The doors close. He hits a button.
Everything’s happening so fast.
“Fuck,” he grits out.
Staring at his profile, I take in the lines around his eyes as they dart rapidly back and forth over the numbers lighting up above the door.
I swear he’s holding his breath.
Fortunately, we only have to go up five floors and not the sixteen this hotel holds.
He had a panic attack last night,a voice reminds me.
Jesus Christ, has it really only been twenty-four hours?
Stepping closer to him, I bump his shoulder with mine. In nothing but a gray t-shirt soaked all the way through, he might as well be naked.
I take in his wet, inky black hair. The droplets of rain streaking down his smooth, sculpted cheeks, and clinging to thick dark lashes.
The pulse fluttering under his clenched jaw, and the purse of his normally full lips.
Fuck, this boy is beautiful.
I bump his shoulder again.
He snaps his head around, hazel eyes clashing with mine.
“Hey,” I whisper.
His eyes drop to my mouth, and he swallows with an audible click
Ding!
We separate like we’re going to be caught doing something—save for our hands, which I’m pretty sure he’s somehow welded together. It’s absurd. It’s all absurd. Unlike downstairs, no one’s around anyway, once we step out into the hall.
We pass by one door, two doors, then, finally, he slows to a stop.Room 504.
I was already up here a little over an hour ago. But no one answered.
The panic I felt earlier when I realized they weren’t here makes a brief reappearance.
They worked late last night,I remember thinking.Today was supposed to be an early day.
And when I went back down and asked the man at the front desk where they may have gone, and he told me“I don’t know, kid. Probably a bar,”like it was nothing at all, I just—
I lost it.
My phone was dead. I forgot to pack a charger because I rushed out of the apartment like an idiot. Shawn knew I was coming sometime tonight, but didn’t know when.
I was exhausted, having run on nothing more than a couple hours of fitful sleep. Exhausted from the never-ending flight, the never-ending layover, the never-ending day because of the change in time zones that made it feel like I was gettingfartheraway from Waylon, rather than closer.
It was all too much.
It’s allbeentoo much.
And here Waylon thought he’d be the weak one. The one who’d break.
I barely notice as he slides the card in the slot. The door seems to exhale as he unlocks it and pushes it open.