“What are you saying?”
His gaze rose, meeting mine. “Let’s be honest. There isn’t a place back home where we don’t share some kind of connection.” Snatching the key from the cup holder, he waved it around, before throwing it back down. “My family isn’t known for its subtlety.”
My gaze slid to the hotel, to the lighted lobby just beyond the door. “So, you’re bringing me here because no one would expect it?”
He laughed, the sound short. “No, I brought you here because here I don’t know you.”
His words caught me off guard, and I stared at him. “Don’t know me?”
“Back home, I know Hawthorne. I know the troubled young girl I met in high school. Her shadow is everywhere, her ghost chasing me from my house to the hooch to the creek. Here, that girl is gone. It’s just you and me. You’re not that Hawthorne any more, and I’m certainly not that boy. Here, there are no memories, no shadows of what we left behind.”
For a long moment, I sat there, my gaze traveling to his side view mirror, my reflection gazing back at me. He was right. I wasn’t that girl any more, and he wasn’t that boy. We didn’t know these new people. We didn’t even know if we’d like them.
My hand fell to the door handle. “Show me your room.”
Jumping free of the truck, Heathcliff rounded the cab, pulled open my door, and offered me his hand. My fingers met his palm, and for the first time since laying eyes on him, it felt like being with the old Heathcliff.
In silence, we walked through the lobby and into the elevators, the doors closing behind us. Heathcliff pressed the button to the fifth floor, the metal throwing back our distorted reflections as we rode upward, my stomach dropping with each new number.
The door dinged open, and Heathcliff stepped free of the elevator, his hand on the frame to keep it from closing.
“You don’t have to come, Hawthorne,” he said.
Again, I caught a glimpse of the old Heathcliff, and it was the vulnerability in his eyes that pushed me forward.
“I think … I think I need to,” I responded.
My gaze dropped to the floor, my eyes following his feet as we walked. Shoes. They told a lot about a person, and Heathcliff’s shoes, while different from the ones he’d worn in high school, represented him well. Worn, well used, and repaired.
His boots paused in front of a door, his hand sinking into his back pocket to pull out a key card. One swipe, and we were inside. The room was a big one, a king-sized bed in the middle of the space surrounded by a desk, a flat screen TV, and two chairs flanking a table. A suitcase sat at the end of the bed, unzipped but closed. It was a neat room, nothing out of place.
Throwing his key card onto the table, Heathcliff turned to face me, his hands out to the side. “This is Max Vincent. A lot of hotel rooms, and a million demons.”
Shifting awkwardly, I forced myself to meet his gaze. “I vaguely remember a guy who enjoyed creating things, who spent his life making people happy.”
He snorted. “Now I just kill them.”
“I beat you to that one, Heathcliff,” I breathed. “You’re not going to find pity here. Sympathy maybe, but not pity. There hasn’t been a person who’s entered my life who hasn’t either left or passed away, and yet I wouldn’t want it any different. Because each person who came into my world changed it.”
My gaze dropped to Heathcliff’s T-shirt. “Take it off,” I ordered.
His hands fell to the hem, his eyes meeting mine. “Déjà vu, Hawthorne. We’ve done this before.”
I threw him a look. “Not this we haven’t.”
Gripping the hem of his shirt, he pulled it over his head, and threw it onto the floor. I stepped forward, my gaze on the scars and tattoos marring his flesh.
“It’s like road a map,” I murmured, my arm rising, my finger dragging down the scar on his forearm.
Heathcliff answered my silent question. “Knife wound.” My fingers dropped farther to the raised scar tissue on his stomach. “Stupidity,” he murmured. “A welding lesson learned.” Finally, my fingers dropped to his hip. “Shrapnel. I was lucky. I was far enough away, I only walked away with a mark.”
“Be brave,” I whispered, my fingers leaving his scars to brush the thorns tattooed on his chest.
Heathcliff’s hand came up to cover mine. “I’ve lost some of my patience over the last few years. I appreciate the curiosity, but …” His words trailed off, fire burning in his gaze.
I pulled away from him, taking several steps back. “You’re not that different, you know. Just … dirtier. Like a truck that’s been rode too hard in the mud.”
Heathcliff’s brows arched. “Dirtier? Rode too hard? Honey, you need some better adjectives.”
I fought not to smile and lost the battle. “I was trying to be serious.”