The way his eyes lit up when he saw me made me feel like shit for caring so much about Stewart, and the past, but I couldn’t help it.
“There’s a motel across the street.” He tilted his head. “I’m thinking we shower, and I can grab us some food? The tow truck won’t be able to grab our truck until the morning, so we’re stuck here.”
I nodded, biting my lip. “Sounds good.”
We headed out of the gas station, and I asked, “Do you want me to carry any of those?”
“I can handle a couple of bags.” He hip-bumped me lightly, making me smile. “Thanks though.”
“You’re so welcome,” I drawled, making his lips quirk upward in a tiny grin.
We got a room in the motel a few minutes later. It was the kind of place I usually ended up staying in when I stayed somewhere alone—seedy, that is—but Zed didn’t seem uncomfortable with it.
We found our room on the second floor, and stepped inside. It wasn’t pretty, but it smelled clean, and the bed was made.
“You okay if I join you in the shower?” Zed checked, as he set his bags of snacks on the scratched-wood desk across from the bed.
I bit my lip. “Would you mind if I washed up alone this time? I’ll be quick.”
“Of course not.” His fingers brushed my arm lightly. “No need to hurry.”
I nodded, slipping into the bathroom.
What I didn’t expect was for Zed to follow me right on inside.
He stripped out of his dirt-coated clothes, piling them on the floor, and leaned up against the counter in his underwear with a stack of hot dogs wrapped in tinfoil next to him.
My stomach rumbled, but I turned the shower on.
Zed unwrapped a hot dog, and took a bite before holding it out to me.
I took a quick bite of my own, then stripped my shirt over my head. When the rest of my clothes were off too, I took the whole hot dog that Zed had already unwrapped and held out for me.
I didn’t consider the consequences as I stuffed my face with food, trying to feed the black hole that my stomach had turned into when I became a werewolf.
I took another hot dog from the grinning, mostly-naked man before ducking into the shower. The food was cheering me up, by some miracle, and I was feeling better about everything.
Downing the second hot dog only took a minute, and then I was scrubbing myself clean with the complimentary bar of scratchy soap that the motel provided.
“I don’t know if there’s going to be enough shampoo for both of us,” I called out to Zed.
He chuckled. “I’ll just use soap.”
“You’d better not put a bar of shitty motel soap on that hair,” I shot back. “Trust me, bad idea.”
“It’ll survive.”
“Don’t risk it,” I warned.
My lips turned down in a grimace as my stomach did a massive flip.
A groan escaped me, and my hand spread over my abdomen as I bent over.
“You okay?” Zed’s voice was enough to tell me that he was considering coming into the shower to check whether or not I was alright.
“Fine,” I managed to get out.
It was a lie.