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And when she did, when she went over the edge, she said my name. And I felt like maybe my life wasn’t so lonely after all.
Nine
Dani
We got dressed and packed in silence. Cavan was already dressed, because he’d just given me an orgasm that changed my life without taking off a stitch of clothing. And he didn’t even seem smug about it.
I should have felt awkward, embarrassed maybe, but I didn’t. I felt good. Good. I had never come like that—not by myself, and definitely not with someone else. And he’d just given it to me without expecting anything in return.
My body was humming like someone had hooked up live wires to it, and the fear and clingy exhaustion had dropped away. Even McMurphy’s phone call couldn’t ruin this. It was crazy, but all I wanted was to get in a car with Cavan Wilder and get the hell out of Arizona.
When I had dug through my suitcase and put on jeans and a t-shirt, then repacked, I turned to find Cavan standing next to the door, holding my phone in his hand, l
ooking down at it and frowning in thought, that sexy furrow deepening between his eyebrows. “What?” I asked him.
“Something McMurphy said,” he replied. “Something about a cheap hotel room.”
I knew the exact words, though Cavan didn’t say them: cheap slut in a cheap hotel room. The words didn’t hurt me—I’d been called a slut before. Maybe I was one; I didn’t care. McMurphy, as Cavan said, could go fuck himself.
But it hit me, what Cavan was getting at. Cheap hotel room. “You think he knows where we are?”
Cavan’s eyes met mine. “We’ve been careful, and I paid for the rooms in cash. So I have to wonder, how the fuck does he know?” He held up my phone.
My good mood fell away. The panic tried to come back, but I beat it down, tried to think. “He can’t track me through my phone. Can he?” McMurphy was just a forty-year-old MC president who liked beer and women, not an IT genius. The Black Dog didn’t have an IT genius. Except—
“Has he ever had your phone when you weren’t there?” Cavan asked.
My mind was blank. He could have. Of course he could have. I’d been with McMurphy for seven months. “I can’t remember. But when I was sleeping, or in the bathroom, or forgot it at home, then sure.” God—he could have tracked me for months. I wouldn’t put it past him. I met Cavan’s gaze. “Did I fuck everything up for us?”
That seemed to surprise him. “You haven’t fucked anything up,” he said. “We’re still alive, aren’t we?”
“McMurphy’s brother, Evan,” I said. “He got divorced. He used some app on his wife’s phone to track her. I remember it came up in the divorce hearings. Something to do with invasion of her privacy.” The divorce had been bitter, and Evan hadn’t come out of it very well. He and McMurphy shared opinions on women. “McMurphy wouldn’t know how to do it himself, but Evan would.”
Cavan’s gray eyes calculated swiftly. “You have anything irreplaceable on this phone?” he asked.
I almost laughed. The irreplaceable things most people had on their phones—photos, the numbers of people they loved—I had none of that. For a second I saw my mother’s face, the last time I’d seen her, when I left home. I’d gotten a new number and I hadn’t contacted her since.
I wondered if I was brave enough yet to change that. Then I put the idea out of my head.
“There’s nothing important on there,” I told Cavan.
Without another word, he walked to the bathroom, threw the phone in the toilet, and walked out again. “We’re running out of time,” he said, picking up our bags. “Let’s go.” His gaze traveled down to my feet. “You’re wearing high heels.”
“They’re the only shoes I packed,” I explained, looking down at where my feet were pinched into the heels below the hem of my jeans. “I was in a hurry and I forgot.”
“We’ll get you shoes,” he said.
The heat outside was harsh, the sun blinding, but we got on the baked pavement of the highway and Cavan hit the gas. He turned the radio on while I rummaged through the groceries he’d bought, pulling out protein bars and water for us. His car had air conditioning, at least. It seemed we weren’t going to talk about what had happened between us on that bed.
I can make it so good for you, baby. Just this, right here, my fingers in your pussy. It’s perfect. Let it come.
I didn’t know what it had been for him—maybe nothing. But for me, it had changed things. I found my sunglasses in my purse and put them on, then sipped water and watched him drive.
Finally, I got up the courage and just did it. I turned down the country music on the radio and said, “McMurphy was my first.”
Cavan flinched, just a quick tightening of his jaw and the skin around his eyes. His knuckles went tighter on the wheel, then relaxed again.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m tired of keeping things in, tired of lying, so I’m just going to tell the truth. He was my first, and…” I looked out my window, summoning up the words. “And it wasn’t very good.”
