I just hope the vacancy sign isn’t wrong.
When I enter the office services, I’m hit with an overpowering smell of lavender. Like someone lit the flower on fire and perfume-bombed the room. The scent burns my eyes as I approach the empty desk.
I tap a bell, and while I wait, my phone buzzes. Pulling out my cell, I check the text.
Let me know dates & times when she starts climbing. I’ll pack my equipment & bring Jesse out with me. – Jack
Sulli’s cousins might not be here, but Jack Highland-Oliveira is scheduled to arrive at some point—looks like his teenage brother Jesse Highland will be joining.
Jack—I didn’t really trust at first. He’s just too likable. And he has so many secrets about the families that he could spill. It always put me on edge. Being cautious is a bodyguard’s job.
But somehow, some way, we became friends. Shit, we’ve even gone on double-dates with girls he’s introduced me to. He has an endless supply of acquaintances, contacts, whoever that always show up when we’re out together, even if it’s to grab coffee on a quick pass to say hello.
I’m not even the one who invited Jack here. Sulli agreed for her free-solo climbs to be filmed for We Are Calloway, and he’s in charge of her segments for the docuseries.
A camera is going to be on Sulli while she free-solos. All I can think is that her death might be filmed for the whole world to see.
She’s won’t die.
I believed that.
When she announced her free-solo plan on her dad’s birthday, the reaction was heavily mixed. For the parents, she might as well have announced she was pregnant with the devil’s spawn.
They were horrified.
But I was in the “let her do it” camp. I’m still there. I have to be. Sulli is too determined to drag her to a halt, and I’ve always known her as the girl who goes for gold.
I send a quick text back: For sure, I’ll keep you in the loop. We’re on our way to Yellowstone Country. You won’t need to come out for a few days at least. She still has to practice the climbs with a harness & rope before free-soloing.
As soon as I look up, an older white man shuffles out from the back of the office. Wrinkles sagging his neck, he adjusts a pair of reading glasses on his slender nose. “You need a room?” he croaks.
“Two. Adjoining if you have them.”
“Only have the one,” he says. “Would you like by the night or by the hour?”
By the hour…
That reminds me of Banks.
He told me in high school, he’d fuck in motels if he had the cash to “go all-out” for his date. Pay by the hour, buy her flowers, light some Dollar Store candles.
I never had an issue finding places to have sex.
Perks of growing up wealthy, thanks to my dad’s lucrative job. I was an only child in a humongous mansion-sized home with a nice pool house. Perfect for those nights alone with my high school girlfriend.
Banks slept on a pullout couch most of his childhood. I realize we’re different in a lot of ways, but similar in ones that are needed to protect Sulli.
To the old man, I say, “For the night, not by the hour.”
“Forty. Cash only.”
I slide a few bills out of my wallet and pass them over. Before I can ask how many beds there are, he’s handing me a key. Guess it doesn’t matter anyway. It’s the only room.
But shit, what if there’s only one bed?
That scenario plays on loop with every footfall back to the Jeep. Banks and Sulli are out of view behind Booger, but the closer I approach, the more I hear.
“I bet you I can do twenty,” Sulli says competitively.
“You know what I weigh, mermaid? If I sit on you while you do push-ups, I’d break your back before you hit five. And then Akara will shred me to pieces.”
“He’s not here, Banks.”
I’m right here.
Really, I’m actually still thirty-some feet away. Sulli is just loud. It doesn’t take a lot of strain to overhear her.
With a kicked-up pulse, I vacillate between walking faster. To interrupt them. And slowing down…just to see what happens.
“Tell you what, get on my back,” Banks replies to Sulli. “If I can’t do forty push-ups with you on me, then I’ll do whatever you want.”
“Deal.”
I move faster.
Reaching the Jeep, I round the bumper and see Sulli straddling Banks’ back, his palms digging into gravel as he does perfect military push-ups.
Noticing me, they freeze for a second.
“Hey,” I cut in, trying to sound casual. “We have a room.” I dangle the key.
