After gathering up a bundle of bills from Dexter’s wallet and the switchblade that’s still coated in his father’s blood, I peel out of the driver’s seat and walk up to the main entrance. Since we needed to perfect our ruse, we didn’t have time to discuss the semantics of our crime, but with our last run-in at a motel still in the forefront of my mind, I keep my head down low and my eyes peeled to the ground.
“A king or two singles?” the clerk asks when he detects my presence.
I drift my eyes back to Dexter slumped in the passenger seat of our borrowed ride, unsure of how to answer. The last motel we stayed in only had one bed, but it was very expensive, so is it pretentious of me to assume he wants to share a bed again?
The last time I shared a bed with a man who was passed out saw him leaving the next morning in a hurry, and I didn’t see him again for months.
I don’t want that to happen with Dexter, so instead of gesturing my head to the king-size bed in the pamphlet on the counter, I point to the two-single suite instead. It makes me sad. Even though I shouldn’t, I like sharing a bed with Dexter.
“That’ll be eighty,” the clerk says before he tosses a clipboard onto the counter wedged between us.
I slowly peer up at him, unsure of what to do. The last time I put my details down at a seedy motel like this, the bad man found me. He took me to visit a prison before he dumped me at a hospital with no windows. I don’t want to go there again. I’d rather die than be poked and prodded like they did to me my first several months there. They didn’t touch my ungodly area like Lee wanted to, but what they did was far worse. They taunted me and called me names.
I should have killed them.
Perhaps Dexter will when you tell him what they did to you.
Mistaking my hopeful nod to the voices in my head as reluctance, the clerk locks his eyes with mine. “If you don’t want to fill in the form, the room rate is double.” He drags his eyes down my body. It makes my stomach flip, and not in a good way. I want to vomit even more now than I did when Dexter went over his plan to make his father pay. “I’ve seen how much girls like you get around these parts. I’m sure it won’t cause too much of an indent in your takings.”
I hide my daftness of his riddle with a smile before tossing two one-hundred bills onto the counter, snatch up the key he’s dangling in front of me, then spin around. He can keep the change if it removes his sleazy eyes from me.
I make it almost to the door before the clerk shouts for me to stop. My blade feels heavy in my hand when I hear the stomps of his boots as he creeps up on me. I’m not overly good at reading people, but his vibe is off. It reminds me of the bad man we ate spaghetti with only two nights ago. He wants something from me I’m not willing to give, and just like Dexter’s father, it will cost him his life.
As he stalks my way, I feel his beady eyes drinking in my body. Unlike when Dexter watched me with the same heavy-hooded and glazed-over stare the past two hours, it doesn’t cause a good tingle between my legs. It makes me want to barf on the dirty tile floor.
I try to yank away from him when he pulls up a section of my hair to sniff it. I almost warn him that he’ll be in big trouble if he touches me again, but before I can beg my brain to speak the words the voices in my head are screaming, he asks, “What’s your rate?”
I’m lost as to what he means, but my naïveness doesn’t last long.
“We cater for all types oftravelersout this way…” he air quotes ‘travelers’ so I have no trouble understanding the dip in his tone before he tugs me back to him by a rough grab of my arm, “… but I’ve never seen one with as much innocence as you. Even the way you walk doesn’t reflect banged-up insides from being fucked seven ways from Sunday.”
As my mouth gapes, the truth smacks into me. He thinks I’m one of those women my daddy visited once a month after my mother died. They wore pretty dresses like my mom, and their lipstick was just as red as her blood seeping into her mattress, but they weren’t her no matter how much my father wished they were. He said they were whores and told me I’d grow up to be just like them.
That night I made his porridge extra hot. He couldn’t taste the poison I hid in his food the months leading to his death, but I was hopeful it burned when it slithered to his stomach.
“Because I might just let you stay for free for how pretty your hair smells.” With his growl loud enough for me to hear it twice, he misses the slightest creak of my razor when I flick it open. “I like the shy, demure girls, but there’s something different about you, isn’t there?” He grinds himself against my backside. “You’re special.”
I’m about to show him exactly how special I am, but before I can, a deep penetrating voice breaks through the silence teeming between us. “Is there a problem?” Dexter slants his head to the side as his scrunched brows shoot up high on his face. His words are slurred, but as he stands before me now, you wouldn’t know that he had been drugged only hours ago.
I like how strong he is.
I like it very much.
Me too,shouts a voice in my head.
The clerk takes a giant step back when Dexter heads our way. He’s scared. I can smell it seeping from his skin and see it dripping from the pores of his sweaty armpits. Rightfully so. He should be scared. Dexter’s expression is the same one he wore after trashing our hotel room. Death is dancing in his eyes, and I’ve never seen anything more entrancing in my life.
“Give it to me,” he demands after stopping in front of me, his eyes locked on the sliver of silver shimmering in my hand. I haven’t had the chance to slice it across the clerk’s face yet, but he grabbed me hard enough to mark, so shouldn’t retaliation be anticipated, much less sought?
When Dexter arches a brow, reminding me I haven’t answered him, I shake my head. I don’t want him to be mad, but he taught me that sometimes punishments must be handled in-house.
I wasn’t meant to kill his father. We only practiced my ballet routine on repeat in case Dexter couldn’t get to me before his father. We had no clue he would drug his own son.
My father was a terrible man, but the only drugs he ever gave me were the ones prescribed by doctors in white coats. I like to pretend he did that because he cared for me, but as the drugs wear off, so does the fog in my head. My father never did anything if it didn’t benefit him in some way, so although he told me he killed my mother for me, I know that isn’t true. He did it for himself.
Just like I killed him for me
It was him or me, and for once, I put myself first.
