Page 53 of Wraith

“Oh, Responsible June is bad, but in all the right ways.”

Then I press my lips to his.

Chapter Twenty-One

Wraith

The taste of her is still on my lips when we pull into the Starlight Motor Lodge parking lot. Not the wine we drank this morning, or the adrenaline-soaked terror of the fight, or even the faint copper tang of my blood that I’ve been tasting since Bruiser and Hawk attacked us. Just her. June. The way she kissed me in the truck with her hand still gripping that stolen cash and her eyes bright with the fire of a woman who just dominated a drug dealer in broad daylight and walked away with his money like she owned the fucking street.

The motel is exactly what we need: cheap and anonymous. The Starlight’s sign flickers with the death rattle of failing neon, and the parking lot is empty except for a rusted sedan and a pickup truck that looks like it hasn’t moved in weeks. The building itself is a single-story, painted a color that might have been cream once but has faded to the yellow of teeth stained by nicotine, coffee, and old age.

June parks the truck, and I follow her inside, keeping one hand pressed against my side where Morrison’s stitches pull with each step. The lobby smells of mildew and cigarette smoke. Behind the counter sits a kid who can’t be more than twenty, staring at his phone screen with the glazed focus of someone who stopped caring about his job approximately ten minutes after starting it.

“Hi. We need a room,” June says. Her voice is steady and confident. Responsible June handling business.

The kid doesn’t look up. “How many nights?”

“Three,” June says, and I don’t contradict her, even though three nights feels optimistic considering the Sons are hunting us and we just left two of them unconscious in her apartment.

But she’s got the cash in her hand and she’s handling this, so I let her.

“Sixty bucks a night,” the kid says. “Cash only. No refunds.”

June counts out the bills. The kid finally looks up, takes the money, and slides a key across the counter. Actual key, not a card. Room seven.

“Names?” he asks, pulling out a logbook that looks like it predates the internet.

“Mr. and Mrs. Smithson,” I say before June can answer. The kid writes it down without interest or questions.

We find room seven at the far end of the building. The door sticks when June turns the key, then opens with a groan. Inside, the room is small and dim and smells like every cheap motel room I’ve ever stayed in: industrial cleaner trying to mask the accumulated sins of strangers.

There’s one bed. Queen size. Questionable sheets. A television from the early 2000s bolted to a dresser. A bathroom with a door that doesn’t quite close all the way. One window with curtains that block most of the afternoon light.

June drops the duffel bag on the floor, and I can see it happening before it happens. The way her shoulders go loose. The way her knees give. She makes it to the bed and sits down on the edge, and then she’s listing sideways, and then she’s lying down, curled on her side on top of the covers.

“I just need a second,” she mumbles.

Her eyes close.

And that’s it. She’s out.

I stand there and watch her sleep. Her breath evens out almost immediately, going deep and slow. Her face relaxes, the hard edges smoothing into something softer. Younger. There’s a smudge of something on her cheek — could be dirt, could be dried blood, could be egg from this morning’s food fight chaos. Her t-shirt has ridden up slightly, showing a strip of pale skin above the waistband of her jeans.

She looks wrung out. Like someone who’s been running on fumes and sheer stubborn will for too long.

New June needs a fucking break.

My side throbs. My ribs ache and jaw hurts where Hawk connected with that punch. Every part of my body is cataloguing its complaints, demanding rest, insisting that I lie down next to her and let unconsciousness take me too.

But I don’t.

I stand there and I watch her sleep and I feel something complicated happening in my chest.

She robbed a drug dealer. In broad daylight. With a whip and her wits. She turned what should have been a disaster into exactly what we needed — cash, anonymity, momentum — by sheer force of will and what I can only describe as weaponized sex.

It was reckless. Dangerous. Insane.

It was effective.