So he stayed there, chain-smoking, watching the window of the motel room until the early hours of the morning when the lights turned off.
Caroline
The smell of coffee woke me.
Then the smell of reality on the sheets. Of Liam.
We’d barely spoken since he’d put me on the back of his bike and driven almost ten hours straight until he forced me into a Walmart to get the essentials, had a silent dinner at a shitty roadside diner and got us a room here.
No, we spoke with him laying down the law in a Walmart parking lot, in the middle of nowhere, Texas.
“I’m betraying my club by doing this,” he said, shoving the plastic bags in his saddlebags.
I watched, not looking at him. I couldn’t. Because I knew what he was doing. What I was making him do. Abandon his family in their time of need.
A spiteful part of me was happy about that, because he’d done that already, to his real family. I wanted him to feel the pain of doing that again.
But the rest of me, who’d played poker with Claw, who’d watched movies with Macy, drank tequila with Scarlett, that part felt sickened by what I knew he was doing.
“I didn’t ask you to do this,” I said, still staring at his bike. It was a good bike.
Harley. Of course.
Matte black.
Also not surprising.
Guns in the saddlebags.
Along with a pair of cotton, unsexy Walmart panties, sweats, toothbrush and toothpaste, and face wash. I hadn’t exactly been able to travel with any of them when I was climbing out a window.
And fresh bandages for my arm.
Liam had noticed it on the first stop.
He’d been horrified at the blood at the open flesh, which was surprising, considering his chosen lifestyle. His grip was bruising on my wrist and he looked up at me. “Why the fuck do you keep bleeding around me?”
My stomach dropped. “You tell me.”
He didn’t.
He went inside to the gas station, got what was an impressive first aid kit for a place in the middle of nowhere and tended to my cut.
The outside one, at least.
He’d checked on it before he spoke.
“You didn’t ask me to do this,” he repeated quietly. “You didn’t give me a fuckin’ choice!” he yelled.
“I gave you a choice,” I said voice even.
He looked from my arm to me. “You getting hurt at the hands of my club is not a fucking choice.” He paused. “Get on the fuckin’ bike.”
I glared at him. Then got on the fucking bike.
When we got to the motel, he’d paid, cash of course, carried my bags up and then left saying he had calls to make.
He didn’t come back for four hours.
At that point, I’d been unable to battle my heavy eyes. You’d think that I would’ve been kept awake by the reality of it all, of going back to Castle Springs, where there was a grave for the man whose bike I was sitting on the back of. The man I was fucking. The man I was falling in love with all over again.
But it was the reality of it all that had me chasing oblivion. Or had oblivion chasing me.
By the smell of sheets—cigarettes and Liam—he’d slept some. I remembered a dream of being warm, of hands on me, feeling safe, but I couldn’t trust it. Because nothing with Liam was a dream. And nothing was safe.
“Coffee.” A tattooed hand placed a takeaway cup on the table beside me. The rich scent beckoned me. I sat up, wincing at my sore muscles as I did so.
Liam had moved himself all the way across the room in the space of time it took me to sit up. Then again, it was a slow process.
He watched my movements. “Ridin’ long haul on a bike isn’t exactly good for the body. You’ll get used to it.”
“No, I won’t,” I shot with venom.
His voice was scratchy. Smoky. He was dressed. Showered. In a fresh black tee he’d gotten yesterday.
People had stared at him in Walmart. At first, I thought it was because of the tattoos, the cut, we were in rural Texas, after all. But the more I watched them, I realized it was his face. They stared at his scar obviously as if he were some kind of attraction. It angered me the second I figured it out. It sickened me. People were fascinated by things that they deemed morbid. And an otherwise beautiful man with a jagged scar cutting through his face was morbid for them. Was cause to stare.
And it was the adults.
The children barely gave him a second glance. Children, who didn’t know any better didn’t have the hunger for the morbid.
But adults who should’ve known fucking better.
Liam didn’t seem to notice. I guess his thoughts had been elsewhere. Maybe back in New Mexico, with the family he’d left behind in their time of need. Or ahead in Castle Springs, with the family who visited his grave every Sunday after church.