Page 63 of Elijah's Hope
Yellow, of course, so as not to tick off Zeke.
Zeke, of the badass, computer-hacking skills. Probably needed to buy him something, too.
I shook my head still wondering how he’d done what he’d done, but then I put it behind me. I had some serious groveling to do.
I got out of the car then headed toward the stairs. I took them two at a time and stopped in front of room twenty-two. I knocked. Then knocked again because I had never felt so anxious in my life.
“I should have let you explain. I’m sorry,” I whispered to the door. It’s where I had planned to start.
“Who is it?” I heard her ask behind the door.
Good, I thought. She was being cautious. She shouldn’t open her door to a random knock. The question was, would she open the door once she knew it was me?
“Shelby,” I croaked. Then I cleared my throat. “Shelby, it’s me. Eli.”
I waited a moment. Then another.
“Please, Shelby, you have to talk to me. You have to…let me say I’m sorry.”
Finally, I could hear her remove the chain lock from across the door then another click, and the door opened.
The surprise on her face was real. “How are you here right now?”
“The credit card,” I said.
“Oh right. Eve would have seen the transaction. But I still don’t understand why you’re here.”
“Can I come in? I don’t want to do this out here.”
She stepped back, and I followed her into the tiny motel room. One bed, a chair, an end table and that was it.
She sat in the chair while I basically paced in front of her. I ran my hand through my hair and tried to pull together my thoughts.
“Look, when Jackson showed me that video and I realized you had lied about everything, it knocked me on my ass. I didn’t stop to think about why you did any of that and I didn’t give you a chance to explain. You know about my mother. How I felt about what she did, but that’s my baggage. Not yours. I shouldn’t have said what I said. About not being able to look at you.”
“Okay, Eli. I accept your apology. But you didn’t have to come all the way down here to tell me that.”
“No, I didn’t. I came all the way down here to tell you that I missed you. That when you were gone, it was like there was this part of me that was missing and I was a shit human being to everyone around me because of it. Eve made me realize I didn’t give a shit about your past or why you lied about it. That wasn’t what I had fallen for. I fell for you. For the way you can make a sentence go on for five minutes. The way you take joy in everything that’s new to you. The way you listen like everything I say matters. You weren’t gone an hour before I knew I had made the biggest mistake of my life letting you go. I spent two weeks on the job being stubborn and frustrated and angry. Then Eve said what she did and it all made sense.”
“Eli,” she said softly.
“So I came to get you. If you’ll have me.”
She stood then and walked over to me, cupping my cheeks in her palms. “You came for me? Really? Even though you know everything now?”
I nodded and bent to kiss her lips. At first, I knew she was startled but after a second, she kissed me back and I decided that was to my advantage. I plunged my tongue into her mouth and did everything I could to convince her to give me a chance. Just one more chance.
She pulled back and smiled up at me and I thought about how I might have lost that forever. If Eve hadn’t kicked my ass, I would’ve never seen that smile again.
“Does this mean we’re going to have make-up sex right now?”
I remembered the first time I made love to her. How needy I had been. How I hard I had wanted to fuck her. And she offered herself to me in total trust. Which made her that much more remarkable, knowing what she’d been through.
I thought of the present I had brought her, but that could wait.
She needed to be naked and I needed to be inside her because that was the only thing that was going to prove to me that this was real. That she was real, and she was giving me another chance.
“It means we’re going to fuck so hard everyone in this motel is going to know what we’re doing,” I growled. “And I don’t give a fuck.”
