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If you had a hundred names, there was a good chance at least one of them would live on forever.
“But I want to see the world. I don’t want to be in a temple.”
This made me laugh, and I knew right away it was the wrong thing to do, but I couldn’t help it. “See the world? Sawyer, I spend about eight hundred hours a year in my car. Whenever I see anything, it’s raining. I regularly get struck by lightning, and it hurts so badly it leaves scars all over my skin. I’m not allowed to have a boyfriend. I’m not allowed to have any life outside what Seth and the temple-minders want from me. I’m a glorified hand puppet. You don’t want my life. Stay here until you’re eighteen, then go somewhere else. Live a real life. Have real problems. Fall in love. Move around. Be free. If you think what I have is freedom or a life worth living, you’re out of your mind.”
This was a little hyperbolic, but I was trying to scare her off. She didn’t need to know about my sweet apartment.
When she didn’t move, I added, “I spend every night on the road staying at shitty motels. I eat shitty food. I have no friends. Sometimes I go a whole week and the only conversation I have is with Fen.”
“You could have me, then.” Her face brightened, as if this was going to be the argument that finally won me over to her side.
“Go home, Sawyer.”
“Tallulah, please.”
I slapped my hand on the table, and the sound was so loud it made her jump. I had tried to be nice about this. I’d given her the honest approach and e
xplained that what she was asking for wasn’t the dream life she expected. I’d even attempted using a simple no. Nothing was working.
“This life isn’t for you.” I kept my gaze locked on hers and maintained a cold tone. She couldn’t think there was even a flicker of sympathy in me, or she’d never let this go. “I don’t want you with me.”
Without another word she pushed her chair back, wooden legs squealing loudly against the tile floor, and ran out of the restaurant. She got out before the tears started to fall.
“Real nice.” Leo watched her go.
“Shut up.”
Chapter Fourteen
The next morning the sky was a perfect, untouched blue on the road to Las Vegas.
It was the kind of stunning, gorgeous fall sky that I spent nights dreaming about, where the sunshine warmed your skin and the color on the horizon was a cerulean that should have been impossible outside of a paint tube.
My world was so often colored in shades of slate, gunmetal, pewter, and silver. Blue was a rarity. Now that I didn’t have any literal fires to put out, I could actually enjoy the bright sunshine and open road.
We’d be a couple days early for the convention, but I honestly preferred the idea of going ahead to Vegas rather than returning to Seattle to make the trip all over again on the weekend. I’d saved enough money by getting the motel in Lovelock for free that Sido couldn’t complain about me going over my per diem. Plus the hotels in Las Vegas offered great rates for visiting clerics. I guess they wanted to look extra accommodating to the gods?
Not sure who that benefited besides me.
Fen made a slightly discomfited chirrup noise from the backseat, something he’d been doing every half hour or so since we’d left the town in our rearview. Now, however, he was getting noisier and noisier about it.
I pulled in at a small, dusty gas station and turned off the car, lifting his carrier over the seat and onto my lap. “You okay, buddy?”
He whined.
“Okay, break time,” I announced. “I think he has some business to attend to.”
“That makes two of us.” Leo climbed out of the passenger seat and moved towards the little store.
There were two restrooms on the outside, and I would have rather been struck by lightning twelve times in a row than go pee in one of them. We were only about three hours away from Vegas at this point, so if I played my cards right, I could avoid using rest stops for the whole trip.
A fancy hotel bathroom with sparkling white tiles and no secret peepholes for video cameras was far more my style.
I’d recently watched a special report on the things that went on in highway rest stops and no longer had any interest in setting foot in one again.
I walked a short distance from the car and let Fen out of his carrier. He might be as hyper as a toddler in a sugar factory, but I also knew he’d be smart enough not to run onto the highway. He did have some common sense.
He sniffed around a bit, did his business, then before I could get him back in the carrier he bolted for the car.
