Page 4 of Base Block

You couldn’t talk in Damian’s car because of the engine noise and his music, but I heard Callum perfectly fine when he pulled up next to me and stopped. “Where exactly are you going?” he wanted to know.

I pointed at the faraway lights. “There,” I told him. “I think that’s the downtown and that’s where I’m staying.”

“In a hotel.”

I nodded.

“Which one?” he asked but I had nothing to say, and we looked at each other as he waited a beat. “You don’t have a phone. Do you have a wallet? Money?”

I’d had money in my purse, a wad of bills that Damian had given me. Millie had peeled a few off my stack and put them in her own bag, saying that it was for safekeeping. I had an ID back at the hotel, where I also had clothes, makeup, and shoes. “I’m good,” I said.

I had taken another step, a hop, when he spoke again. “You should get in.”

This time, I didn’t hesitate to follow his suggestion. I opened the car door and slid into the seat, very glad to get off my feet. He looked over at them and then he drove us away.

“I’m going to the gym first,” he warned me. “Then we can look for your hotel. Will you recognize it?”

“Yes,” I said. But Millie had called me a liar and she was right about that. I put my hand on the vent but there was no heat coming out, even though Callum wore only a T-shirt.

“Do you usually work the downtown?”

I looked over at him, confused for a moment by his question, before I understood. “I’m not a sex worker,” I told him. I wasn’t the kind that he meant, who got picked up on a corner or who had dates with travelers in their hotel rooms.

“What are you doing in Indianapolis?”

Oh! Indianapolis, that was the name of this place. We had flown here from Chicago but almost as soon as we’d taken off, we were landing again. Damian had been furious because we had been on a plane with no first-class section, and he’d had another fit when the front desk at the hotel wouldn’t let us check in early. Millie had slid over a short stack of bills and then they gave her the key cards.

“I’m on vacation,” I said.

“Were you at 20 Grand?”

That might have been the name of the club where we’d gone, so I nodded. “The one in the warehouse area,” I ventured, and he didn’t say no. “My friends left me there.”

“Alone? And barefoot?”

“I had shoes but I dropped them when I ran from the dog. Why are you going to the gym so early?”

“I have to get it in before work,” he answered.

“What do you do?”

“Right now, I’m in the lumber department at a home improvement store. But I’m also a football player.”

Oh, ok. I knew lots of guys like this. They were music promotors—but they were also personal trainers, just for the time being. They were producers—but they were currently moonlighting as waiters, only temporarily. I’d never heard any of them claim to play football, but Callum was large enough to make that sound believable.

“I don’t know much about sports,” I mentioned. I believed in giving men opportunities to talk so that I didn’t have to, but he didn’t say much else. He only mentioned that he had stopped playing for a while but he was trying to get back into it.

“What do you do?” he asked me.

“I’m a personal stylist,” I said but he looked blank. “For fashion,” I continued, but he still had no idea what that was, so I filled him in. It ended up that I talked more than he did and soon, we were stopping at a beat-up building that had the word “GYM” in neon in the window. It didn’t look anything like the place where Millie and I went to do Pilates in LA.

“I don’t think you should come inside,” Callum announced. “You don’t have shoes. And that dress could cause a problem with some of the guys. I don’t want to get into a fight so early.”

“Ok,” I agreed. I didn’t really care, as long as he wasn’t kicking me out of the car.

He locked the doors behind himself. “Don’t open them,” he told me through the window and I nodded. It was getting even lighter outside, and the sky had gone slightly pink. I watched him walk into the GYM and then leaned my head back against the seat. I let my gritty eyes close.

“Hell, I forgot your name. Hey, girl. Hey,” a husky voice said, and someone jostled my arm.