Page 49 of The Woman with the Handcuffs

“I think I know enough to say you’re really being harder on yourself than you need to be. And trust me, I know all about being hard on yourself. So I’m kind of an expert here.”

I shrugged at that, not ready to accept it.

“No, seriously. I think sometimes we get told something once or twice, and because it’s a fear we hold, we kind of build our whole self-concept around it. Meanwhile, it’s just not true. Like maybe you just think you’re an asshole because you were a moody teenager who liked his alone time and were called out on it a couple of times. Then you just… ran with it. But you’re not an asshole. And you’re going to miss your exit.”

I turned off at the exit, her words swirling around in my mind.

I had been teased somewhat mercilessly by my more outgoing siblings and cousins about how I’d rather stay at home and read books or learn about ancient civilizations on TV. And I had gotten moody about it at some point, tired of defending myself against it. So I just… leaned into it. Let it be true.

Maybe none of it had been true.

Maybe teenage boys were just little fucks who knew which buttons to press to make you squirm.

But that was a lot of shit to try to think about as I turned off the highway and into the lot of the hotel.

“Big place for being out in the middle of nowhere,” I said as I parked.

“There’s a really big concert venue not far from here,” Caitlin told me as she gathered all her trash and shoved it into her purse. “And a wedding venue, too.”

She hemmed and hawed over her luggage for a moment, shoving some things from one bag into another until she finally let me take two of them and head into the hotel.

“Okay,” Caitlin said as the girl at the front desk got our keys. “I admit. This is a lot better than the Purple Heron.”

“Sometimes it’s worth it to spend a little more money.”

“Like on a book with sprayed edges.”

“Yeah, no. You lost me there.”

“You just don’t like pretty things,” she said, rolling her eyes as she tucked her hair behind her ear.

I tracked the motion, feeling my heart lurch.

Yeah.

No.

I don’t think that was the problem.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Caitlin

I grew up with a reasonably frugal father. He always knew he wanted to be able to send me to get a good education one day, so while he did buy me anything I wanted, he was careful about spending more than he needed to on basic life essentials. Like rooms when we decided to stay in them for short periods of time.

Did that mean I had, on more than one occasion, woken up with bed bug bites? Yep. And had to endure the bone-deep embarrassment listening to johns and sex workers getting it on loudly in the next room? Also, yes.

But I really developed a fondness for some cheap roadside motels over the years. And the interesting mix of people you could find there. There were, of course, the occasional truckers. Or the clients of sex workers. But there were also men kicked out of their houses, staring off into the distance, trying to figure out how their lives had gone so far off their original path. There were single moms with a bunch of little kids, trying to start over but finding it nearly impossible with childcare costs through the roof and no help from their deadbeat exes.

I got to play with those random kids in pools. Or listen to my dad try to give the lost men advice. They were almost all pleasant parts of my childhood.

That said, yeah, Gav was right about the hotel.

I’d never seen such a clean room in my life.

The space was dominated by two queen beds with sheets that smelled freshly laundered and bedspreads had no suspicious stains. Though I knew better—thanks to helping out the cleaning ladies at many motels over the years—than to trust a bedspread. Not even at a fancy hotel. So the first thing I did was walk over to each bed and fold them down, pulling them off, and piling them up on the desk.

“Beat me to it,” Gav said, coming back in from checking the bathroom after looking in the closet.