Roxy propped herself up on her elbow, cheek in her hand, and she idly drew circles on his abs and around his belly button. He sucked in his breath when it tickled. “Do we really want to wait until tonight to start driving again?”
Rolling to face her, propping his own cheek in his hand, up on his elbow, he pushed the fingers of his other hand through her hair, cupping the back of her head. “What do you have in mind?”
She shrugged, her eyes trailing slowly over his face, gaze lingering on his mouth. “I think it’s silly to wait until late to start driving for the night is all.”
“I’m gonna need you to spell it out for me, Red,” he rasped, clasping the nape of her neck and angling her face toward his.
“Can we stay? Tonight, I mean. I don’t want to leave this… not yet,” she whispered, gold and green eyes bouncing between his.
Leaning forward, he pressed his mouth to hers. “We can stay tonight, baby girl. I’m not ready to leave this yet, either.”
Thirty-Three
“The rain finally stopped,” he murmured, his lips moving against Roxy’s temple. They were wrapped tightly around each other, their naked bodies intertwined completely beneath the sheet. Her back expanded beneath his arms as she took a deep breath in before letting it out slowly, her face pressed into his throat. He could feel her lips moving against his neck and then up to his jaw.
“I wondered why it was so quiet when I woke up,” she whispered. “I got used to the sound on the tin roof outside the door…”
Grady had come down to collect them from the motel around three in the afternoon the day before. Travis had paid for the new tire, as well as the tow bill, which prompted a lot of arguing from Roxy. He had called in a to go order from Bertie’s across the street, and they had brought their food back to the motel room, sitting half naked in the bed together as they ate and watched old episodes of Law & Order on one of the only channels the motel got on the ancient box TV in the room. They hadn’t left the bed since, exploring each other’s bodies thoroughly, fucking until they were both damn near dehydrated. Falling asleep withher wrapped in his arms, her body curled against his was almost as blissful as waking with her still there.
“We should keep driving now that the rain has stopped,” he said, pressing a kiss to her forehead. He was loathe to leave the bed, to lose the closeness of her body against his. “I don’t want to give that bastard any chance of finding you, baby girl.”
She nodded, her head moving under his chin, but her arms tightened around him and he closed his eyes to revel in the moment. “Travis…”
“Hmm?” he asked, keeping his eyes closed.
“I wish we had met differently. I would have liked to have more time with you, I think,” she whispered quietly, her lips pressing to his ribs just below his left pectoral.
“I would have liked to have had more time with you, Roxy,” he admitted just as quietly, speaking directly into her hair.
Leaning up on her elbow, she looked at him. “Can we maybe take the long way north?”
Pushing her fiery red curls away from her sleep flushed face, he cupped her jaw in both hands, letting his fingers slide through her hair beneath her ears as his gaze traveled over her features. The bruise had started to fade from the angry black and blue to a muted purple, tinged with a garish looking green at the edges.
“I suppose we could go straight north through Wisconsin and take the long way around the Upper Peninsula and back down. I doubt he’d expect us to take that route, come to think of it,” he murmured, smoothing his thumb over that hateful bruise and the smattering of freckles that shone through.
“I don’t think he’d follow us, Travis,” she said softly, propping her chin on his chest. “And he doesn’t know where Free and Jodi live, other than a general ‘somewhere in Michigan’.”
Smoothing his palm over her curls to the back of her head, he furrowed his brows and let his lips thin. “I don’t trust him not tofigure it out. I’ll stay a few days once we get there, just to make sure. And you’ll be safe. Free seems like a good guy.”
She smiled warmly, nodding. “He’s the best. You’ll like him.”
“I have no doubts,” he chuckled, nodding, too. “Do you have an actual address for where we’re headed?”
“Of course,” she scoffed. “I have it written down and safely tucked into the console of the 4Runner, and I have it saved in my phone, just in case. Jodi’s family owns an equestrian boarding ranch, and they’re going to let me stay in the loft in the barn until I can find something more permanent. Funny story, that same loft used to be Free’s, back before he and Jodi got together. He moved back into it for like an hour when he officially moved back north. He had to grovel to Jodi a bit before she invited him to move in with her.”
“What did he need to grovel for?” he asked, laughing.