Banks goes to stand, and in a seamless maneuver, he clasps the backs of Sulli’s thighs and hoists her up higher on his back as he rises to his feet.
Her lips part with heady breath. Her arm instinctively curves around his collar. Legs tightening around his muscular waist.
Banks has Sulli secure in a piggyback.
And my heart has stopped pumping blood. Because I can’t get over how she’s looking at him. Her eyes roam over Banks like he just made love to her in a motel parking lot.
A knot lodges in my throat.
Banks doesn’t have view of her face. He can’t even see her expression. Or the way she drinks in his hands that grip the bare flesh of her legs. He’s just hawkeyed on me, and slowly, he sets her feet on the ground.
For my sake.
Why does Banks have to be such a good dude? I wish he were a complete bastard so I’d have reason to separate them. To protect her.
I’m just the asshole keeping them apart.
“There’s only one key?” Banks asks.
“Just one,” I nod. Coming up to Sulli, I steal the Philly baseball cap off her head and try to fit in on mine, but it’s tight.
She smiles a little, and I tell her, “Banks and I will take the floor.”
Sulli passes me and Banks, then grabs a couple sleeping bags from the trunk. “If the bed is big enough, we can all just camp out on the mattress in sleeping bags.”
Banks’ hot gaze is on me. Waiting for me to make a decision. I am the leader, and I don’t want to make a big deal out of this right now.
She pauses in my silence. “If that’s…fucking cool with you?”
I wipe all thoughts about popping cherries and Sulli clean.
“Yeah, it’s cool with me.” I take the sleeping bags from her. “We’d need these anyway. Who knows what’s living in the sheets?”
She grimaces. “This is why camping is fucking superior.”
“Not a fan of motels?” Banks asks her and tosses me my backpack.
I sling it on.
“Tents are better,” she replies.
“Five-star resort hotels are even better,” I pipe in.
Banks cocks his head. “You are the bougiest of the three of us.”
“Can’t disagree,” I say easily, wanting to smile. But I keep replaying the way Sulli looked at Banks.
It stays with me as we all gather the rest of our overnight things. I lock up Booger, and we make the short trek to room 4.
When I open the door, the verdict is in.
One bed.
A full.
Not even a fucking queen mattress could come out and save this situation.
Banks and I sweep the room quickly for recording devices in the lamps and drawers, while Sulli drops her Patagonia backpack on the ground.
Coming out of the bathroom, I see her tear down the blankets and inspect the state of the sheets and mattress. “Um…fuck, what is that?” She inspects a stain with a cringe, then catches my gaze. “Hey, if you don’t mind, Kits, I think I’ll take the floor.”
“That bad?” I ask.
“It’s beyond fucking gross.” She assesses the room. “There’s enough space for all of us to crash on the ground, I think. I can grab the sleeping pads from the Jeep.”
“I’ll do it,” Banks says. “You said you wanted to shower.”
She m
ust have told him that when I was grabbing the key.
She smiles, her cheeks and neck reddening. Absentmindedly, she runs her fingers through her hair but tugs on a tangle. “Yeah, thanks…I need to shampoo this mess.”
“Looks pretty to me.”
“Pretty dirty.”
“Nothing wrong with that, mermaid,” Banks says before he leaves.
She stares faraway at the closed motel door, at his shadow. And as soon as she turns to me, her smile falters. “What…?”
What expression am I even making? Horror? Concern? Jealousy? Some unknown emotion that keeps ravaging my insides? My stomach has coiled into a tight fist.
All I can say is, “You like him.”
It slams into me now more than ever before.
She really likes Banks Moretti. My friend.
That’s a good thing, Nine.
Sulli bends down to her duffel, resting near a dusty nightstand with a broken digital clock. “Yeah, I thought that was fucking clear when I told him it’d be cool if he took my virginity.”
What is air?
I’m barely breathing.
But I walk closer to Sulli. “I meant that you like him as more than just a friend.”
