Maddie rolled her eyes, which was her way of giving in.
So Dingo pushed for even more. “But before we do that, you need to send your father a text. A real one, with a real apology, confirming that we’ll meet them tomorrow. And considering that you’re about to ask him to borrow eight thousand dollars…? Try to say something nice.”
It was nearly 2200—ten P.M.—when the text came in on Pete’s phone.
“I’m so sorry. I know you’ve been worried.” Shayla read it aloud as they drove slowly through the open-all-night McDonald’s parking lot, still searching for Dingo’s maroon sedan. “But I’m safe. Dingo is honorable. None of this is his fault. We will meet you and Shayla tomorrow.”
He looked at her face, lit by his phone’s screen. “Text her back. Please. Tell her I’m glad you’re safe. Let’s meet now. We’ll come to you.”
Her fingers moved as he spoke, and his phone whooshed as she hit send.
“What does she mean—Dingo is honorable?” he wondered. “That he’s going to marry her and help raise my grandchild?”
“I’m picking up more of a The drugs aren’t his vibe,” Shay said. “Along with Please don’t kill him on sight when we meet tomorrow.”
“So she’s trying to protect him,” Pete concluded as he left the McD’s. Just across the street was a Carl’s Jr. He pulled into that parking lot. “Any response?”
“Not yet.”
He was tired of waiting, and since Maddie had finally unblocked him to send that text, he used his truck’s Bluetooth to call her phone.
But it went right to voicemail. “You’ve reached Maddie. Leave a message. Or not.”
“Maddie, it’s your dad. Call me. Please. We’ve tracked you to both Sacramento and Manzanar, and I’m worried that if we could find you, the men who hurt Dingo’s friend Daryl might be able to find you, too. We’re nearby. Please call. I just want to help. I love you.” His voice fucking cracked, and as he punched the connection, he shook his head in disgust.
Shay, however, was doing her warm-eyes thing. “We should add one more thing,” she said. “Maybe in a text? I know we don’t know how far their reach is—the $12K NOW people who put Daryl into the hospital…? But if this is drug-related, well, I’ve done research and that type of criminal activity tends to be territorial, so…Maddie’s definitely safer out here.”
He glanced at her. “Writing research?”
She nodded. “Yeah, so it is what it is. Although, despite what you told Maddie, I’m pretty sure that you, me, and maybe Hiroko are the only people on the planet who might’ve guessed she would go to Manzanar from Sacramento. I seriously doubt she’s in immediate danger.”
“I agree.” He paused. “Well, she is with Dingo. And he’s an idiot.”
“But in Maddie’s eyes, he’s an honorable one. P.S.,” she recited the words as she typed the text. “Please stay put. Do NOT go to San Diego. It’s not safe. Please let us come directly to you ASAP so we can help.” She looked up. “I’ll leave out Dingo sounds swell, can’t wait to meet him again, and just say, Love, Dad.”
Pete laughed. “Thanks.”
She hit send.
Pete cleared his throat. “If you were Maddie and Dingo, where would you really be?” he asked. “Right now?”
She took a deep breath and narrowed her eyes. “After an overnight drive from San Diego to Sacramento, a little morning B&E at my old friend Fiona’s, and then another long drive, with an emotional afternoon at the windswept, sun-baked historic site of a national embarrassment? I’d be sleeping. In the car. Regardless of whether I’d taken a wad of cash from Fiona’s room. Because I wouldn’t want Dingo’s car sitting in a motel parking lot, like a giant, flashing MADDIE IS HERE sign, within view of the highway. Likewise, I wouldn’t be sleeping while parked at the Desert Flower All-Nite Diner.” She gestured at the restaurant whose lot they were driving through. “I’d find some dark, deserted backstreet, in one of these little towns along 395, and even then I’d sleep very lightly, and plan to wake up early, get moving at dawn. Hopefully checking my phone when I wake up, for a message from my father.”
Pete nodded. “That’s what I thought, too,” he said, as he pulled next door, into the parking lot for the Desert Flower Motel, where a neon vacancy sign was lit. “So how about we call it a night, and get, um, a couple of rooms.”
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,” sh
e 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.”
Some Kind of Hero Page 30