I keep my mouth shut, glancing between him and his new baby momma in the dark living room that I decorated.
DoI want to live here with them? No, not really.
“Why don’t I rent you a hotel room? I have credit card points. You can stay there for a few weeks.”
I don’t say anything for a minute. Then, “A hotel does sound nice…” I hurry upstairs to the guest room and stuff the clothes I can find into a bag then call for Truman.
Nathan is waiting with his keys.
Truman seems apprehensive as I stash my bags in the back seat of my newly minted ex-fiancé’s car.
“Don’t you want to put him in his dog seat belt?” Nathan asks. Something about his smile has my skin prickling.
I ignore it, because it’s raining and my phone battery is low, and I’m cold and tired, and I bet I can order room service on Nathan’s credit card.
I plug in my phone into the charger as Nathan turns onto the street—and turns away from the downtown hotel district.
The city lights dim behind us as Nathan’s Mercedes roars down the road that runs along the ocean.
“Um…” I twist in my seat. “What hotel are we going to, exactly?”
Nathan works his jaw. “It’s a boutique hotel.”
“What’s the name?” I reach for my phone to look it up. “Damn it!” The phone goes black and starts updating. “Stupid thing.” I yank it off the charger to slap at it.
Upset by the loss of power, the phone freezes on the update screen.
While I’m trying to turn it off or force a restart, Nathan yanks the wheel of the car, and dirt and gravel spew under the wheels as the car skids to a stop on the side of the road.
Nathan’s unfastening my seat belt.
“Out.”
“What?”
“Get out.”
“No. You said you were driving me to a hotel.”
“You seriously believed that?” Nathan’s face is screwed up in disgust. “I’m not paying for your hotel, I’m not letting you stay in my house, and I’m not letting you keep that dog.”
Truman is howling in the back seat.
I scramble, reaching for him as Nathan lunges, pushing me against the passenger door, trying to force me out of the car.
“You can’t dump me here! Are you insane?”
“You’re the insane one, thinking I’m just going to let you walk off with my dog after you were cheating on me.”
“You were the cheater!” I bang him with the bricked phone in my hands while he fumbles for the door handle.
Kicking at him, I lose my shoe. The seat belt strap burns my hand as I slip too quickly along it when I topple out of the now-open car door.
“Truman!” I scream as I splat in the mud and kick at Nathan, who is trying to shove me away.
I lose my other shoe.
The side of my foot scrapes the passenger seat as Nathan gives me one more shove.
