Page 84 of Storm Bound
I wished he was here to protect me. I wished he was here to stand up for me.
But he wasn’t. He’d run away. Like any sane person would. Why would anyone want to stay with someone so weak and stupid like me?
“Adam!” Justin shouted again.
I nodded and followed him out the door. He got in the passenger seat and waited for me to get behind the wheel.
“I think it was this way. I’ll check my phone,” he said.
We went through the quiet streets, the big stretches of land, finding our way closer to town and to Main Street. I felt like rolling down the window, shouting, screaming, anything to get him away from me, but whatever was happening inside me wasn’t cooperating with my body.
Maybe I just had to succumb to this fate and just be grateful that I got to meet Charlie, even if I ended up hurting him in the end. Because at least he’d shown me what normal love felt like.
“There it is. I knew it was a hotel,” he said after telling me to park and to get out of the car.
It wasn’t any hotel. It was Melody’s B&B. I stopped walking and stared at the sign.
“Babe, come on. Stop being so stupid,” Justin said from a couple steps ahead of me but loud enough for a couple walking by to turn and stare.
I didn’t need to embarrass myself any more than I already had, but I couldn’t go to Melody’s Bed and Breakfast. Anywhere but there.
“I can’t. Not here,” I said.
“Babe, come on!” Justin shouted again.
I moved toward him and the B&B just to get him to stop shouting. It might not be so terrible in Chicago, but here, where everybody knows one another and everyone talks, it wasn’t okay.
Maybe it didn’t matter. Wherever we went, people would find out, anyway. If the townsfolk didn’t share the gossip, then Charlie and his family would definitely tell everyone what happened and what a terrible person I was.
But I still couldn’t face Melody.
My only consolation was that at least Melody had been at the house when we left, so she probably wasn’t working tonight.
We stepped through the door, and I was proven instantly wrong.
Melody was at reception and sprang up when she saw Justin with a big smile on her face. But then she turned to look at me, and her eyebrows sank.
“We’d like a room for the night. Double bed,” he said. “Do you guys have room service, by the way? This one knows how to work up an appetite.”
He slapped my ass again, and Melody’s eyes flared.
“I… What are you doing here?” she asked me.
“Do you know him?” Justin asked.
I opened my mouth. But what could I say to her? What did I say? How did anyone explain this?
Maybe I could tell her to help me? To call the police? But what would the police do? He wasn’t holding me captive, and I was free to go. It wasn’t anyone’s fault I couldn’t find the balls to do it.
“Dr. Kravitz? Yes, I know him,” Melody snapped at Justin, and I admired her fierceness.
“You didn’t tell me you were working here, babe. Nice one.” He slapped my butt again, then leaned on the reception desk. “How about the room we asked for? And if you can do a special price for your doc, that’d be…” He kissed his lips in a chef’s kiss.
Melody grimaced.
“Adam, what is going on? Why are you here?” The way she looked at Justin at the end of the sentence didn’t take a mind reader to know she was asking “with him?” too.
“That’s none of your business, don’t you think? Now can you give us a room, or are we going to be giving our money to another hotel in town?” Justin said before I could even articulate the beginning of an answer.
