Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 77018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Really, with his track record, I probably should have been thankful minor vandalism had been the extent of it.
“I’ll get it cleaned up before you get back.”
Doubtful. Theo had knocked the side mirror off my car in high school and thought fixing it was painting duct-tape black, then wrapping it around the connector. Ten minutes in the Alabama summer heat and the glue melted just as I was trying to merge onto I-59 during rush hour.
“Man, I feel like I’m gonna—” His cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk, and I hung up.
I had no intention of listening to him puke up his guts. I’d made that mistake before.
A few minutes later, Blake came out of the bathroom, dressed in a pair of cut-off shorts and a black Pandemic Sorrow band T-shirt, her damp hair in pigtails.
Pandemic Sorrow was one of the last bands I would have expected her to like. They were hard rock, not the bubbly, girly stuff I’d guess she listened to. Maybe the shirt was an ex’s. Maybe Jimbo’s… The thought she still held any fondness for her piece-of-shit ex had a wave of jealousy rising within me. “You listen to Pandemic Sorrow?” I asked.
“Yeah. Stone Steele is my favorite.”
The guitarist. Eyeliner. Long dark hair. A sleeve of tattoos. Seemed she liked long-haired bad boys who would use a gun to get her off and make her call them Daddy? I had a lot to live up to.
She dropped to her knees in front of her suitcase and crammed her wadded-up, dirty clothes into the top zipper. “You know who they are?”
They were on the cover of every tabloid at the grocery store check-out, constantly into shit. The unconscious minds of coma patients probably knew who those rock stars were.
“Everyone knows who they are,” I said. “What in the hell do you think I do in my free time?”
“I don’t know.” She continued rummaging through balled-up T-shirts and half-folded dresses. “Whittle wooden figurines of squirrels while listening to podcasts?”
She’d basically just said she’d call me Grandpa before she’d ever call me Daddy.
I frowned. “I do not whittle wooden figurines or listen to podcasts.”
“Someone’s sensitive this morning…”
“You act like I’m some boring old fart.”
“No, you act like you’re some boring old fart. Well, at least you do at work.”
Who wasn’t a boring old fart at work? Outside of her and Margot. It was work. It wasn’t a fucking rave with flashing lights and shots of Patron.
She continued to dig through her ramshackle luggage for a few more seconds before turning to meet my gaze. “Okay. So let me just get this out of the way. My getting another hotel last night may have been a rash decision. And I can see how it would make whatever this is—” she waved a hand between us—“weird.” She paused before going back to her luggage and zipping it up. “But if it makes you feel any better, I slept on a nest of scratchy, overly bleached towels I piled in the corner of the dirty floor.”
It didn’t. But the imagery of her curled up on a pile of shitty towels did almost make me laugh. “Do I want to know why you slept on a nest of towels?”
“Probably not, but since you asked...” She dug her phone from her pocket, tapped the screen, then pushed to her feet and handed it to me.
The picture she’d pulled up was of a ratty mattress with a massive brown stain decorating the center.
“I’m pretty sure that stain on the bed is blood,” she said. “No way I was sleeping on blood.”
If that was blood, whoever it came from was dead. My gaze lifted to hers. “That looks like shit, not blood.”
Horror flickered over her face. “Why would you say that?”
“Based on the size of that, I’d rather it be shit. “
“Gross. I don’t want to think I stayed inches away from a defecation mattress.”
I’d bet anything her being able to use the word defecation had made her day. I zoomed in to examine the photo a little more closely. The place made the alien hotel with the dead rat look like a five-star resort. “Would you rather have slept inches from a death mattress? Because, if it were me, I’d choose excrement over blood.”
“Ohhh! Good choice of words.”
That was one of the words I’d highlighted in my thesaurus. I made a small bow before passing back her phone.
Frowning, she stared down at the screen. “Regardless of what that stain was, the curse continues.”
“That’s not your curse at work, Blake.” I shoved away from the dresser, grabbing both of our passports and stuffing them inside my backpack. “That’s you making bad decisions.”
A slow smile crept over her face. “Speaking of bad decisions… Did you ever figure out how to make your Sistpeen Chapel shoot work?”
“Not a clue.” Not that I’d given it much thought. My preoccupation had been with her.