by Selena Scott
Jeez Louise. Like he wasn’t hot enough already. But now he had to go and have smile lines? Ugh.
“Oh, fine,” she said, her anger dissolving under his laughter like a sugar cube under a fall of hot tea. “We’ll do it your way.”
They quickly packed their things, tossed the bags onto Dawn’s back, and then Dawn climbed up onto Quill’s back. She tugged one of the ponchos over herself and the bags and then clung to his neck, her face notched against his ear.
His scent was so much more concentrated up close. She closed her eyes against the onslaught of it as he stepped out into the weather. He was the scent of fresh air and dark rooms. Copper and soil. Sweet leaf and ice. Sweat and laundry detergent.
Even in his scent he was two different men. Dawn couldn’t tell which version of him was more attractive.
The movie theater was only a block down from the motel, but it took them about ten minutes to get there. The water was up to Quill’s knees in a few places. As soon as they made it through the front doors of the theater, Dawn jumped down, eager to not be dead weight anymore.
“How come you didn’t carry me here, Carl?” a loud, jovial voice asked.
Dawn turned and saw a large blond woman standing next to the ticket booth, squeezing water out of her sweater, her hair in wet streaks over her face and shoulders, her cheeks pink, and her smile radiant.
The very skinny man beside her, who was leaning on her as he bent down to check on the prosthesis attached at his left knee, replied in a flat tone, “You had only to ask, my love.”
“Hi there,” Dawn said. “Are you staying at the motel too?”
“Yup. I’m Karen and this is my boyfriend, Carl.”
Carl and Karen were easily well into their sixties, but Dawn supposed there wasn’t a statute of limitations on the word boyfriend. “Nice to meet you! I’m Dawn and this is Quill.”
Karen looked back and forth between Dawn and Quill eagerly, obviously waiting for Dawn to label their relationship. Dawn did no such thing and after a moment, Karen spoke up again.
“Well, nice to meet you two kids.”
“Come on back here, folks!” The hotel manager who’d come to their room, still wearing his clear poncho, stood next to the popcorn machine. “We’re all congregated in the theater.”
The four newest additions followed the manager back to the one and only theater. They walked in to see a group of people standing in an awkward clump down by the screen.
The manager called them all down together and had everyone go around and say their name. There were three other couples, two small families, and one single guy. The manager, whose name was Ted, explained that they’d wait out the storm in the theater, that there’d be microwaveable dinners available for everyone in the employee break room, and that they were welcome to sleep anywhere they wanted if the storm didn’t let up before nightfall. He pointed toward the stage area where there were piles of pillows, blankets, and towels.
“Will you show us a movie or two?” Karen asked, her cheeks pink with excitement.
“Oh,” Ted replied, scratching at his wet hair. “I guess I could see if I can figure out the projector.”
“I used to work in a theater,” volunteered one of the dads. “I’ll come help you.”
Dawn and Quill set out to explore the small building and quickly realized that most likely the best place to sleep would be in the very back of the theater where there was a clearing on the floor that was likely for wheelchair access. They went up and dumped their stuff on the ground, spreading out some blankets and pillows.
Quill set up his floor bed about six feet from Dawn’s and she wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed.
Dawn opened the grocery bag and inspected Quill’s choices. Besides the peanut butter and jelly fixings, she saw that he’d bought a bunch of stuff from a deli. Pasta salad, two turkey sandwiches, beet salad, roasted potatoes.
It was a little early for lunch, so Dawn settled on another PB and J. “This would hit the spot if only I had a cup of coffee.”
Quill stood up without a word and disappeared. About five minutes later, he returned with a mug of coffee that he handed down to her before he sat back on his pallet.
She blinked at the steaming mug and took a sip. Little bit of cream, little bit of sugar. Just how she liked it. It wasn’t a huge deal, him knowing how she took her coffee, considering that he’d been the one to introduce her to coffee in the first place. But something about the casual way he’d jumped up to get her the drink had a furrow forming between her eyebrows.
She’d never met a more confusing person in her life. And yeah, maybe that wasn’t saying much. She’d only been a part of the human world for a little over a year. But still. She was pretty sure that Quill did one thing and felt another. Never in her life had she been more certain that there were two versions of himself that were in constant war over who was in the driver’s seat.
His horrible past didn’t excuse what he’d done to her. To her family. But it kind of explained it.
She looked down at the steam rising from the coffee and felt her confusion rising with it. Dawn three weeks ago wouldn’t have had the courage to ask what she was about to ask. Hell, Dawn three days ago wouldn’t have had it. But she’d had the craziest few days of her entire life and she was headed toward the loss of her freedom entirely. Voluntarily. If now wasn’t the time to ask the questions you were curious about, when was the time?
“Quill?” she asked in a quiet voice, lifting her eyes from her coffee and meeting his. “Do you… care about me?”
CHAPTER SIX
Dawn’s question was an arrow straight into his chest. He felt the air in his lungs just seep out into the world. There was no oxygen left for him to even speak, if he’d had any idea what to say.
Tell her the truth and make everything so much stickier? Lie and keep things as simple as possible?
