At first, he talked. Practically babbled, which wasn’t like him. Then he fell quiet as we packed up the rental car. The silence stretched over us all day, broken only by the radio, the traffic, and the occasional few words to communicate when we needed to stop for food or fuel or to stretch. As the hours wore on, our nerves frayed to shredded threads.
By the time we stopped for the night just over the South Dakota state line, he looked as exhausted as I felt. We needed time away from each other. I couldn’t wait for the solitude of my own room and the serenity of a long, hot bath.
Imagine my surprise when I stepped into the neat butcramped hotel room with one queen-size bed taking up most of the space, and Ben followed me and closed the door behind us.
I whirled around to face him. “I can settle in by myself.”
He raised his eyebrows.
I waved my hands in a shooing motion. “Time for you to go to your own room.”
“Not a chance.” He edged past me and perched his bags on the one upholstered chair wedged into a corner. “It was bad enough when you were peripheral to Devlin’s mess, but if heisthe mess, you might be closer to the target center than we thought.”
He wasn’t wrong, and I wasn’t going to win this argument, but I had to try one last time.
“There’s barely enough room for one person to move around in here.” I glanced at the bed, hoping he could read my meaning without me mentioning it. We only had one bed again, and this time, I saw no space for his sleeping bag.
He dropped said bag on the floor in front of him and glanced around the space. “We’ll figure it out.” He inclined his head toward the small bathroom. “You first. I need to check in with Pasco and get an update on the details for tomorrow night.”
Tomorrow night, when we’d part ways. We not only wanted to get away from each other, we needed it. The way we were going, it would be another goodbye with no closure, which was one thing I’d promised myself I’d demand if I ever saw him again. It had been easy to make demands on a memory. It was a hell of a lot harder to force my will on the flesh-and-blood man in front of me.
I laid my suitcase on the bed, unzipped it, and pulled out the items I needed. Walking a few steps to the bathroom, I spotted a tub. “I’m going to take a soaking bath, so it’ll be a while.”
Ben, tapping his iPad screen, didn’t look up. “Take all the time you need.”
I took him at his word and emerged from the small bathroom forty minutes later. Tendrils of steam drifted out in front of me as I stepped into the comparatively cold bedroom.
Ben, now wearing shorts and a wicking T-shirt and stretching in the tiny space between the foot of the bed and the wall, went still and stared at me.
I shivered. I told myself it was from the cold and not his intense eyes.
“Sorry about the temperature.” He seemed to snap out of his reverie. “I turned down the thermostat while I did my round of hundreds. I can turn it back up.”
“Round of…?”
“Round of hundreds. One hundred each of sit-ups, push-ups, and squats.”
I did my damnedest not to picture him working out with his muscles bulging, a soft sheen of sweat gathering on his skin, as he stripped naked and stepped under the shower spray. I failed. Badly.
“The cold air feels good,” I said. “I’m pretty warm. From my bath, I mean.”
“I can tell.” He swept his gaze over my face. “You’re flushed.”
Yep, from head to toe, and he’d noticed it. Another shiver rippled through me, this time chasing the wake of pure arousal. Getting hot and bothered over him while we were holed up in this small space was a spectacularly bad idea. I’d moved on, heart and soul, from the stupid girl who’d fallen for him. Now I needed to remind my body about that development.
I broke our gaze. We’d been doing way too much staring at each other from across rooms and cars and tables. We had to stop.Ihad to stop. Twenty-four hours from now could not come soon enough, closure be damned.
I tucked my dirty clothes into a side pouch on my suitcase and zipped the bag closed. I pushed it in Ben’s direction. “Could you…?”
“Of course.” He rearranged his bags on the chair and put my suitcase beside them. “Hey, Sav, before I head to the shower, I want to talk to you about something.”
The only thing worse than our longing stares were our awkward conversations. “Can it wait until tomorrow? I’m pretty tired.”
“Actually,” he rubbed the back of his neck, “I’d like to do it now, if that’s okay. It’s been a long time coming, and I need to say it.”
His serious tone made me glance at him. “Okay, sure.”
He motioned toward the bed. “Maybe you should sit.”
