Page 28 of Promise You Forever

“You can’t touch me like that anymore.” She backs away from me and walks over to the oven.

“Worried about what Bernie will think?”

“Brandon.” She spins around, fire in her eyes. “His name is Brandon.”

“Do you think he’d be upset?” I can’t stop myself from poking at her now that I’ve started. “Where is he anyway? Kind of shitty of him to up and leave when you’re dealing with so much.”

“You are the expert on shitty behavior, aren’t you?”

I pick up a cookie and take a bite. “Good point, but you didn’t answer the question.”

She tilts her chin up and stares me down. “And I’m not going to. I need to shower so we can get going as soon as Gramps wakes up.” She points to the cookies on the counter. “Do you mind putting those in Tupperware for him?”

She’s out of the kitchen before I can even answer her. Her anger gives me hope, indifference would be so much harder to overcome than hatred. If she still harbors such strong feelings, it means I can redeem myself. I can remind her why we were good together, that before I fucked everything up, we were perfect.

I should care that she’s engaged to another man, but I don’t. I’m here, but where the fuck is he? If that was my ring on her finger, you can be damn sure that she wouldn’t be navigating this alone. Benji can get fucked for all I care.

I’m going to get her through all of this. Bit by bit I’ll wear her down until she remembers, until she sees how much I’ve changed. I’m not the man who broke our hearts three years ago. I’ve healed, I’ve worked damn hard to be emotionally healthy. It’s on me to prove all that to her and more, starting today.

Today has been brutal, and it’s only halfway over. The original plan was to get Paul checked in and settled around lunch time and then drive back all in one day. But then mother nature decided it was a great time to wreak havoc with a surprise blizzard in the mountains.

So now I’m driving twenty miles per hour on the interstate in near whiteout conditions looking for a place to pull over for the night. Every other minute Eli’s foot slams on her imaginary brake pedal, which is the least helpful thing she could do.

“Keep your eyes open for any place we can stop. I think there’s a little town we should be coming up on soon.”

“I would if I could see more than five feet in front of us,” she murmurs as she scoots forward in her seat.

The next few minutes pass in tense silence as heavy, wet flakes fall down around us. Finally, we see a sign indicating lodging ahead. Now to pray that they have a room available for us.

The motel’s parking lot is half full of vehicles and the other half is full of construction equipment. I pull up in front of the office and grab my coat and hat. Eli starts to grab her things as well, but I put my arm out to stop her.

“You stay out here in the truck. I’ll see if they have a couple rooms for us.”

“Okay.” She relaxes into the seat. “Be careful.”

“It’s only ten feet.” I open the door and brace myself against the cutting cold of the wind. I knew we had a chance of running into bad weather, but I didn’t realize it would be like this.

I push open the door and am greeted by heat and the scent of commercial cleaning products. At least it’s clean from the look of the office. A man comes out from a back room and greets me at the front desk.

“Afternoon. What can I do for you?” he asks.

“I need a couple rooms or at least one room with two beds.”

He scratches his graying beard before answering. “You want the good news or the bad?”

“Does it really matter?” I’m not in the mood for bullshit.

“Guess not. The good news is that we have one room left, the bad news is that there’s only one bed.”

“That’s fine. We’ll take it.” I hand over my card. The worst-case scenario is I sleep on the floor. I’ve slept in worse places than a motel floor. I take the envelope with the key card and walk back out into the bitter cold.

Eli looks at me expectantly when I drop the keys in the cupholder between us.

“There was only one room left.”

“That’s fine.” She nods. “Anything to not be on the road. We can grab a few hours of sleep and then get back.”

“As long as they don’t close the pass.”

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