The Perfect Cover (The Perfect Stranger Book 2)

by Charlotte Byrd

  “Miss, are you okay?” someone asks.

  I saw him go in a few minutes ago, and now he’s on his way out.

  “Did something happen to your car?” he asks. “Did someone take your wallet?”

  Soundly, I snap out of my daze and feel around for the bag near my waist.

  “No, I’m fine,” I say quickly, pointing to my cross-body purse.

  So, that’s why Tyler said that.

  A light bulb goes off in my head.

  It seemed odd that he handed it to me when I already had my wallet, but I guess he didn’t want to leave me here without… anything.

  The Good Samaritan walks away from me, relieved that his help is no longer needed.

  I shift my weight from one foot to another as I feel my body start to wake up from the shock.

  Now, I have to figure out what to do.

  I reach over to my purse and unzip it. I’m in another state and it’s going to cost some money to get back.

  But do I have enough?

  Searching through my bag, I see a folded up piece of paper. It’s a letter and it’s from him.

  Tyler left me.

  The world tilts on its axis.

  And then I see him.

  He pulls up to the curb and gives me that beautiful open mouth smile.

  Is this really him? Is this Tyler McDermott?

  Cracking the passenger window, he says, “Get in.”

  I feel like the wind has just been knocked out of me.

  Questioning everything that just happened, I wonder if I had made a mistake.

  “Where did you go?” I ask and shut the door behind me.

  Why is he back?

  What about everything that he had written?

  “What do you mean?” Tyler asks as if nothing had happened, even adding a casual shrug. “I just drove around while you shopped. I didn’t want the camera to focus in on our car or me in particular. I thought that we would be harder to track this way.”

  Of course, yes, that makes sense.

  A wave of relief rushes over me. When I give him a slight nod, he grabs a bag of pretzels from my cold hands and pulls out onto the highway.

  I don’t bring up the letter or that I had seen it. I just turn up Bob Dylan and lose myself in the lyrics.

  Did I actually read what I think I did?

  Was it real?

  I look into my purse and feel around for the letter. In the back pocket, I find its thick outline, where it is bent in half.

  We drive for a while and I start to doze off. I’ve always been the type of person who needs plenty of sleep just to function through the day. Getting up so early and in the middle of the night has worn me out. At first, I fight my tiredness, but then I close my eyes and drift off, admitting defeat.

  I don’t know how much time passes, but it feels like none at all when suddenly, I see his hand rummaging through the bag in my lap.

  Is this a dream?

  When I open my eyes, it all rushes back to me.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “Nothing,” Tyler says a little too quickly, like a man who has been caught doing something illicit. “I was just trying to move that so you would be more comfortable.”

  I don’t believe him.

  Of course not.

  He’s lying but I’m lying, too.

  We drive for another hour and then another one. I want to bring up the letter, but I’m too tired from the day to talk about anything that serious. I need more sleep.

  Later that night, we pull into a Motel 6. It’s a double-decker building with each room’s front door going straight outside. There’s a Denny’s across the street and we talk about getting some food, but I’m not in the mood for anything fast, greasy, or with meat. Luckily, when I check my phone, I learn that there’s a Trader Joe’s only ten minutes away.

  I ask Tyler what he wants and he just gives me a big over-exaggerated shrug.

  “Whatever you’re going to get is fine,” he says with a tone of defeat.

  Does he know what I’m thinking of doing? How could he not?

  I’m tempted to bring up the letter, but again, I hesitate.

  Instead, I wait for him to stop me from going, but he doesn’t.

  He acts like he trusts me even though he probably shouldn’t.

  At Trader Joe’s, I get a cart full of food. It’s cheaper and will last a lot longer than roadside diner food, but it’s not just the money that I’m worried about. I come here to get away from him. I come here to try to make up my mind about what to do.

  Tyler tried to leave me and then changed his mind.

  Now it’s my turn to decide if I should go home.

  While standing in line, I get a call from work. It’s Trisha. Her voice is peppy and sweet as always. I have worked for her for almost a year and while she doesn’t know all the details about my anxieties and fears, she knows that I’m not exactly all there. She also knows that I don’t take spontaneous road trips.

  “Hey there,” I say, forcing a smile on my face.

  “How are you?”

  “Yeah, I’m good,” I mumble. “I just needed to get some time off.”

  I’m not sure if I come off believable, but I hope so.

  “Yes, I know. Normally, it’s no problem at all, but with Lindsey’s due date coming up and with all the uncertainty about her maternity leave, I just wish that you could have chosen a better time for this.”

  Trisha stops short of calling me an asshole, a name that I rightly deserve. Of course, I already know all of this and I wish this could’ve happened any time but now.

  “I know that this is a really big inconvenience, but I’ve just had some stuff come up and I needed a break, okay? I’ll be back in ten days.”

