AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Cree automatically reached for her two bags, but Lulee was every bit the modern-day woman and grabbed one of her suitcases while Cree grabbed the other one, rolling his eyes.
“God, I hate when you do this shit,” he muttered, but dutifully carried the one bag.
I only had one suitcase, and when Saint went to grab it, my first instinct was to yank it back from him. I didn’t want him getting the wrong idea, though I really had no plans further than that. However, all protests died on my lips when he shot me a look, daring me to argue with him.
Keeping my mouth shut, I let him carry my suitcase to the elevator, then grabbed my purse before making sure that everything was locked up tight for the week. Since we lived off-campus, not all of our neighbors were college students, so we’d made sure to let the Rodgermans know that we’d be gone for the week. They lived two doors down from us and had promised to keep an eye out on things.
Jogging to catch up to the elevator, things still felt a little awkward riding down to the lobby, but not as bad as it could have felt. Everyone was doing their own version of pretending, and I could only hope that things got better once we arrived at the retreat.
If not, it was going to be a long ass week.
Chapter 5
Saint~
Two hours into the four-hour drive, I was ready to blow my brains out.
Seriously.
After we’d gotten the girls settled in the car, Cree had taken his place behind the steering wheel, Lulee had taken her place in the passenger seat next to him, and I had ended up sitting behind Cree after helping Verity take her seat behind Lulee. Everything had seemed cordial enough, at least, until Verity had announced that she was going to listen to an audio book all the way there and had asked us not to bother her.
So, for two hours, I’d been doing everything that I could not to rip those earbuds out of Verity’s ears and force her to talk to me. Lulee’s been talking nonstop, no doubt trying to overcompensate for Verity’s rudeness, and God bless the man, Cree’s been all ears.
Now, when Verity had walked out of her bedroom, graciously giving in, I hadn’t expected any miracles. Whatever her personal reasons for changing her mind, they hadn’t taken away from the awkwardness of the situation. Verity had been upset, and it was obvious to see that she still was.
There was also the issue of the room. Lulee had shut the bedroom door when she’d gone in to talk to Verity, so I had no idea if she’d been completely honest about the trip or not. However, the logical part of my brain told me that there was no way that Verity would have changed her mind about the trip if she knew the truth. With her already feeling like we all betrayed her, there was no way that I couldn’t tell her before we got there. While my conscience was urging me to do the right thing, it was also reminding me that I could have said somethingbeforewe’d taken off for the retreat. There’d been plenty of time when I’d taken her bags, when we’d ridden down the elevator, when we’d made our way to Cree’s car, when we had placed their bags in the back, even when I had opened the door to help Verity inside.
“Okay, it’s time to stop for a break,” Lulee announced. “I need to stretch my legs. I’m also out of beef jerky.”
Cree glanced at me through the rearview mirror. “Sound good?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I could use a break, too.”
Cree’s brown eyes slid over towards Verity. “Verity?” When she didn’t answer him, he called to her again, only a bit louder this time. “Verity?”
She jumped a bit, her eyes blinking as she pulled an earbud out of her ear. “Huh? What?”
“Ready for a pitstop?” Lulee asked, turning around in her seat. “I need to stretch my legs.
“No, yeah,” she muttered, stretching, testing my resolve. While Verity didn’t have huge tits, she had enough to make a man notice when she was stretching like that.
“There’s a gas station a couple of miles up the road,” Cree remarked. “We’ll stop there.”
A few minutes later, Cree was pulling into a random gas station, busy enough not to feel sketchy. While I didn’t scare easily, when you had females with you, things always felt different. Normally, a stranger greeting me would mean nothing to me; with a female at my side, that changed.
“We got plenty of gas, but might as well fill up while were here,” Cree said as he pulled up next to the pumps.
As soon as we were all out of the car, Cree looked over at me, but he didn’t need to. I already knew the drill. When it came to the protection of females, Cree and I had the same viewpoints. While I was very aware that it was 2023, and that women could handle a lot of shit themselves, at the end of the day, we were designed to protect them, and that’s just how I felt.
So, I followed the girls into the store, let them shop for whatever they needed, then paid because I was better suited for an era when men still did shit like that. I still couldn’t understand how taking care of a woman had morphed into viewing her as inferior, but this was me, and I wasn’t going to change.
As soon as I had the snack bag in my hands, Lulee asked the cashier. “Do you have public restrooms here?”
“Sure do,” the cashier replied. “In the back, near the fountain machine.”
“Thanks.”
Before I could say anything, Lulee was grabbing Verity’s hand, dragging her along for a trip to the restroom. Following, I waited outside for them to finish doing whatever it was that women did when they went to the restroom in pairs. Now, did I think that they would get kidnapped in broad daylight? No, not at all. Was I willing to take the chance? That was also a no. We were two hours from home, and I had no idea what kind of people were coming and going from this place.
