Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 77505 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77505 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
With that, we checked in and waited for Saint and Syn before going up to our rooms.
We’d managed to all end up on the same floor, with Saint and Syn down near the stairwell and Colter and I almost on the complete other end.
“Let us know if you guys decide to order anything for dinner,” Saint said before disappearing into his room.
Unsurprisingly, it was a major upgrade from the motel. Which wasn’t hard. But this was a legitimately nice room, seemingly redone in faux white oak nightstands and desk, beige and white distressed carpet, and thick linen drapes. It was a single king-sized bed with crisp white bedding that seemed like it had seen the inside of a washing machine recently. The TV? Not a tube.
The bathroom wasn’t huge but seemed recently renovated too. The floors and walls were covered in a warm tile that had an almost sand effect. The shower was a glass walk-in, and there was a floating vanity with warm golden lighting all around and under it.
“This’ll do, huh?” I asked Sugar, who was already sniffing around the room.
I set my bag on the desk and was about to pull out my monitor to test my sugar when there was a knock. From… inside the room?
I stiffened and waited.
It came again.
But it wasn’t really inside the room.
It was from the other side of a door that I figured was another, smaller, closet.
Upon closer inspection, though, there was no reason for a closet to have a deadbolt and a swing lock.
You only needed that kind of security if that door went to another room.
And that other room?
That was where Colter was staying.
I stalked over there, flipping the swing and undoing the deadbolt, then yanking it open.
“You can’t be serious. Connecting rooms? I didn’t even know connecting rooms were a thing anymore.”
“It’s actually a big feature for a lot of people. Parents and kids can get separate rooms without having to go into the hallway to get to each other. It’s a safety thing.”
“Fine. Sure. We’re not a family.”
“No, but we will likely need to be able to talk. This makes it easier. Saint and Syn have a connecting room too.”
“Why didn’t Saint or Syn connect with me then?”
“I can switch with one of them,” Colter said, holding up his hands.
Calling my damn bluff, and he knew it.
If there was anything worse than a man being right, it was one knowing he was right.
“Wait, Sugar…” I called when she pushed past Colter to check out his room.
“She’s fine,” he said, shrugging. “The more she sniffs, the more tired she’ll be. Syn clearly spent some of the drive looking into local eateries. He sent me a list of options. Want me to run them past you?”
“I honestly don’t feel like going out,” I admitted. Despite having a lazy day of napping and watching out the window, I felt bone-deep tired.
“Okay, I’ll let ‘em know to head out without us.”
“What? No. You can go.”
“Don’t really feel like going out either.”
“I wasn’t inviting you to eat with me,” I told him.
“I wasn’t expecting that. But I can run down to the lobby to get the food, so you don’t have to.”
Damn him, he knew my Achilles’ Heel: my love of laziness.
“Fine.”
“Were you going to test?” he asked, nodding toward the case of lancets in my hand.
“I… yeah.”
“Want me to read you take-out options while you do that?”
“Uh, fine.”
It was.
I mean, I wasn’t exactly used to testing or injecting in front of people, since I’d been all alone in the world after Roach took my club from me. If I had to do either in public, I tended to go into the bathroom since blood and needles freaked a lot of people out.
But Colter just moved into the room, casually leaning against the wall, looking down at his phone. His nonchalant reaction to it made me a lot more comfortable as I went through the motion of testing.
“You sure?” Colter asked when I agreed that Chinese sounded good.
“Yeah, why?”
“Kind of notoriously carb-heavy food.”
“You have to just… live sometimes,” I said, shrugging. Granted, I did it rarely because it was easier to get my insulin right when I ate from a very strict menu of options. But every once in a while, you just needed comfort food.
“I get that. We could share the most carby option,” he offered, “so you’re not tempted to eat all of it and struggle to correct.”
I hated (loved) that he picked up on the general management of my diabetes so quickly. And that he had the perfect solution to me not overdoing it and struggling to fix it.
“It has to be lo mein.”
“Can’t go wrong with that,” he agreed. “And for the safer options… beef and broccoli is an option. Or chicken or shrimp chop suey. Moo goo gai pan.”