I hear Amira ask the question, but my headache is making it difficult to process.
“Huh?”
“Back at the house, when you and Ash came up to the car, Sage looked uncomfortable… why?”
Oh shit. I never told Amira how I saw Sage working the night of the strip club.
How do I bring that up now without sounding like a shady asshole?
“You know a couple of nights ago how I went with Ash to that strip club? The night of our fight.”
“Yeah,” she responds, hiding her upcoming yawn with the corner of the blanket.
“Well, we sort of saw Sage there… working. It was pretty tense, and I guess now she isn’t sure how to feel around us.”
Looking out from the corner of my eyes, I watch as Amira puts two and two together. A surprised glint sparkles in her eye when she whispers under her breath, “So that’s where she goes at night.”
I want to ask what she means by that, but I don’t. Sage and what she does is none of my business. Plus, I have a fucking sixth sense that Ash will make all her shit his business very soon and include me in that regardless of my refusal.
With a clearing of her throat, Amira shifts back around, her face directed toward the door as she tries to settle to sleep.
†††
Six hours later, I’m fucking exhausted, and I can’t see through the film of sleep developing over my eyes, but we fucking made it to Omaha, Nebraska, earlier than I expected.
Around eight in the morning, I’m greeted by looming grey skyscrapers towering into the crystal blue skies above, their windows reflecting the lake I’m currently driving over.
It used to make a trill of anxiety course through me whenever I drove over a bridge, but the fatigue I’m currently battling leaves no place for fear. I just need to get to a bed and fucking crash.
Traffic comes to a halt once I get off the bridge, each car warring over its place on the dual-laned road.
The weather, barely touching fifty degrees Fahrenheit, prevents the leaves on the trees from growing back, leaving bare branches lining the side of the road I’m driving on.
“How pretty.” I hear softly spoken from next to me.
Shifting my gaze to the right, I watch Amira’s head poke out from the edge of the quilt. Her glittering gaze admiring the stripped bark and skeletal branches from her view out of the window.
“They’re dead.”
“So are we, kind of.”
Stopping at a light, I turn to regard her fully, the way her large, brown eyes have rings of Fushia surrounding them from her lack of sleep. Lips swollen with the morning blood rush, sucked into her wet, inviting mouth.
I yearn to dip low and suck that plush bottom lip intomymouth, the same way I did her lips down below, but I don’t think Amira would appreciate that much at this moment. So, I deprive my desire and let go of the breaks, rolling forward as the light shines green.
“Can you find a motel for us to stay in, angel? I’m fucking beat.”
Taking my phone from the holder on the AC vent, she taps her long, unpolished nails against the screen, scrolling until she finds a spot comfortable enough for her.
Amira ends up directing us to the Sunborough Hills Inn, which is fucking great since it's only three minutes away from the freeway that we’re going to need to get on next when we leave for Wyoming.
The Inn is nothing special. Three stories with twenty rooms lining the front and back, identical red doors beaming in the sunlight as we step from the car to the front entrance of the motel.
Adjusting the cap that I threw on my head last minute, I hold the door open for Amira, instantly getting a whiff of the toxic smell of nicotine and pot. I don’t care about either of those smells on their own, but together? I can’t stop the gag from pouring out of me.
“Are you okay?” Amira asks, running her nails down the grooves of my spine.
“The smell reminds me of dad.” My back stiffens at the word, suddenly remembering we technically have the same father.
