“I will.”
“You believe that?”
“I believe a lot of things,” he said.
The echo of my own words from the truck slid between us.
I looked at him.
His eyes were open, but fatigue had pulled at the edges of him. The chase, the drive, the room, me. Everything had done what I needed it to do.
Almost.
I had my hands free.
His jeans were on the floor near the bed.
The hidden burner was still in my boot.
Crystal was still waiting somewhere in the dark because she had to be. She was my sister, my twin, the good part of my face looking back at me from a life that had gone wrong without warning. I’d promised her without saying the words that I would keep Dex away from her as long as I could.
Dex’s eyes drifted shut.
My chest hurt in a place I couldn’t blame on sex.
I counted his breaths until they deepened.
He shifted once, pulling me closer, then settled again. His hand stayed loose at my waist. He didn’t sleep like a careless man. Even exhausted, he took up the door side of the bed. The restraints were on his side. The small cuff key was in the pocket of his jeans on the floor near the bed. His truck keys were in that same pocket, buried in denim and close enough to steal if I could reach them without waking him.
The restraints were still on the nightstand.
His hand was loose at my waist, not locked there. He’d fallen asleep on the door side, with the keys in his jeans on the floor and his body between me and the exit, as if that was enough.
I waited until his breathing stayed even.
Then I moved.
Slowly.
First my hand off his shoulder. Then my knee out from under the sheet. Then my waist, sliding from beneath his palm one inch at a time. Dex’s fingers flexed once against the mattress.
I stopped breathing.
He didn’t wake.
I slipped off the bed.
The carpet felt damp and gritty under my bare feet. My knees wobbled, which was rude and inconvenient and entirely Dex’s fault. I found my underwear and shorts by touch, pulling them on in the dark with one eye on the bed. My tank was twisted under one arm. I fixed it, then grabbed my bra and shoved it into my overshirt pocket because clasps were not worth dying over.
Dex slept on his side, one arm bent under the pillow, the other loose across the place where I’d been. His face looked younger in the motel light. Not soft. Just stripped of the hard edges he wore when he was awake and responsible for everyone else’s bad choices.
I looked too long before I made myself move.
His jeans lay on the floor beside the bed, the right front pocket turned half toward me.
I knelt beside them.
Every tiny sound in the room got louder. The sign. A pipe ticking in the wall. My breathing. Dex’s breathing.
