Page 33 of Exit Strategy

“Sorry,” I said softly. “I shouldn’t talk about those things.”

“Why not?” he asked.

“Because they upset you,” I said.

“You talk about whatever you’d like, Love. Whatever makes you feel better.”

I lapsed into silence again, turning those words over in my mind.

I couldn’t remember when it’d happened, but I liked that he was calling me “Love” even if it was just a generic thing that Englishmen said. Like an American “Sweetheart” or “Darling.”

While I sat in my silence, I thought about that, too. I felt like I should be vaguely unsettled for liking it, but I didn’t. I really liked it. I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know if that reallymeantanything.

It was dark by the time we pulled off the road to get a room. I waited in the truck, inspecting my reflection in the night-darkened glass of the passenger side, staring at the bruises that were fading from wine to coffee stains under my skin. The red was leaving, the brown coming through more, but I hadn’t quite gotten to the sickly green and yellow phase of things. That’s when it became easier to cover it all with makeup. A little red to balance out the green, just a slightly thicker layer of concealer for the yellows – oh, and it hurt a lot less to apply and remove it all.

Except I didn’t have any makeup to hide behind. No high-end cosmetics. Not even low-end drug store quality anything. Just my wild mane of red hair that dipped past my ass but wasn’t quite to my knees.

The truck’s door opened behind me, and I jumped.

“Easy,” Kurt said. “It’s just me.”

“Sorry,” I apologized automatically, and he shook his head.

“No need for that. You save your apologies with me.”

I nodded carefully and he drove us around closer to our room. I frowned slightly when he brought everything that didn’t have a lock on it inside with us.

“Are we staying for a few days?” I asked.

“Nah.” He shook his head. “Just tonight.”

“Oh,” I murmured, my curiosity eating me alive.

“Ask the question, Callie,” he said kindly.

“If we’re only staying the one night, why bring everything in?” I asked.

“It’s a bit sketch out there,” he said.

I looked out of our motel room door, across the cracked asphalt of the parking lot, rippled by heat and whatnot, reminding me of the lava beds we’d traversed earlier in the day.

“I don’t understand, what makes it… off?”

He smiled at me and shut the door, throwing the locks, and swinging the little arm over the ball that seemed to replace the old chain-style locks in recent memory.

“A lot of things you’ve never had to deal with in the secured confines of New Eden. We’ll have to work on your situational awareness.”

“Okay,” I said perking up. “I like learning things.”

“Aye, I somehow knew that about you,” he said, dropping onto the edge of the bed beside mine – the one closest to the door and the window, which he’d insisted upon from the very first night.

“I never asked, but—”

“Go on,” he said.

“Why do you always take the bed, or the side of the bed closest to the door and windows?”

He smiled and it was tired. “Lesson one, then, I do that to protect you. If anyone is coming in, they have to get through me to get to you.”

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