  This is the plan so far. My trip should last a week. In that time, Tyler and I will drive out west and then I’ll come back. But now…

  “I know but we really need your help-” Trisha starts to say, but I cut her off and promise to call back later.

  The checkout clerk scans all of my chips and snacks as well as vegan cheeses and a quart of dairy-free ice cream. We don’t have a fridge in the car, but it probably won’t last me through the evening.

  I drive back to the motel room and open the door using my key card.

  “You’re back?” Tyler asks, sitting up in the bed, looking astonished.

  I nod, wincing under the weight of the groceries.

  “I was certain that I would never see you again,” he says, helping me with the bags.

  “Well, I was certain that I would never see you again at the gas station, so imagine my surprise.”

  The silly smile vanishes from his face. He stares at me without breaking eye contact.

  “Oh, you didn’t know about that? You didn’t think that I read your letter?”

  He darts his eyes away, but only for a moment.

  “You tried to take the letter away from me while I was sleeping.” I continue my assault.

  “What were you doing?” I ask. “It better be the truth. If you tell me one more bullshit lie, then I’m fucking out of here.”

  Isabelle

  When we talk…

  Tyler closes his eyes and licks his lips. He opens his mouth like he’s about to say something, but then inhales a little breath and stops himself. I hope he knows that I’m serious. I hope he knows that if he doesn’t tell me the truth, then I won’t continue on this journey with him for another mile.

  “Is this why you went to the store?” he asks, even though he knows the answer.

  “I had to think. I read the letter and I know what it says. You were going to leave me.”

  “I know, I was, but since you read the letter you know the truth. Everything in the letter is the truth.”

  “What was I supposed to do? After you left me at the gas station?”

  He licks his lips again and looks down at the floor.

  “Did you not finish reading it?”

  “Of course I did,” I say, nod
ding vigorously. “You left me $1,000. You told me to take an Uber to the nearest car rental place. On paper, it was all going to work out perfectly, wasn’t it?”

  “Why wouldn’t it work out that way?”

  “The world doesn’t work like that. It’s not just about the logistics of the whole thing, there are other things at play.

  “I was alone. Yes, I have money but I need….” I stop short of saying that I needed him. "We made all these plans and we were going to start this new life.”

  “We were never going to start a life together. I can’t let that happen, Isabelle. You mean the world to me. I fucking love you. That means that I can’t have anything happening to you. The federal marshals are after me. My face is plastered on every television screen in the nation. You would have to live under a rock to not know what I look like or how much money my reward is. You really think that I’m going to get away with this?”

  “How many times are you going to question that? I mean, what are we even doing if you don’t believe that you’re going to get away? Why did you even try to escape? What’s the fucking point?”

  Anger starts to rise up within me again.

  “Listen, I’ll try to explain why I left that letter, but there’s something else that you need to know.”

  I cross my arms and turn away from him. I told him that I want to hear the truth and that I would hear him out, but now I am too angry, upset, and pissed off.

  “I can’t believe you were just going to leave me there. I mean, how am I going to trust you again?”

  Tyler shakes his head and says, “Maybe you shouldn’t.”

  He takes a step closer to me and puts his arms around mine. “You have to hear me out though.”

  I shake my head.

  He bends his head down and presses his lips to my neck.

  They are cool to the touch. Soft and silky.

  When I feel his tongue on my skin, shivers run up my spine. I don’t want to hear anything that he has to say and yet I can’t not listen.

  “I shouldn’t have left. It is one of the million mistakes that I have made in my life so far. I’m sure that I’m going to make more. People act like they can live this life with no regrets, but that’s just a farce. It’s fucking make-believe.

  “It’s impossible to live that way. Every day that you make a decision, any number of things can happen. I wrote that letter to protect you. I needed you to drive me out of the city, out of your development where the cops were checking every car. I needed your help, but after that? I was worried about you.

  “You shouldn’t risk your life to protect me. I’m a scumbag. I didn’t kill Sarah or Greg, but that doesn’t make me a non-shitty person. It is my cross to bear and I’m trying to gain my own freedom but the only thing that would happen to you is that they would put you in prison for helping me. I don’t want to see that happen.”

  I look up at Tyler and our eyes meet. I can’t look away. I know that every word of what he is saying is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

  He bends down and puts his lips onto mine. I open my mouth and kiss him back.

  Our arms look for each other’s and our fingers intertwine. He presses his body to mine and I push back at him. My hands make their way up his neck and bury themselves in his hair. He grabs me by my ponytail and tugs down.

  With my head tilted back, he kisses my exposed neck. His mouth generates heat that overwhelms me. I wrap my leg around him, pulling him closer to me. His hands start to move up and down my body, feverishly, almost as if they are in search of something.

  My clothes can't come off fast enough.

  I raise my arms up as he pulls off my shirt and then I tug at his. When he tries to lean over and kiss the top of my breasts, I push him away for a moment and run my fingers up and down his hard, chiseled body.

  “You're so hot,” I whisper.

  “Not as hot as you are,” he says.

