Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 75833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
The words played over in my head: some of us bite just to hear your scream.
I couldn’t help but think over and over … I didn’t know if I would scream or would I dare to bite back.
9
MELODY
I liked the laundry room on the days the hotel was filled with the Kings.
It was quiet when they could sometimes be quite loud.
When I was in the lobby or at the front desk, even along the hallways, I had to be polite and inviting. Not only with the bikers but the guests. People came here tired or some just entitled. Either way whatever mess was left behind, the expectation for me to be a soft landing to everyone existed.
In the laundry room no one asked for anything except another stack of clean towels or bedsheets. The machines did the talking. Industrial washers with a steady churn, dryers that rumbled like distant thunder with a click and clatter of zippers as they hit the drum or the hiss of steam if I cracked a door mid-cycle.
Those were the noises that surround me and helped to drown out the chaos in my head.
The room was hot, the kind of heat that stuck to the back of my neck and made my shirt cling between my shoulder blades. Detergent sweetness layered with bleach bite; clean, but sharp enough to taste on my tongue. I sorted towels into rolling bins, white with white, beige with beige, and the special pile of pool towels that were this beautiful teal color that I always worried would fade, but never did.
Routine steadied me.
Fold. Flip. Stack. Band with a strip of laundry tape. Build a neat white skyline on the metal cart. I could lose my thoughts to the rhythm and not think about the clubhouse party last night, or the way a man with a chiseled but stubble covered jaw had looked at me like he could see straight through my dress, my spine, into the softer things I tried to bury.
The door from the back stairwell thumped open.
I knew instantly it wasn’t one of the housekeepers. Their footsteps were quick, light, always in a half-jog because rooms didn’t clean themselves. These steps were heavier. Intentional. The kind that made old concrete pay attention.
I kept folding another towel like I could ignore the shift in air pressure, that small change you felt when weather rolled in over the mountains. Fold. Flip. Stack.
“Tiny down here?”
I turned.
It was him.
He filled the doorway with shoulders and shadow, the leather cut sitting like it had been stitched onto him, patches I had learned enough to read without pretending I wanted to be part of any of it.
Thrasher.
I hadn’t asked anyone, but the name had found me anyway in the clubhouse noise that trickled it’s way to the hotel. Up close, in fluorescent light instead of neon, the pale scar through the stubble at his jaw looked new and old at the same time, like this was his every day appearance.
I don’t know if I said his name out loud or only thought it. My mouth felt dry either way.
“He’s not here,” I said, and I hated that it came out softer than I meant it to. “I haven’t seen him since this morning.”
The door eased shut behind him on the hydraulic arm, the latch clicking like a period at the end of a sentence. He took two steps in, slow enough to be polite, close enough to erase the space I’d declared my own.
“You work down here?” he asked.
Not a real question. His eyes had already mapped the room, memorized my little island: the two stacks of folded towels, the open jug of detergent, and the battered radio that didn’t work unless I twisted the dial just so.
“Laundry,” I said. My hands had curled into the towel I was folding, knuckles white under fluorescents. “Sometimes.”
He nodded once like that answer satisfied something I couldn’t see. He didn’t smile. He didn’t look away. He just… looked, and I felt my pulse jump against my wrist like it wanted a way out.
He crossed the last two steps between us. The dryers hummed at my back and blew warm air up my spine, and even in that heat, a shiver skittered over my skin.
“Tiny’s not here,” I repeated, because saying anything kept me from drowning in the quiet he brought with him. “You can try the office.”
He didn’t even glance toward the door. “I’ll find him when I’m done with you.”
He stopped so close I could see where the stubble didn’t quite catch the hollow under his cheek, where the curve of his mouth could tip mean or soft and he’d get away with both. Something sparked in his eyes—recognition, I realized with a snap of embarrassment. He knew me from last night. From the moment I’d bumped into him like an idiot and he’d growled at me just to hear my fear.