Roxy made a face, her nose wrinkling. And then she sighed, letting her forehead fall onto his chest for a moment. She spoke directly against his skin, her words muffled. “Promise you won’t judge me? Or him?”
Travis cupped the back of her head, rubbing gently. “I will never judge you, Red. Of all people, you never have to worry about judgement from me. I promise.”
She exhaled heavily against his naked chest, then raised her head again. “Free lived in Michigan with Jodi’s family, working on her father’s ranch after his mom died. He’s… significantly older than Jodi, and when he realized he had started having feelings for his buddy’s teenage daughter… he left. Moved back to Texas and stayed there for like, seven years or something. I met Freeman the first week he was back in Texas, almost a decade ago. I was young and jaded from being on my own since I was sixteen. Met this hot, emotionally stunted cowboy and we…” She stopped, shrugging, dipping her head to tuck her curls back behind her ears again. “We had anarrangement, ofsorts. No strings, no emotional attachment sex. Strictly sex, and that was it. We became ‘best friends with benefits’ or so another friend called us. I knew early on that Free had left someone in Michigan and his heart was always going to belong to her, and I never had those kinds of feelings for him like that anyway. It was maintenance sex when one of us needed it.” Travis spread her curls out around her shoulders. She sighed again. “Anyway. I met Neal and mine and Free’s ‘arrangement’ ended. It never picked up after that again, even after I broke things off with Neal after… well. Because of reasons.” Gesturing to her face, he understood and nodded, though he wanted to rip this bastards’ throat out all over again for putting his hands on her. “I moved into Free’s place—my house in Melody Hills—and we just co-existed for a while. He’s my best friend, but that part of our relationship was over, and we were both fine with it. He had to make a trip north for his brother’s wedding, and while he was there, he went and fell all over again for his buddy’s daughter, who had apparently been in love with him this whole time he’d been gone.”
“And this is Jodi? His wife?” Travis asked. She nodded.
“Mmhmm. And she’swonderful.Just the sweetest. So, while he was home—well, in Michigan—he got into a fistfight with her ex-husband and got thrown in jail for a weekend.” She laughed when his eyebrows shot up, nodding. “Oh yes, he was defending Jodi and the douchebag got him arrested for assault. Charges were dropped later, but that’s another story,” she said, waving her hand as if to re-center herself in her story telling. “At the same time that he was sitting in jail, Neal came back. He was waiting at mine and Free’s house when I got home from work one night, and it started out with him begging for me to take him back, begging for me to come home. When I said no… he got violent. He was pissed because I was living with Free, even though nothing was going on with us anymore, but he knewabout our past and was sure that we had picked up where we had left off. Or, rather, that I had never stopped sleeping with Free while we were together.” She swallowed, gesturing to that jagged white scar that bisected her lip. “He beat me into a bloody mess and then left me in the kitchen. I was in the hospital for a couple days. He broke three ribs, fractured my pelvic bone, broke my nose—it’s much prettier now than it used to be, believe it or not, thanks to the fabulous plastic surgeon Dr. Landon—umm, fractured my skull in two places, and damaged my left eye. When I got discharged from the hospital, I was terrified he was going to come back for me, and when I couldn’t get a hold of Free via phone, I did the only thing I could; I flew straight to northern Michigan and tracked him down at Jodi’s.” She smiled wryly then. “I’m sure I scared the hell out of her, showing up on her porch looking like I did. And then she found out that Free and I had been… well, Free and I. He was worried about me, terrified of leaving her again, and he didn’t handle it all that great; like I said, emotionally stunted idiot that he was back then. He left with me that night to make sure I was okay back at home in Texas. Idiot didn’t even bother saying anything to her for a month, just showed up with a fucking U-Haul at her parent’s house and groveled for her to give him another chance.” She shrugged. “The rest is history. They’re sickeningly in love and so obnoxiously perfect for each other.”
He curled his arms around her waist, pulling her up and angling her across his body. Collaring her throat with one hand, he drew her mouth to his, kissing her gently, sweetly. Brushing his lips over the scar on her lip first, he then brushed his mouth over her left eye, then the new bruises, and across her nose. “Thank you for trusting me with all that, Roxy. I understand more, now. Although I certainly hate Neal more than I did before. I will never let him hurt you again, Red. I promise you that.”
