Page 79 of Lose You Twice

Kai’s mouth twitches before he looks away.

Probably for the best. I have enough problems without finding his almost-smiles cute while my hotel-room situation falls apart.

Rain hammers the window at the end of the hallway, sleet ticking against the glass. The hotel smells like damp carpet and industrial cleaner, and half the rooms have hockey players standing outside them, arguing over luggage and keys.

The entire place feels one inconvenience away from collapsing.

I relate.

Grayson taps his key card against room 318 and pushes the door open.

Then stops.

Kai nearly walks into him. “What?”

Grayson steps aside.

One king bed sits in the middle of the room.

Not two queens. Not a pullout. Not even an uncomfortable chair wide enough to pretend it could support a human body.

One singular bed.

Grayson checks the number on the card sleeve. “They gave us a king too.”

“Maybe it separates,” I offer.

We all look at the single headboard.

“Right. Never mind.”

The adjoining door is on the far wall. Walking over to it, I open it and peek through, seeing a room that is nearly identical to the one I’m standing in.

Kai squeezes past me into my room and goes to test the door himself. He barely touches it, and it opens with almost zero pressure. “So it doesn’t even work at all, and they expect someone to stay in here with nothing but a flimsy-looking deadbolt keeping the door shut? I think the fuck not.”

“Kai.”

He gestures toward the door, visibly pissed on my behalf. “This is asking for something bad to happen.”

I give him a look. “The maintenance cart and giant sign in the hallway did give me that vibe.”

His attention moves to the chair, then the adjoining door. I can practically see him calculating whether the chair would hold beneath the handle and how quickly he could get through if something happened.

A knock on our door breaks up our discussion as Kai heads to open it. Standing in the hall is a man wearing a blue shirt.

“Uhm, hello,” the man says. “I’m Alex, and I work in the maintenance department. There seems to have been some confusion on our part, as the room adjoining this one should not have been given out. When we took apart the lock, we realized damage had been done to both the piece on the door as well as the one on the frame.”

He continues, nervously swaying side to side slightly. “We’re really sorry about that, but I’ll need you guys to shut the middle door and lock it, keeping it shut for the duration of your stay tonight. We should have it fixed tomorrow, but according to the front desk, you all will be checked out by then.”

Alex stands there awkwardly, which I can’t blame him for. Grayson and Kai would make quite an intimidating pair if you didn’t know they were harmless underneath their large frames.

He clears his throat. “Anyway, I told the clerk downstairs that I’d take care of this, since it was my mistake in not letting them know sooner. Have a good night.”

With that, he walks away down the hall. Kai closes the door, enveloping us in silence.

Grayson is the first to speak, still leaning against the connecting doorway. “I’ll bunk with Asher and Weston.”

Kai looks at him. “No.”