I moved back toward the window, sliding the ancient curtain out of the way to look out.
But he hadn’t turned back.
He was making the trek back to the clubhouse.
“What the hell is that, right?” I asked Sugar, who’d moved toward the bed to sniff at the basket.
I didn’t need to wonder how he’d gotten in. I’d been picking locks since I was in elementary school. And I went ahead anddidn’t think about the creep factor of him figuring out my room and letting himself in.
I jumped right into curiosity as I pulled my insulin and box of needles out of the basket.
Without insurance or pharmacy rebates, it had to cost a couple hundred, maybe more. It depended on the prescription. And he’d paid for that. Without a second thought.
Then, as if that wasn’t enough, he’d compiled a care basket.
Who the hell did shit like that?
“It’s weird, right?” I asked my dog as I reached for a large blanket in a warm, buttery-yellow color. It was the softest damn thing I’d ever felt. Until I took out the fluffy socks with a yellow and white floral pattern. Next, there were several towels—plain white, fabric spray (lemon), cleaning wipes, and bleach spray.
“I guess this is his subtle way of telling me to thoroughly clean the room, huh?” I asked Sugar. “Maybe he knows something I don’t.”
I put the cleaning supplies to the side and went back to the basket, finding a sleep mask, slippers, one of those big stainless steel water bottles everyone was carrying around—again, in yellow—and earplugs.
As if sensing the question rolling around in my head as I held them, somewhere down in the hotel, a woman’s voice was drifting over toward me.
“Yes! Oh, fuck! Just like that! You’re so big, daddy!”
She wasn’t even trying to sound convincing, but it seemed to be working for the guy as the fake moaning got louder and louder.
“Guess this place has a specific clientele,” I said, tossing the earplugs on the nightstand with the eye mask.
It made a certain sort of sense. Guys got out of prison, had nowhere to go, got a room, and quickly blew off years’ worth of sexual frustration with local sex workers. And, of course, wecouldn’t count out the local married men paying for some on the side.
And Colter wanted me to believe in romance.
I didn’t know about him, but I lived in the real world.
In the real world, I spent the next hour scrubbing the room that had likely been used by sex workers and clients thousands of times.
Real, real romantic shit.
Though I had to admit that once I took a shower and climbed into my fuzzy socks and got under the impossibly soft blanket, things did feel a little less dark and gritty than they used to.
Damn him.
CHAPTER NINE
Colter
“Does anyone have anything?” Slash asked the next afternoon, coming into the clubhouse with a tray of coffee he must have picked up out of town, since we didn’t have a solid coffee option in Shady Valley.
Most of us had been up a good chunk of the night, just catching quick cat naps, just plugging away at our laptops to try to find something, anything, for him about Dylan.
“Seriously?” he asked, glancing around at our red-rimmed, tired eyes.
“She has no social media.”
“Who hasnosocial media?”