Two voices spoke in his mind at the exact same time and unfortunately, they both sounded like him.
“Hello!” a bright voice said from their right.
Both Dawn and Quill turned to see Karen waving to get their attention.
“We made popcorn and are all gonna get to know each other a little better real quick before we start the movie. Come on down!”
Karen stood there, her hands on her hips, waiting for them to join her. Apparently it wasn’t optional.
Normally, this wasn’t the kind of thing Quill would participate in, but considering it had just completely saved his ass from having to answer the hardest question of his life, he hopped right up and followed Karen down to where the rest of the motel-stayers were sitting.
He plopped his ass down and a few seconds later, Dawn sat next to him. He didn’t turn to look at her. Karen passed out bowls of popcorn. She chatted and laughed and got everyone talking. She led the group through two different name games and made it her business to memorize one little fact about everyone. This was Quill’s version of hell, but today he participated heartily.
When Karen had finally run out of get-to-know-yous, they rolled the movie, which was a kid’s movie with enough pinwheeling colors and annoying songs to have Quill’s head aching for a week, but he stayed exactly where he was and watched every minute of it.
Twenty minutes in, Dawn got up and left the room.
Quill watched the next horrible children’s movie they screened as well. When that one was done, he got up and scanned the room for Dawn. Luckily, she wasn’t up by their food, so he bolted up there, grabbed one of the sandwiches, and headed back down. He couldn’t stomach another kids’ movie so he snuck out of the theater into the main room. He saw, with a quick glance, that Dawn and a few of the other folks were sitting in the employee room talking about the rain.
Deftly avoiding that room, he went out to the main atrium and saw with dismay that the rain hadn’t let up. He watched an upturned recycling bin float by on the street. Quill ate his sandwich, frowning at the water, the rain.
“Hey, man,” a
voice said from behind him.
Quill turned and saw that the single guy who was staying at the motel, who—thanks to Karen—Quill now knew was named Harris, owned a Border Collie, and lived outside of Nashville, was walking up to him, hands in his pockets.
“Hey.”
“Pretty crazy weather, huh?” Harris said, glancing from Quill to the windows.
“Yeah.”
It was obvious that the man wanted something from Quill, and Quill just hoped it wasn’t food. He and Dawn had enough food for the two of them to get through lunch and dinner tonight, but not much more than that.
“So, uh,” Harris said after a quiet minute. “Are you and that girl together?”
Ah. So that’s what the little weasel wanted. Quill turned and really looked at Harris. He wasn’t bad-looking. Not too handsome, not ugly. Not too young, not too old. Looking at him was like looking at a piece of plain paper.
“That girl?” Quill said in a sarcastic voice. As if Harris didn’t know Dawn’s name. Not only was Dawn the only young, hot piece here, Karen had made every single person do a freaking name game not an hour ago. This fool wasn’t fooling anybody with this nonchalant act. “You mean Dawn?”
“Uh, yeah.” Harris was starting to look nervous now, perhaps because of the way Quill’s muscles chose that moment to flex under his T-shirt. Or perhaps it was the glower that Quill couldn’t seem to find the energy to wipe off of his face.
Aaaaand Quill found himself asking the same damn question he’d been asking himself all afternoon. To lie or not to lie.
Dawn was worth the trouble of working out the ethics of truth vs. lie.
But Harris? Not so much.
“None of your fucking business,” was ultimately what Quill decided on going with. He jammed the last bite of his sandwich into his mouth and went back into the theater. Kids’ movies it was, then.
***
By early evening, the persistent rain had turned into a thunderstorm, complete with gusting wind that shook the building in its boots. The entire group was now sitting in the top rows of the theater. A movie played, a sequel to a sequel of some movie about aliens. Dawn finally decided she’d had enough.
She marched up to Quill and plunked down into the seat next to him. “All right. I give up.”
“Hm?” he said, his eyes on the screen, all of his body language straining away from her.
“I give up,” she repeated. “I am officially taking back my question. You never, ever have to answer it. Let’s just pretend like I didn’t ask it and you can finally stop watching these shitty movies just to avoid talking to me.”
His white smile flashed for half a second before he tipped his head to the side and eyed her with his icy eyes. “That obvious, huh?”
“Painfully.”
She kept her voice dry and sarcastic to mask her hurt. She didn’t know if Quill’s refusal to answer her question proved that he did care about her or proved that he didn’t. Either way, she was tired of feeling hurt. She decided just to move on and keep things as light as possible on the road trip to hell.
“Well,” she said. “Consider yourself freed. Come play cards with me.”
She held up a deck of cards she’d found in the employee break room.
“Oh.” He looked surprised that she was letting him off so easily.
Actually, she was a little surprised herself.
They plopped down on the area they’d staked out earlier for themselves and Dawn dealt the cards. A long time ago, when she still hadn’t been talking to him much, he’d taught her how to play gin rummy. That was what they automatically fell into now.
They played in silence for a long time. To Dawn’s consternation, whenever she’d glance up at Quill, he’d already be looking at her, only to quickly look down at his own cards. This was very confusing to her.
