“That’s my line.”
Another long pause. Just when I thought maybe she would give up, she spoke again.
“I want to know you,” she told me.
“Not much to know,” I replied with a little grin, which she did not return. I sighed, and then I was dumb enough to make eye contact with her. “I’m just me, Tria. I fight. I work out. I hang out with friends sometimes. That’s it. I don’t have anything else to give you.”
“Give me your past,” she whispered. “Tell me why.”
I watched her look carefully at me, searching my face for answers. I felt my resolve crumble around me. I couldn’t even identify the feeling; I just knew that there was a part of me that wanted her to know—to understand. There was a part of me that wanted to tell her everything.
I was never one to open up, but I could not deny those eyes.
Chapter 19—Tell the Tale
“My family has a lot of money,” I told her as she moved around the suite to get ready for bed. Even though we only had the bare necessities, Tria seemed insistent on putting everything in dresser drawers and out on the bathroom counter, which I thought was pointless, at the very least. I sat on the couch, drank another screwdriver, and tried to deflect her every question.
“Not just your uncle?” Tria asked for clarification.
“No,” I said, “pretty much everyone.”
“How much is a lot?” she asked.
“Only my father’s accountant knows,” I said with fake humor.
Tria stopped placing clean clothes into the dresser long enough to stare at me. I pretended to be very interested in the condensation of the orange juice bottle.
“Are you going to elaborate?” she eventually asked.
“I wasn’t planning on it,” I replied. I tilted the bottle up to my lips before looking at her again. “It’s really late, and you need to sleep. All this shit is way too long a story for now.”
“You are just blowing me off,” Tria said, the accusation hanging between us.
I couldn’t really deny it because it was absolutely true. She still needed sleep, though.
“We stopped here because you were about to fall right off the bike,” I reminded her. “You need to go to bed.”
As long as she was moving around, she was awake, but I was pretty sure as soon as she lay down, she would doze off, and I would be saved. She crossed her arms and raised her brows at me.
“You’re exhausted,” I told her. “You need sleep.”
“Then tell me in bed.”
I rolled
my eyes and got up off the couch. Tria finally relented and agreed to get herself ready for bed. I let her take the shower first while I smoked on the balcony, hung out, and flipped through the crappy cable channels offered by the hotel. I was mildly annoyed by the realization that I could rack up a huge bill on the porn pay-per-view for Michael to sort out later, but having Tria there with me made that a lot less feasible. I decided to order almost one of everything for breakfast from room service to make up for it.
Once we were both ready for bed, Tria climbed onto the plush mattress and sighed deeply. I smiled, finding the decision to come here was a good one after all. At least she was warm, safe, and comfortable. I was almost glad the other motels and shit around the city wouldn’t take us because they would have been nasty. If nothing else, Michael made sure his hotels were the very definition of posh.
I climbed into bed and got into the usual position with her coiled up next to me. The bed was incredibly luxurious. The pillows were stuffed with something that felt like feathers but didn’t make my nose tickle. The sheets were obviously high quality, and I felt like I was merging with a pile of clouds or some such shit. It was good, that was for sure.
It was so good, I had to lean over and kiss Tria. She responded, and she brought her hand around my head, rubbing her fingers through my hair backwards again. I trailed my hand up her side, then back down again, moving a little lower to grip her hip. I started to move around to her backside, but she stopped me.
“You never gave me ground rules,” I reminded her.
“I know.”
I was pretty sure I could see her cheeks darken in the subdued light. I reached out and touched the side of her face. She turned toward me, and her throat bobbed as she swallowed.