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“No. Absolutely not,” Harrison snapped before Hale could even react to that news. Last night they’d stayed in a place big enough that they’d felt secure in allowing Hale and Harrison to have separate rooms.
Hale’s eyes drifted to the motel. Yeah, this place was a little sketchy.
“There has to be another option. I can sleep in one of the SUVs,” Harrison continued.
“No. You are with Hale,” Clay shot back. “No one sleeps alone anymore. It’s for protection. We don’t know if the pestilents will find us at night. You’re a target because you’re traveling with us. And if the pestilents discover what you have, that makes you an even bigger target. You are to have one of the Weavers with you at all times.”
Harrison looked as if he wanted to argue, but no words came out.
Hale forced a grin on his lips and leaned toward his new roommate. “It’ll be like a slumber party,” he said in a loud whisper. It didn’t seem to improve Harrison’s mood.
To be honest, Hale wasn’t exactly thrilled to be sharing a room with Harrison. The man was grumpy and cold. Nothing he did or said broke through his hard outer shell. But how bad could it be?
Turned out, really bad.
Ten minutes into sharing the same room with Harrison, Hale was ready to strangle the man. Because it wasn’t bad enough that they were sharing the same room. Oh, no. The damn motel room had only one bed.
First off, the place looked like it was a throwback straight from the eighties with loud colors everywhere his eyes were bold enough to stray. The thin comforter on the lumpy bed was bright purple. The walls were green. The carpet was a bad acid trip of purple, orange, green, and brown. At the very least, if there were any stains on the carpet, they’d never be able to spot them.
Harrison took one glance at the bed, sighed, and turned toward the tiny sofa shoved against the wall near the door, claiming that he planned to sleep there. Hale offered to share the bed. They could be adults about it. Not like he was going to jump some unwilling bones in his sleep, but Harrison wouldn’t even discuss it.
From there, he could only watch as his roommate started to unpack his overnight bag. Toiletries were placed on the chipped and stained seafoam-green counter, organized in order of descending size. All their labels were turned facing outward, and each item was an equal distance apart. Afterward, he unpacked exactly the clothes he would need for the next twenty-four hours and refolded them, checking for wrinkles.
There was a frightening precision to Harrison’s every movement and the placement of each item. Just watching the man left Hale feeling anxious. What would happen if Hale accidentally moved one of those things? Would it completely upset Harrison’s entire world? Would the man go on an ax-wielding rampage of Jack Nicholas in The Shining? Where the hell was a hedge maze when he needed one?
Hale was a child of science. He understood the second law of thermodynamics better than most civilians—entropy always increases with time.
In other words, all things gradually decline into disorder.
Chaos.
Life moves toward chaos.
And this kind of precision and order begged for disorder and chaos to bust through the door.
Hale almost pitied Harrison. He didn’t want to be this man’s chaotic force.
Chapter
Eight
Hale was a slob.
He pulled nearly all of his clothes out of his satchel and left them scattered across the bed, then kicked his shoes off haphazardly before he’d disappeared into the shower. Harrison barely resisted the urge to straighten things up as he gathered what he planned to sleep in.
He stared at the one bed, the damn thing seeming to mock him. It was probably lumpy or worse, hard as a rock, but it had to be better than the tiny sofa with the broken springs and funky smelling cushions. Either way, he wasn’t going to be getting much sleep. He’d never slept in a bed with another man and could only imagine it would feel strange.
When Hale finally emerged, he was wearing nothing but a towel. Water dripped down his chiseled chest to disappear under the too-short strip of fabric. Some of the drops gathered in his navel.
Harrison’s mouth went dry and shockingly, his dick reacted. He had a sudden vision of licking the water off Hale’s stomach and he was so shaken, he hurriedly finished grabbing everything he’d need for his shower with trembling hands.
“Damn, that water felt good,” Hale said as he riffled through the clothes he’d left strewn on the bed. “All I did was sit in a car all day, yet I still felt dirty.”
Harrison was about to flee into the bathroom when Hale just casually dropped his towel. He had a tight, round ass, the skin a little paler than his back and once again, Harrison felt blood rushing to his dick. He couldn’t take his gaze away as Hale bent and slipped on a pair of light-blue basketball shorts.
