Page 26 of Run Away With Me

For the next hour I got progressively more snarky, cutting off Chris mid-sentence and earning increasingly furious death glares from Brooke. I didn’t want to sit with him anymore, but I couldn’t tip him off that I’d seen him taking our room key. And, unlike me, Brooke didn’t seem to want to get up to use the restroom. I had no way of telling her what he’d done, other than pissing her off to the point where she wanted to leave.

‘We should get going,’ Brooke said eventually, and I felt my shoulders slump with relief.

‘Right,’ I said.

‘It was really nice to meet you,’ Brooke enthused at Chris, and I forced myself to smile at him.

‘You too. Have a safe trip, Summer. Jenna.’

I nodded at him and wrapped my hand around Brooke’s arm to drag her out of the bar.

‘You were so rude tonight,’ she hissed. ‘What iswrongwith you?’

‘I’ll tell you in a minute.’

‘You have to make an effort, Mouse. You can’t just go through life not talking to people. He was a nice guy, you could have –’

‘I’ll tell you,’ I said tightly, ‘in a minute.’

‘Fine,’ she huffed.

She sulked all the way back to our room. I stopped outside the door and folded my arms.

‘Go on,’ I said, gesturing to the door.

Brooke put her hands in her pockets. ‘Shit. I must have dropped the key.’

‘No, you didn’t.’ I tried to fight back my frustration and instead pulled one of the new keys out of my wallet and let us into the room, then I put the chain across the door and flipped the deadbolt, too. ‘Chris pickpocketed you.’

‘What? No, I must have dropped it earlier,’ she said, patting her pockets.

‘I saw him, Brooke!’ I said, my voice rising. ‘I literally watched him take the key from your pocket. He was good at it, too, so he’s probably done it before. I knew he looked like trouble.’

She gaped at me. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Yes!’

‘Oh my God! And you didn’t tell me?’

My fingers curled and I clenched my jaw. ‘I’m telling you now.’

‘You could’ve told me earlier! You let me talk to that creep forhours!’

‘So you would’ve believed me if I’d told you downstairs?’ I said, challenging her.

Brooke opened her mouth to argue, then shut it again.

‘And what do you think he would’ve done if I’d confronted him?’

‘I don’t know,’ she murmured.

‘Me neither. I tried to get you out of there as soon as I could, but you wanted to keeptalking.’

‘Ugh. I feel dirty.’ Brooke sat down heavily on the end of the bed.

‘He’s probably still going to try to get in here,’ I said, leaning against the dresser.

‘You think?’ she looked up at me with worried eyes.

---