  Suddenly, I get very self-conscious about my stomach and I suck it in a little bit, but he shakes his head, so I stop.

  He runs his fingers up and down my side, then leans over and unclasps my bra. We make our way to the bed where he pushes me down and pulls off my leggings.

  Leaning over me, he unbuckles his pants and lets them slide all the way down to the floor. I glance down at his large cock and my mouth waters for it.

  When I lean over and rub my hands around it, I glance up and see him close his eyes. When I replace my hands with my mouth, he tilts his head back slowly.

  A few moments later, he pulls away and flips me over onto my stomach.

  “I want you,” he whispers in my ear.

  “I want you, too,” I whisper back even though my mouth is muffled by the pillow.

  My desire for him burns in the center of my core and I get wetter and wetter. I open my legs wide and stick my butt in the air, and he comes from behind and slides in.

  As soon as I take him all the way inside, suddenly the world falls away and nothing else exists except for the two of us.

  Our movements are slow at first.

  Easy-going and relaxed.

  Then something starts to build within and I begin to crave him. I move my body back and forth increasing the speed of each thrust. Grabbing onto my hips, he starts to take control. He knows exactly what I want and he's going to give it to me.

  A few moments later, the energy between us explodes almost at the same time. A wave of pleasure overwhelms my senses. I curl my toes and let myself go. He collapses on top of me and I breathe hard into the sheets and pillows underneath.

  We stay there for some time, reveling in the beauty of what just happened. Some people might think this is a sin, but I see it as an expression of love with a man who completes me.

  “Oh my God,” I whisper, putting my hand over my mouth.

  “What’s wrong?” Tyler asks, pulling out.

  “We didn't use anything,” I gasp.

  My voice is barely audible and my chest tightens out of fear.

  “What are you talking about?” He laughs. “I slipped on a condom right before. I would never go bareback without your permission.”

  I let out a sigh of relief and smile.

  Tyler

  After…

  I’ve never had this kind of sexual chemistry with anyone before. With my wife, we had good sex, but we were never drawn to each other this way. I don’t know why we got married, except that it seemed like something that everyone was doing.

  Isabelle asks me all about it as we lie in each other’s arms, holding on to one another in the glow of what we’d just done.

  “So, how did it happen?” she asks again. “You loved her, of course, right?”

  “Yes, I did,” I say, thinking back to that kid that went to Penn who got into a relationship with a girl who lived on his floor and somehow never got out of it.

  “I met her at orientation,” I say quietly. “She had a really big fun side and she always knew how to laugh. We had the same group of friends. We all hung out together and somehow everyone separated into couples. After graduation, all of our friends started to get married. One engagement followed another. We lived together and I knew that she expected that from me as well. I loved her and I had no reason to not get her an engagement ring.”

  Isabelle gives me a nod as if she understands, but the truth is that I hardly understand it myself.

  Why would someone marry someone that they had no interest in being married to?

  “Do you think you’ll ever get married again?” she asks.

  I look down at her.

  She narrows her eyes in that cunning analyzing sort of way.

  “Is that a proposal?” I ask.

  Her eyes turn into big round saucers as a wave of surprise rushes over her.

  “No, absolutely not,” she says.

  “I’m just kidding,” I say, smiling with the corner of my lips. “I’d marry you in a second.”

  I let the line hang there, realizing that it is not even
an exaggeration of the truth.

  “Tell me something real,” she says.

  I know that I can’t, or shouldn’t, repeat myself.

  “Sarah and I were very different people. We wanted very different things in the world. It’s not that I didn’t want a wife and a family. It’s that I didn’t want it with her. It’s a really cruel thing to say, but I used to think that I was just not the marrying type. I just didn’t want to be married, but the truth is that I just didn’t want to be married to her.”

  “So, why did you marry her?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  She pulls away from me and sits up, covering her breasts with the barely threaded Motel 6 sheet.

  “It just seemed like the polite thing to do,” I finally say. “I hate how coldhearted and detached I sound, but that’s the truth. That’s what happened. All of our friends were getting married and I didn’t want to not propose and make her feel like there was something wrong with our relationship. The truth was that there was nothing wrong with our relationship. I loved her and she loved me and I wanted to be with her. Then after a while, I didn’t want to be with her anymore and I didn’t know how to stop the marriage.”

  “When was this?” she asks.

  “It was about a year before her murder. Things had been off for a while. We became ships passing in the night. I started spending more time at work. I wanted to get my own apartment but I didn’t want to break her heart. I kept postponing telling her. I kept spending more and more time in the office. After a while, I just didn’t come home at all.”

  “You had no idea that she was having an affair?”

  I shake my head and say, “Honestly, it would have been a relief to find out. Of course, I didn’t want her to sleep with Greg, but it would’ve made our conversation a lot easier.”

  We talk about this and a lot more things while lying in bed that evening, without getting dressed. I haven’t talked to anyone about this before.