Because honestly? He was acting a little bit like he had a crush on her. In fact, when she scrolled back through her mind, there were lots of times that he’d acted like he’d had a crush on her. She ran a reel through her head. Quill pushing her hair behind her ear. Quill standing in line with her while she got her driver’s license, a proud smile on his face. Quill’s face when she’d told him about Sasha. Quill meeting Sasha. Quill hate-eating Sasha’s sandwich like he’d rather have been eating dirt. Quill’s face resting on the pillow just inches from hers. The thick hot slab of his strong back under her body as he’d carried her through the storm.
Are you aware he’s totally in love with you?
And then earlier that afternoon, when Quill hadn’t even been able to look at her when she’d asked him point-blank if he cared about her.
So, yeah. There was all of that on one end of the see-saw. And on the other end was the fact that he’d sold her off to be a science experiment for an ex-government employee.
Huh. She really didn’t know how the math panned out on this one.
She was just about to put down a winning hand on their seventh or eighth game of cards when there was a sudden pop and the lights went out. Now, considering they were in a room with no windows, all of them were plunged into absolute darkness.
There were a few screams and then Ted’s voice rang out. “Don’t panic, people. I’ll go get the generator running.”
A flashlight clicked on, but the darkness only went from completely dark to mostly dark. Dawn could still barely make out her fingers in front of her face. A strange feeling creeped up the back of her neck. She hated indoor darkness. Outdoor darkness she didn’t mind at all. When you grew up in the wilderness, you got accustomed to it. Outdoor darkness had a hundred different personalities. Shadows and moving air and countless natural sounds always accompanied outdoor darkness. But when Dawn and her brothers were starting to get accustomed to the human world, she quickly realized that indoor darkness creeped her out. It was so impenetrable. Everything was completely still. It made her claustrophobic. Like it pressed in on every side.
Not enjoying the feeling of being out in the middle of a pitch-dark room, Dawn carefully picked her way over to the wall and sat with her back against it. She stiffened in surprise when her shoulder knocked against Quill’s. Apparently he’d moved to the wall as well.
“Sorry,” she whispered, about to inch away from him.
“It’s all right,” he whispered back. “I know you don’t like the dark.”
That’s right. She’d talked to him about this. Back when she told him everything with reckless abandon. When she didn’t know she was supposed to guard herself from people like him. When she didn’t even know what kind of person he was.
But did she really know now either? Because right now, she could feel the warmth pulsing through his body where their shoulders connected. She heard his steady breath, could scent his skin and hair. He wasn’t a superhero, the way she’d come to think of him before. No. He was just a man. A man with a fucked-up past and chipped heart. He sat next to her, breathing the same air as the rest of the humans in this room.
Time moved slowly in the pitch dark. She couldn’t tell if Ted had been gone for too long. She listened to the rain on the roof of the building and tried to soothe herself. She closed her eyes and counted slowly and realized that she’d started leaning on Quill, instinctively shrinking toward his warmth and weight, like their point of contact was keeping her anchored to the earth.
She jumped a little when a warm hand touched her elbow. She turned to look at Quill but saw only flat black nothing where his face would be.
Her breath caught as the tips of his fingers trailed from her elbow down her forearm. He lingered at the back of her hand before he slipped his fingers against her palm. Dawn stared down at the place where their two hands would be resting on her leg. She saw nothing and for some reason, that completely heightened the sensation of him lacing their fingers together.
She’d never held hands with someone like this before.
It was really freaking nice.
His hand was warm and dry and calloused. She could feel his he
artbeat in his palm, or maybe that was her heartbeat. She’d never know.
***
Quill held Dawn’s slender hand and tried very hard to get his heart rate under control. He could fool himself and say that the only reason he’d reached for her was because he knew she was creeped out by absolute darkness. But that wasn’t the only truth. So much of it was because as soon as the lights had gone out, all of his walls had dropped as well. Somehow, without her eyes on him, he felt like he might not have to hide everything from her. In the dark, where she couldn’t see him, he wouldn’t freeze under the heat of her soft, brown gaze.
“Dawn,” he whispered through the darkness.
He felt her turn to him, her hair brushing against his shoulder. It sent a shiver down his spine that he was sure she felt, as pressed against him as she was. “The answer to your question is yes.”
Her breath stopped.
“I know I don’t deserve to tell you this,” he continued in a hushed tone. “And it would probably make everything simpler if I just kept it to myself. But I can’t face—“my probable death, never seeing you again, take your pick“—what’s next without telling you. At least once. You’re so unbelievably special. Smart, hilarious, sweet. Everything I could ever… I wish everything were different. I wish I were different. It doesn’t matter. I just need you to know that I care about you. So much.”
She still wasn’t breathing. He leaned toward her but froze in place when he felt her forehead land on his shoulder. She rocked her head back and forth a little, and he felt her hair brush against his arm. Her hand clamped down on his and she shuddered.
She sniffed and sniffed again.
“Are you crying?” he asked gently.
“No.”
He chuckled. “Yes, you are.”
She lifted her face from his arm and he couldn’t help but reach for her face with his free hand. His palm landed at her ear and he slid his hand around to her cheek. He swept a tear away with his thumb and leaned his head down. For a long moment, he just breathed her air.
