Page 87 of Raff
“Fuck,” I sighed, throwing my arm across my eyes and trying to think of anything else.
It was useless.
What could I expect when the thing I’d been fantasizing about for years became a reality? And it not only lived up to, but surpassed those fantasies?
“Ugh,” I grumbled, folding up, then climbing off the bed.
I grabbed some fresh clothes and made my way to the bathroom, keeping the water cool, then stepping under the spray. Standing there, I cranked it colder and colder each time a thought of her popped up. It wasn’t long, though, before there was no way to make it colder. And my mind was still riddled with thoughts of her.
Giving up, I toweled off and climbed out before pulling on some fresh clothes.
When I made my way back out, Lula was still working on her laptop as the penthouse went dark around her.
I walked around, flicking on the lights.
The hotel suite was enormous, but I felt like it was packed to the rafters with everything neither of us was willing to say. Lula, because she was afraid of her own feelings and how they didn’t fit in with her carefully constructed plans. Me, because I was afraid of giving her anything she could use as an excuse to keep me at arm’s length.
So I sat down on one of the dining chairs, texting my brother until, eventually, Lula broke the silence.
“What time is my flight tomorrow?”
“One.”
“So, I should get there at around eleven to go through security,” she said, mostly talking to herself.
Her flight was actually at eleven-thirty. At a private airport. One last treat of luxury before she went back to living at Jack’s motel and eating sad grocery store prepared foods and drinking leftover coffee.
It was petty and ugly of me, but some part of me hoped that she would think of me each time—remembering the trips to cool little coffee shops or risking our gastrointestinal health at some sketchy-looking roadside food places that turned out to be incredible.
There was that old saying about absence and the heart growing fonder that I was choosing to put some faith to rest in. Maybe, as much as I hated it now that I knew how good it was to be together, what we needed was time apart. To miss us. To realize how good it actually was.
That said, I was planning a route back to Shady Valley that wouldn’t take as long, while still managing to get some of the guns I promised Slash. I figured I could hit up three decent sales and knock out ten-hour driving days, putting me back in Shady Valley in roughly three days instead of five or six.
It wasn’t a long time, but it might be long enough for Lula to miss me.
Besides, I had to have a big sit-down with the boss man to talk about everything that had gone down. And deal with whatever anger he was going to have toward me about it. Not to mention the lecture I was going to get from my brother about keeping shit from him.
But all that would be worth it if I finally got Lula to realize that, while it might not look like it on the surface, we did fit.
“I think I’m going to go take a shower,” she said, closing her laptop.
“Okay.”
She paused as she got to her feet, and I could feel the look she shot at me—the kind with pinched-brow confusion. Because I never passed up on an opportunity to say something cheesy about asking if that was an invitation or that we should be mindful of water restrictions and bathe together. I just didn’t have it in me to pretend right then that I wasn’t upset about the distance, that I wasn’t worried about the future.
At some point, she packed up what was left of her things hanging around, then went to her room. Neither of us seemed inclined to order dinner, just go off to our separate spaces and overthink everything.
Or, at least, that was what I did.
I dropped into bed eventually but maybe only got a broken hour or so of sleep before the sun was streaming through the windows, dragging me up with sawdust-dry eyes and a heavy feeling in my chest that I was trying to ignore.
Everything was still quiet in Lula’s room, so I took a quick shower, got dressed, and headed out to grab breakfast and the biggest coffees I could find for each of us.
By the time I got back to the suite, I could hear her moving around in her room and smelled the scent of her body wash wafting through the penthouse from her shower.
When she emerged, she was back in her boss-bitch mode: hair in a slick back, light makeup, and one of those sexy librarian dresses she always wore to work—all skin-tight and hugging every curve, but with a modest bodice and a hemline that cut just above her knees.
I loved every version of Lula I’d met. But the more I got to know her, the more I saw that the person she projected herself as in Shady Valley was more of a persona than who she truly was. She wanted to be seen as confident, competent, independent, and successful. And shewasall those things. But she was so much more too. It was a real shame that she didn’t let anyone see that.