Her brows pinch, staring at the discolored carpet. Then she takes out a toiletry bag. Standing up, she faces me and steals her hat back, taking it off my head. “So what if I do?” She fits on the baseball cap. “It’s not like he likes me as more than a friend.”
I frown.
She doesn’t think Banks likes her?
Really?
I shift my weight. Sulli hasn’t realized he’s blatantly flirting with her. How? How is that fucking possible? It’s so obvious, it smacks me in the face on a daily basis.
She tries to read my screwed-up expression. “What?”
I should tell her the truth.
Tell her Banks finds her hot, attractive, the sun that sets the earth on fire. But I can’t make my lips form those words.
I just slowly nod.
She nods a few times back, her head hanging. “I’m gonna go…” She jabs a thumb to the bathroom, then treks there without another word.
Fuck.
Immediately, I feel like shit for letting her believe something that I know to be categorically untrue.
I’m worse than an asshole right now. It’s tearing me apart.
And I can’t unwind time.
When Banks returns to the motel with an armful of sleeping mats, our eyes collide together, and guilt is written all over me. No way can I scrub this away.
Tensely, I sit down on the edge of the stained mattress.
Banks slowly lowers the sleeping mats on the floor like they’re tiny bombs. He glances to the cracked bathroom door where the shower turns on. Water pouring.
And then he focuses on me. “You and Sulli had a fight?”
I shake my head, massaging my hands. Running my thumb over the calluses on my palm. My mom has the same habit of kneading her hands. I thought we shared the trait because we shared Muay Thai. Her pro-fighting days left her hands tender and aching. But I never went pro like her, and when we both slowed down competing, me as a teenager, her after I turned ten—we both kept the quirk.
Banks rests a hip on the wall, arms crossed. With the gun holstered on his waistband, a toothpick between his lips, all he’d need is the hat to be the cowboy. What he once joked he was among me and Thatcher.
He surveys me. “You look like someone told you you’re not allowed to talk to her for the next twenty-four hours.”
I lick my dried lips, eyes descending to the sleeping mats. “I’ll help you unfurl those.”
Rising from the mattress, I get one step ahead before Banks intercedes and plants a hand on my chest. “First, tell me what’s going on.” Concern sinks into his brown eyes.
Making me feel like a sewer. Not just a tiny paper bag full of shit. A whole fucking shit-system beneath a city.
I spit out, “She doesn’t know you’ve been flirting with her.” It’s not what I need to say, but it’s a start.
The splash of water from the shower cuts through the brief silence.
Banks’ forehead is wrinkling in confusion. “You think this is some revelation, Akara?”
Now I’m frowning. “Wait.” I hold up a hand, my voice lowering. “You knew she doesn’t think you’re flirting?”
“Akara, how many fuckin’ times do I have to go over this?” He plants his hands on my shoulders. He’s five-inches taller, but somehow we feel the same height. His eyes connecting to mine. “You flirt with her. You’ve been flirting with her for years, and you keep telling her you’re just friends. So when some guy like me comes around and actually flirts with her—what the hell did you think she’s gonna think?”
I push his hands off my shoulders. I don’t know what I thought. All I know is this… “I haven’t been flirting with her.”
Banks steeples his fingers to his lips, but his eyes sink deeper into me. It feels almost penetrating. Excavating. I’m vulnerable under his gaze, and I realize it’s because he’s slowly coming to his own understanding. “Akara,” he whispers.
“She’s like my little sister,” I say quickly, though this time it sounds like I’m trying to convince myself. How much did her dad infiltrate my head? Was it full-on Inception? For how many years? She’s like your little sister, Akara. Protect her.
Shit.
Banks shakes his head repeatedly, almost angrily.
I feel that anger inside me. At myself. I’m so pissed at myself for making this unnecessarily complicated. I end up snapping, “What?”
“What?” He points at the ground and growls, “You love her.”
“As a friend,” I combat.
