The drops came down a little harder now, and I glanced around the barren streets, unsure of what to do. I knew what my heart wanted, and for once my brain wasn’t spouting its stupid logical drivel. It didn’t need to. I wasn’t slipping, I realized.

I knew I was strong enough to pull my phone out and call Melanie. I was sure I could be away from him; that I could be in my bed in a matter of hours if that was really what I wanted. And that was the first time I actually admired myself because I didn’t feel consumed enough in someone that it was out of my control. I was in control, and I could decide to stay or go. I’d grown enough to be okay with either. That Carter-induced haze had cleared.

I stared up at him, saw the rain pelting him, sticking parts of his hair to his beautiful chiselled face. His plump lips were soaked, his eyelashes coated with water drops, his t-shirt pressed against every inch of his torso, giving me a glorious view of those abs.

In all seriousness, would any girl walk away from this?

“Okay,” I finally said on a firm nod. “Let’s do this.”

*

I had gone into the motel office, my shoes squeaking noisily with every step, and booked the room in myself. I had Carter waiting outside under the awning with his front facing the wall. The last thing I wanted was for us to be discovered and have a mob of people outside our room come morning.

What a strange new reality I was living.

“You look like something a cat dragged in,” the miserable young receptionist told me as I signed my name in the guestbook.

“Well, I mean, it’s raining,” I replied. “And I’ve just walked, like, six kilometres, so…” So shut the fuck up.

“Is that guy your boyfriend?” she then asked, setting her nail filer down, staring at the entrance door. I followed her gaze and saw Carter’s back outside, some feet away. I could hardly see a clear image of him from where I stood. It was pouring down rain, and the awning did little to keep him out of it. What I did see was a tall, well-built man, his light hair plastered to the back of his neck.

Fucking hell, he was sexy.

I gave her a strange look. “Uh, not really.”

“I saw you both walking over. He looks familiar,” she continued.

“He gets that a lot.”

Her eyes narrowed in thought. “It’s almost like I’ve seen him before somewhere.”

I set the pen down. “Unlikely. Anyway, I got my name down, so if I can have that key, that’d be splendid.”

She opened up a drawer and ruffled through the keys, all the while staring out the window with those eyes so narrow, I could hardly see her irises. When she handed me my key, I got out of there ASAP.

“Don’t look back,” I told Carter, grabbing him by the arm. I led him down the line of rooms and stopped when I saw number 15.We got crushed by the rain, and it was getting old already. As if this part of the world didn’t get enough of it!

I asked for some, not buckets of it, world!

“Everything alright?” he asked.

“I swear, some people can recognize you just looking at the back of your head,” I told him with a scowl.

“Someone recognized me?”

“She said you looked familiar. Honestly, Carter, can you not walk anywhere without being noticed? It’d be nice if you looked as pathetically normal as the rest of us.” I shoved the key in and opened the door. Immediately, the smell of dust and old sheets slammed into me as I stepped inside the room.

“It’s a bit of a curse,” he said, turning on the light as he walked in after me. “And you don’t look pathetically normal.”

I sneered at that, shooting him a sceptical look. “She said I looked like something a cat dragged in.”

His eyes travelled my body from head to toe. “That’s because you’re drenched in rain, beautiful.”

Yeah, well, it sucked. Why couldn’t I look like those hot girls in the movies that looked sexually pleasing to the eye the second they got their bodies drenched in rain, in front of men that looked like Carter?

Unfair, Universe. Unfair.

He shut the door behind him and we kicked off our shoes, all the while looking around the most unfortunate looking room I’d ever seen. It had two single beds, a lime coloured rug, probably from the 80s that was frayed and worn out from overuse. There were panels on the blinds that were askew, barely blinding anyone from a view inside the room if they were seriously intent on it. The television was more a black box looking thing and there were magazines on the night stand of celebrities from years past.

“How the hell did this place stay open for so long?” I wondered aloud. “There are hardly any cars in the parking lot, and it’s a freaking dump. It makes that zebra car we slept in look like a dream, right?”

When he didn’t answer, I turned to him and paused. My cheeky humour had fallen on deaf ears. With his back pressed against the door, Carter was too busy looking at me. If ever there was a gaze to melt the heart of a girl, it was the one he was giving me. He smiled wistfully at me, and I consciously crossed my arms over my wet body.

Why are you looking at me like that? I wanted to ask.

“If someone told me last week I’d be in a motel room with you, and that you would be soaked to the bone looking like a fucking goddess, I’d have shot them in the face.” He said this to me so quietly, I had to strain my ears to hear. He let out a long sigh, running a hand through his longish hair. Drops of water fell over his face, sending trails down his cheekbone and lips. “I’m trying to think of ways not to fuck this up.”

I shook my head a little. “You can’t fuck this up.”

“I want you to want me, and I’m stumped because usually I have girls falling to my feet, and the one girl I want isn’t.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that. There was no way to eloquently tell him that the past had scarred me, that our time together had left me frightened to ever love someone again. I tried to think of ways to lighten the conversation instead, but my mind was empty. My humour ended the second my eyes touched his blues.

He pushed off the door and slowly walked to me. My heart pounded harder the closer he got. It took everything in me to look at him, to not shrink away. He was so close to me, I could feel his body heat. He looked just as scared as me, if not worse. I’d never seen him this vulnerable before.

“Does it feel like we’ve been apart?” he asked me in a hushed voice.