Page 49 of Why Broken Wings Fray

~

It took all of twenty minutes to get into civilization, and I hauled Killian into the hotel before his eyes could widen any further with glee. In all honesty, he looked far too tired to take it all in, and I wanted to be able to appreciate it in the morning so that I could mock him relentlessly.

We stumbled into the hotel, a two-star looking thing that had always been easy to deal with.

The receptionist, a mid-forties man who always looked up from behind his computer and scoffed judgementally at me, did exactly that as the bell rang out above us.

“The usual, Olivia?”

Killian flicked a confused look in my direction but I rolled my shoulder and tried to evade it.

“Sure,” I ground out. Except this wasn’t the usual, and Killian wasn’t the usual. He was more and we were more.

“Fucking hell,” he, who I was sure was named Gerard, spat out. “Where the hell did you find this one?”

“Ren-con,” Killian said through a disgustingly-large grin, flicking both eyebrows up as if to ask if he did it right.

“Right…” Gerard sighed as he reached behind him and grabbed onto a set of keys, tossing them wordlessly in my direction.

“Thanks, Gerard!” I called out as I grabbed onto Killian’s hand and dragged him away from the reception before he could say anything else.

“It’s John!”

“Okay!”

~

There were a thousand horrors in my life, a thousand dark things and tortured things, a thousand things that I would have let Killian see. This hotel, this hotel-room, and the way I shuddered as I shut the door behind me, were not one of them.

His nose scrunched several times as he breathed it in. Quite literally. Apparent only by the way he said, “It smells like you in here.”

“Great,” I huffed, rethinking just how thoroughly they must clean these rooms. It must have been at least two weeks since I was last in here, and they must have had other patrons since then.

Luckily, nothing in here was super modern. There was a bed in the center of the room, adorned with beige bedsheets that I was suddenly thinking were supposed to be white. A window outlook the world beyond, but I quickly drew the curtains shut before Killian could peer out and start peppering me with questions. The ensuite had a bathroom, the space that I spent most of my time in hacking my guts up over the toilet. And the only other thing that Killian could easily look twice at was the TV on the far wall. But I didn’t worry too much about that, mostly because it didn’t work.

With a sigh, I slammed myself down on the bed and kicked my feet up, crossing my arms behind my head. “Answer me something, Killian.”

There was silence for a beat, making me lift my chin to get a look at what he was doing. Surprisingly and unsurprisingly, he had peered his head into the ensuite and was inspecting what a shower, toilet, and sink were. After playing with the knobs for several minutes, laughing the whole time like a child, then gasping something about the temperature changing in the water, he finally sauntered out.

“Were you talking to me?”

“I have a question,” I said, watching him carefully as he dropped down on the edge of the bed, nearly catapulting me into the ceiling in the process.

He sucked in a sharp breath as he bounced up and down on the edge of the bed several times. “Magnificent!” he shouted, punching his fists into the foam over and over and over. “What is it!”

“A bed,” I said, far too tired to see so much glee on his face.

“Well of course it is a bed. But how splendid!” For extra measure, he slammed his body up and down several more times, until I placed my hand on his shoulder.

Frowning, he looked at the point of contact then to my face. “Sorry, you were saying?”

It was hard not to smile as I watched his eyes widen as something caught his attention.

“You said this room smells like me.”

“Sure does,” he hummed along, taking a few more deep breaths and letting a small smile climb over his face. “I’d know that scent any day.”

“Okay. Well… What do I smell like?”