She opened the door up and walked right inside, staring in awe at everything that was in there.
“Why don’t you live in here while you’re home?” she asked curiously. “You could be in here and free up one of the bedrooms for everybody else.”
What she said was true.
I’d been considering it a lot now that my brothers were married.
There was only so much of them having sex that I could handle, that was for sure. But, like when we’d first moved back and moved into the trailer, I’d chosen to stay.
We’d always been a tight-knit family. We’d also always been together—minus Georgia, of course. Though Georgia had always been there.
Being away in the military had been hard on me. I’d gone from having three siblings always there, always up in my business, to no one in a blink of an eye.
So, when I got back, that was something that I’d craved—the closeness.
“I’ve considered it,” I admitted. “But we’ve always been close. Leaving seems like a copout.”
“Hmm,” she said. “It’s really nice, though. Like… way nicer than anything that I’ve ever seen before, and I’ve seen some nice ones with all the houses my father has done for people. There was this one guy that lived on a million acres. He moved out early so he could watch over the construction—so things went exactly how he wanted—and he had this motor coach. Jesus, it was more opulent than our house. It had marble floors. Chandeliers. I would say it was only a step down from this one.”
I took in the travel trailer through her eyes.
“I bought it off a guy,” I said. “He was passing through town when the axle underneath of it broke. He’d run over a cow, and that was the result.” I looked at the bed and grinned. “The bed was completely demolished when I bought it. Everything from here backwards was fucked. Ace and I met him on the road, and he was looking at it in disgust. I offered him a grand and he sold it to me on the spot. Sent the title and everything to me in the mail a week later.”
She shook her head.
“How long did it take you to fix it? How much?” she asked.
“Couple grand. And it took me about a week to fix it. Put a new axle under it. Changed up the paneling in the back. Right as rain a week later.” I pointed to the bedroom door that was closed. “I got a little imaginative in there since nobody could see it from the outside.”
She pushed through the door with cautious steps, then burst out laughing.
“You have a king-sized bed in here!” she said.
“Yep,” I agreed. “And that’s it.”
That was the only thing that could fit once I was through with fixing it.
The only other option I would’ve had would’ve been a smaller bed with about half a foot of walking room.
What was the fucking point?
So, I’d just tossed a king-sized mattress in there and had called it good.
“I assume,” she said, turning around and once again surveying the rest of the trailer. “It’s so small in there because you have so much shit out here. Do these walls pop out?”
I nodded. “They do. This one and this one go out.” I pointed at the edges. “But the back no longer pops out thanks to not really knowing how to fix that part that was broken. Not that I can really tell.”
Her lips twitched.
“Where will I be sleeping?” She looked around for a couch, but the RV didn’t have one.
“Umm,” I hesitated. “The bed.”
She frowned.
“It’s big enough for both of us,” I told her.
I wasn’t sure who I was trying to convince, though. Her or me.
“We’ll grab a hotel room if you want,” I offered.
She shook her head. “I don’t want a hotel room.”
I felt something inside of me shift.
“Banks,” she said.
I turned so that I was facing her fully.
“This won’t look right if we don’t do it right.”
I frowned, unsure of what she meant.
“We have to play the part,” she continued.
“Play the part…”
“We have to make it look good,” she urged.
That was when I understood.
Sleeping in the same bed would make this whole ruse of us being together seem real.
Well fuck me sideways but I was down.
I wanted it.
I would use anything in my arsenal to get her where I wanted her.
The thing was, I just didn’t want to scare her.
I didn’t want to move too fast.
I didn’t want to do something she wasn’t willing to do.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Sleeping in a hotel room would be counterintuitive.” She nodded in confirmation.
And I realized, right then and there, that this was going to be much, much better than I ever thought it would.
Candy Ray Sunshine would finally be mine.
It was only a matter of time.Chapter 12Do you remember when you didn’t need eight hours of sleep a night to function and you could walk up stairs without your knees creaking?