ran in our bodies didn’t mean I was an alcoholic.
It didn’t. I wasn’t.
I awoke with a start and heard my phone ringing. The bulk of the man I referred to as stock-photo guy laid beside me and his breath warmed the back of my neck.
Sundance.
Hot.
Male.
Sexy.
Strong.
The events after the bar last night were blurry at best. A fast, hard fuck that turned our worlds upside down. Slamming small bottles of whiskey, dancing to music that wasn’t playing, ordering burgers and fries from room service and feeding each other the fries. More fucking, playing with each other’s bodies like I’d never done with anyone before, talking about nothing that mattered, and then passing out in each other’s arms.
I’d never come that many times in one night.
He was a sex machine.
A sex god.
And I had been deliciously and thoroughly fucked.
My phone started pinging with a message, and it sounded like an unyielding alarm. I winced. My head hurt. My body hurt. My heart hurt.
The red digits on the bedside clock read four fifty-nine. It was early. Too early. Still, somehow I managed to sit up and slide out of bed. I looked down at him, and my insides fluttered. His dark-brown hair was deliciously tousled. His naked body sculpted and tanned.
Even sleeping, he looked strong, powerful.
A little aloof, too.
It made him seem intriguing, mysterious, even.
I wondered if his walls were as high as mine. I wanted to try to climb them. Get to really know him. That was never going to happen. I would only ever know the way his body fit mine like it was made for me.
My cell chimed again.
With a regretful sigh, I turned. On tiptoes, I searched for my purse, and once I found it, I fumbled to locate my phone. Clumsy from lack of sleep, or from being hung-over, I dropped my purse.
Quickly, I fell to my knees and gathered up the contents. With my phone in my hand, I cursed it. I should have turned it off, and I would have if the mints hadn’t sidetracked me.
Reluctantly, I read the message on the screen.
SIMON: You disappeared off my radar. I hope you got enough for the operation. I talked to the nurse last night, and Riley is going to be released today if his parents don’t come up with the funds.
I closed my eyes.
Riley.
I couldn’t let him be released without having that surgery. I couldn’t chance that he might never walk again.
Because of me.
Step 3: Make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Him.
When I opened my eyes, they landed on Sundance’s bulging wallet and then shifted to the two camera bags.
I felt sick.
So sick.
But I knew I had to take them. It was my only choice. Hating myself, I texted Simon back.
Me: I got the two camera bags and some cash.
SIMON: And what else?
Me: I don’t have time to get into it.
SIMON: Meet me at Huck’s Diner near the Park-n-Fly in thirty minutes, and I’ll take care of cashing everything in.
Me: Okay.
Haphazardly, I tugged on the clothes that weren’t mine and then pulled my wig over my disheveled hair. Over at my suitcase, my thumbs depressed the two buttons and the latch released.
Sundance was out cold, but still I worried he might awaken. With trembling fingers, I reluctantly emptied the contents of one of Sundance’s camera bags into the Louis and threw the other over my shoulder before I opened his wallet and took the wad of fifties and hundreds.
Even when I was seventeen and on my own with nothing, I had never stolen anything from anyone.
I felt sick.
I held my breath willing it away.
This was for Riley.
This was for Riley.
Thinking of what I’d done to him was the only way I could get through this.
When I was finished, I looked at Sundance for a long while before I left. A beautiful, tortured man who didn’t deserve this. I didn’t even know his real name. Didn’t want to. The only thing I knew was that he had modeled at some point in his life.
Did he still? I had no idea.
I did know one more thing. I knew that love had burned him, and to escape the flame, he was running for a while. Going on vacation, I assumed, and hence the cameras.
I had no idea where he was headed, but I hoped when he got there, what I’d taken didn’t prevent him from stepping off for a while.
Slowly, I closed the suitcase and walked toward the door. The floor creaked, and I froze. Without breathing, I flipped back the lock, turned the handle as quietly as I could manage, and eased the door back before stepping across the threshold.
As it started to close behind me, I couldn’t help but turn to look at him one last time. I grabbed for the handle and peered through the crack. I couldn’t help but think if he was The Sundance Kid, I was Butch Cassidy—the outlaw.
In that final moment, I wanted to think we were alike.
Something sad lived within both of us.
A feeling of unwantedness that couldn’t be shaken?
Either way, we were both runners. However, unlike me, he wasn’t running from the law . . . just love.
And that made us so incredibly different.