“Does strategy usually involve taking your boots off?”
“When strategy wants to walk tomorrow.”
I sat on the edge of the mattress to pull them off. The bed dipped under my weight, and Crystal’s breath changed before she covered it with a small cough.
I looked back at her. “You have a comment?”
“I’m respecting your process.”
“That’ll be a first.”
She smiled into the pillow.
I stripped down to my T-shirt and jeans, left my belt on, and stretched out on top of the coverlet on the door side of the bed. I kept one arm between us and my phone under the edge of my thigh. The key stayed in my front pocket. My body was close enough to feel the heat trapped under her side of the blanket and far enough away that I could still pretend discipline had a vote.
Crystal lay under the sheet beside me, gorgeous and furious and wanted in every way she couldn’t be.
This scenario sure as hell wasn’t what I’d pictured the next time a woman crawled under the covers near me.
I stared at the ceiling. “Go to sleep.”
“Dex.”
My name in her voice stopped every thought I had left.
I turned my head.
She lay on her side, hair pale against the pillow, eyes on me, mouth soft in a way it hadn’t been all day. The fight was still there in her shoulders and the set of her chin. Now it had heat under it, a steady burn that moved through the dark and wrapped around my ribs.
“You either trust yourself,” she said, “or you don’t.”
“I trust myself.”
Her gaze dropped to the front of my jeans, then rose again. “Then turn off the light.”
I reached over and turned off the lamp.
The room went dark except for the thin green bleed of the motel sign around the curtains.
I lay still on top of the coverlet, listening to the air conditioner rattle and the quiet shift of her breathing beside me.
Then Crystal laughed softly in the dark, like she knew exactly which part of me I was fighting.
I didn’t move toward her.
Not yet.
Chapter Three
DEX TURNED OFF THElamp and stayed on his side of the bed.
I stayed wide awake.
Light from the Pine Shadow sign seeped around the curtains and painted the ceiling in narrow green stripes. The window unit rattled once, then pushed cold air over my bare shoulder. The room smelled like cheap soap, dust, pretzels, and Dex, which was a deeply unfair combination for a woman trying to commit a felony with steady hands.
My hands weren’t steady.
They were cuffed in front of me under the sheet, warm metal loose enough to turn against my wrists, the short chain resting against my stomach. Every small shift made steel whisper against skin. Dex’s phone was pinned under his thigh. His keys were in his front pocket. The room key sat on the little table on his side of the bed, where I could see the plastic pine-tree tag and not reach it.