“A friend?” His voice is hushed but hot with pent-up annoyance like mine. “I’ve never had friends who are girls and teased them like you tease her—”
“Guys can have platonic friends who are girls, Banks. It fucking exists.” I spread my arms.
He crosses his. “Sorry, I’m just a little fucking lost here. First she’s your sister. Now she’s your friend. Is she going to be your cousin tomorrow? Should I start pulling out the cousin-kisser jokes—”
“Fuck you,” I say plainly.
“No, fuck you,” he whispers hotly close to my face. “I want to fucking shake you, Akara. Just accept the simple truth. It’s not gonna kill you if you do.”
It won’t kill me if I do.
His words somehow punch me backwards.
I sink onto the mattress and put my head in my hands. I’ve been flirting with Sulli? I think about how I stole her baseball cap, right after she clearly had a moment with Banks in the parking lot.
Shit.
Shit.
I’ve been flirting with Sulli. Every time she’s been interested in another guy, I’ve cut in…and teased her, messed with her hair and shoved her playfully.
I’ve flirted with her.
Will Rochester, her ex-boyfriend, told me to stop flirting, and I did back off my interactions with her because I didn’t want to ruin her first relationship. I couldn’t tell her why I was being standoffish, and when she found out, that almost cost my friendship with Sulli.
She broke up with him instead.
“Shit,” I mutter out loud.
Why has this taken so long for me to recognize? My brain…I’ve just shut off the possibility that I could be flirting. Maybe because I didn’t want to stop, and now it feels like I have to.
SFO has told me I’ve been in denial, and it’s taken Banks yelling at me to finally see that I have been.
Banks sinks down on the mattress beside me.
I look over with reddened eyes. “This is all my fault. She should know what an advance looks like from a guy. I’ve screwed with that—with her.”
He squeezes my shoulder in comfort. “You’re not some Wicked Witch, Akara. It wasn’t out of cruelty.”
“Is jealousy any better?” I ask him.
Banks shrugs. “She’d under
stand.”
“Maybe she shouldn’t,” I mutter. “She deserves a better friend, better bodyguard—”
Banks shoves me. He literally shoves me off the fucking bed. My ass hits the floor and I look up at him like he’s nuts.
He’s smiling this stupid crooked smile.
And I start laughing. “Fuck you again.”
“Fuck you thrice.” He bites down on the toothpick. “If you try to beat yourself up again, I’ll just shove you harder.”
I stay on the floor, resting my forearms on my knees. “What would I do without you, man?”
“You wouldn’t be on the ground, for one.”
I let out another laugh. And I exhale, massaging my knuckles. What are you going to do, Nine? I’m a leader, and I have zero answers on where I need to go. Or what I even feel…
It’s all confusion.
Quietly, I say, “So she doesn’t recognize come-ons.”
“At least she’s not that naïve,” Banks says. Motioning to my chest, he adds, “She’d bite a dick off if the wrong guy whipped it out.” His smile rises at that image he constructed. Reminding me that he likes everything about her.
Yeah. I nod tensely. “You’re the right guy, Banks.” My muscles feel taut. “She likes you—she told me.”
He doesn’t seem that surprised. Just concerned. For me.
“And what’d you say?” he wonders.
Here it goes.
Me on the floor, him on the bed, I meet his gaze head-on. “I didn’t say anything really. Not even after she told me she thinks you don’t like her as more than a friend.”
Banks stares at me, expressionless.
So I add, “I let her believe you don’t like her.”
He blinks. “And why do you think that is, Akara?” I hear the tension in his voice.
“Because I’m an asshole.”
Banks rakes a hand irritably through his hair. “Because you love her too.”
My brows jump. “Too? You love Sul—?”
“Like,” he corrects fast, his eyes dragging across the carpet. “I just like her. You know that.” He looks back up at me.
“Yeah,” I say casually.
“I like her,” Banks says, “and you love her.”
I shake my head without thinking. “It’s not romantic love…” It hasn’t been. I’ve been her bodyguard since she was sixteen.
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