Hold Me (Love The Way Duet 2)

I’m not jealous. I’m beside myself.

Ella doesn’t say a word on the way to the car. The cold is setting in. She shivers under my arm, wrapped in her coat. Her teeth click together as we reach the car. I bundle her into the passenger side and run around to mine and throw myself in. Start the car. Turn the heat all the way up.

The tires screech as I back out of the parking spot. I don’t bother to call or text a soul seeing as Silas is standing right there at the exit, watching us leave.

The radio plays along as I accelerate into the road and get us out of the neighborhood, thankfully, Ella reaches over and turns it off. I usually took city streets between the motel and Ella’s, but tonight I take the first available turn onto the highway that skirts the edge of town. Stars shine above the mountain in clear skies. What was she thinking, jumping off that bar? What the hell did she intend to do to me?

Ella huddles in the passenger seat, her teeth clicking together with her shivers. Her arms lock tight around her stomach. “I’m so cold.”

I try to turn up the heat some more, but it’s already at full blast. “That’s probably from jumping off of a balcony into the pool when it’s freezing outside.”

I don’t take my eyes off the road for even a moment and focus on not losing it. It doesn’t matter. I can still feel her watching me.

“Are you mad at me?” she whispers as the night whips by us.

Mad does not begin to describe what I feel right now. It’s such an intense storm of emotions that I hesitate to open my mouth. There are no words to describe it. Mad doesn’t encompass the terror and the relief and yes, the anger.

It doesn’t describe the need.

Because right now I am in a state of need. I need her to understand. I need an outlet for all these things I feel. I need to be in control.

I don’t answer, and Ella doesn’t ask again. She stares through the windshield as we sail through the night, headlights from the oncoming traffic gliding across her face at uneven intervals.

We pass the exit we’d have to take to go to her house.

I feel Ella notice it. Her wet clothes shift against the seat. But she doesn’t ask the question. On some level, she already knows where we’re going.

The exit that leads to the motel looms out of the night, and I give all my attention to driving carefully. To steering us off the highway and going the speed limit and not fucking up another thing tonight.

We’re here. The mom-and-pop motel is a strip of rooms on a quiet road off the highway. It was closer than my house, closer than hers. And we’ll have privacy.

Lights burn on the outside of each door, keeping the night at bay. I think it’s meant to be welcoming, but right now it’s more than welcoming. It looks like safety. There’s no one outside the rooms.

I park, and leave her where she is.

“Stay while I get a room,” I order and she nods. For a moment, a tic in my jaw spasms until she answers, “Yes.”

Once I have the key, I open my trunk to take out a spare bag that stays there. Most of it is useless, but there’s a dry undershirt and pair of boxers that will do. Grabbing them, I go around to her door. Wordlessly, I open it and offer her my hand.

Ella hesitates.

Then she puts her hand in mine.

That hesitation does something to me. I know she’s delicate. But I also know had I been stricter, this shit wouldn’t have happened. She wouldn’t be questioning a damn thing between us.

I hustle us to the door, take the key out, and let us in.

The room seems too small to contain me in this moment, but there’s more than myself to focus on. “Get out of those wet clothes.”

Ella stands by the door, still and silent, and I unbuckle my belt. As I pull it apart, ready to slide it through the belt loops, I see she hasn’t moved an inch.

“Little bird.”

Her eyes snap to mine.

“Get out of those clothes.”

I don’t know if it’s because she’s responding to me or because it’s cold that Ella’s fingers go to work on the buttons of her coat. She strips it off and tosses it across the table, then goes for the hem of her dress. Anger surges through me again. She could have died, and then I would have been there with her broken body and my broken soul. She could have died and left me to live through the aftermath.

Ella has her dress over her head, her bare breasts perky, her nipples pebbled. She’s not entirely steady. Probably still drunk, and how the hell did I let that happen? I told her there would be punishment for drinking. She knew that going in. And she did it on purpose.