Page 14 of Offside Angel

The floor is damp and the steam is so thick I can’t even see the mirror.

I rip back the curtain and…

It’s empty.

She’s gone.

I tear out of the bathroom and search the room again, as if she might have rolled between the mattress and the headboard like loose change.

I spin in a circle and she’s gone.

Last night might as well have been a dream. I can still feel her on my cock. I can smell her in the dingy comforter. But she isn’t here.

My phone rings. I dig it out of my pants on the floor. “Where are you?” I grit out.

But it isn’t Mira on the other line.

“I guess you finally woke up,” the P.I. says. “I’ve been calling you for hours.”

I belatedly recognize the ringtone. I must have been tired if I didn’t hear it for the last few hours. Weeks of no sleep and hours of fucking can really take it out of you.

Was that her plan? I think. To exhaust me and run?

“Where is she?”

“Your girl snuck out the bathroom window before the sun was even up. I followed her and she checked into a motel a couple towns over.”

She left.

She’s not just gone; she chose to leave.

I have to force myself to loosen my grip on my phone so I don’t crush it in my hand. “You have eyes on her?”

“I’ll send you the address and make sure she doesn’t get away,” he says. “I’d move quickly if I were you.”

I pack up what little she left behind in the room in a mad dash and leave. The motel looks even worse in the daylight. The sun-washed green paint is the color of an old bruise and there’s shattered glass glittering all over the cracked parking lot.

This is the kind of place I used to stumble out of in the middle of the day, sweating out the drugs and alcohol from the night before.

Mira absolutely doesn’t belong here.

She can’t want this over the life we could have together. Last night was enough to prove that. I know she wants to be with me. I felt it in every kiss, every curl of her body around mine. There’s no way to fake this thing between us.

So how the fuck do I get her to stay?

I climb into my car, enter the address the P.I. sent into my GPS, and call Daniel as I screech out of the lot.

“Good news?” he asks in lieu of a greeting.

“I found her.”

Daniel cheers and I hear muffled yelling. He’s talking to Taylor in the background.

Good. I could use her input on this.

“Then,” I add loudly, drawing their attention, “she ran off again.”

Daniel cuts off his celebration. “What? What do you mean?”

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