He turns around.

I barely have enough time to remove my eyes from his neither regions and bring them up to his face where I glance those damn wireless earbuds in his ears.

He’s listening to music.

Of course he is.

And he’s staring at me, these beautiful, sky-colored eyes open wide in shock.

“I’m so sorry,” I blurt out, fighting like hell to keep my eyes at his level and not at his dick, which he’s attempting to hide with his hand and even though it’s only in my peripheral, and he has large hands, his attempt is futile. You cannot hide that thing.

“I didn’t hear you come in,” he says loudly, a hint of an accent on his words, and then he takes out his earbuds with his hands, leaving his dick to hang freely.

Don’t stare, Maggie, don’t stare.

Instead, I gawk.

That’s one hell of a dick.

I swear I even see it twitch under my gaze, this long, dark meaty looking python that has me wishing this was a porno so I could drop to my knees and suck him off with abandon. I’ve never had a penis that large and beautiful near the vicinity of my mouth before but I bet I could figure out what to do with it.

And while I’m staring dumbly at it, my key card slides out of my hands and onto the floor.

“Shit.” I snap out of it and bend over to pick it up.

Just as he bends over to pick it up.

Frightened by the proximity of his giant penis, I flinch and straighten up.

Banging the top of my head against his jaw.

“I’m so sorry!” I yell again while simultaneously backing up, holding the top of my throbbing head.

He’s even more dumbfounded than before, grabbing his jaw with one hand, staring at me in confusion.

“I’m so sorry!” I say again, aware that I’m yelling and I manage to turn around and head toward the door before I can assault him again.

“Uh, Miss,” he says just as I’m almost free, “your key.”

Fuck!

I turn around and see him walk toward me, that fucking dick of his swinging freely like a battle-axe, holding out my key between his long fingers.

I slap my hand over my eyes so I can’t see anything at all, manage to grab the key from his fingers and then quickly turn and scuttle away. I’m pretty sure I mumble something like “I’m sorry,” or even “penis” as I go, but thankfully I make it to the hallway and pull the door shut.

“Holy shit,” I mutter to myself before pushing my housekeeping cart down the hall as fast as I can, my face burning up. “Holy shit.”

God, I hope he doesn’t lodge a complaint. Says that I’m some maid that tried to see him naked or something. There was no “trying”–I couldn’t not see him even if I tried.

You should have tried harder.

And I’m right. I should have. I guess it’s a testament to either how lonely or horny I am. My sex-life, my love-life, it’s all been put on the backburner ever since I moved back to Tehachapi. It wasn’t even anything great in New York, but at least then I had gone on a few dates, gotten laid a few times. Now, I’ve been a sex camel for the last year and I think it’s starting to weigh on me. Apparently strange, naked men are enough for me to lose my fucking mind.

But he wasn’t just some average man. He was well over six feet, with hands bigger than my face and a body that looked sculpted from bronze. He had eyes that reminded me of the sky on a summer day, an accent that spoke of a refined upbringing somewhere far more interesting than here.

He was honestly the most gorgeous, beguiling man I’d ever seen and that’s not even including his penis.

I lean against the wall outside the housekeeping room and try and shake some sense into myself, shooting up a silent prayer. Hopefully that’s the last time I see that guy.

Chapter Two

Maggie

“Who listens to their earbuds when they get out of the shower?” Annette says to me, smirking over her beer as she does so.

“To be fair, I don’t think he just got out of the shower,” I tell her. “He wasn’t wet at all. He was completely dry.” And smooth. And clean. Every taut and tawny inch of him.

“Even so, it’s La Quinta, not the Four Seasons,” she says. “Who wants to walk around naked in their hotel room listening to music?”

She shudders and I reach over and lightly punch her on the arm, almost making her spill her beer. “Hey. I clean those rooms. You can rub your naked butt up and down that carpet, it’s clean as a whistle.”

“I’m only joking,” she says with a tsk of mild disgust, picking up a napkin and wiping down the side of her beer bottle. “I guess I should watch what I say around you today, Miss Sensitive.”

I roll my eyes and take a sip of my glass of wine. “I am not Miss Sensitive. I just had an off day.”

“Which is why we’re here,” she says brightly, gesturing to the Faultline Bar. The Faultline is one of the nicer bars in town, nothing fancy but at least the drinks are good and staff is polite. Bonus points for not crawling with prison workers and ex-convicts. Not that I ever went in those bars before but I definitely couldn’t handle it now. That’s where you’d often find my dad after his shift and I’m sure I would feel him in the walls, not to mention the patrons there would probably love to talk about him to me, bringing up the ghosts.

Not that I often come out to the bars anyway. I don’t have the time or the money. But I haven’t caught up with Annette for a few weeks now and she said she was buying me a drink and Pike said he’d watch everyone while I was out. He didn’t even hesitate. Maybe the stress is causing my face to crack.

Annette is in her fifties—she’s actually my mother’s best friend. Or was. It’s always hard to talk about that because do you really stop being someone’s friend when they’ve died? She’s never stopped being my mother, even though she’s not here anymore.

Anyway, I’ve always known Annette and always liked her, despite her being crass and crude, or maybe because of that. After my parents died, we started getting closer. She’s a great person to talk to because she’s still grieving in the same way I am, plus she’s going through a bitter divorce and can use a friend. Her soon-to-be ex also works at the prison as the warden and he’s very respected and I think Annette is slowly losing her friend pool in this town, with most of them siding with him.

I sigh and lean back against the booth. “I need to get out of this town,” I tell her and then I’m immediately hit with a million pangs of guilt and regret. There’s no leaving, not now.

“You know, anytime you want time off, you can go,” Annette says. “I’ll keep saying it until you believe me, but I would be more than happy to watch the kids for a weekend. Go drive down to LA and live it up. Act like the twenty-three-year-old that you are. You’re too young to have to deal with all of this.”

“I can’t take time off work,” I tell her.

“Bullshit,” she says, tapping her hot-pink nails against the table. “You’ve worked there for a year, you can get your two weeks. You just need to take them.”

“But I’ll probably need them for an emergency,” I tell her. “What happens when April graduates and wants to go to college and I have to take her there, wherever that is.” I pause. “Fuck, she probably won’t even go to college. She won’t get a scholarship, not with the way she’s been acting and we all know we can’t afford to pay right now. She might not even graduate.”

“Regardless, Maggie,” she says with emphasis. Even though she quit smoking years ago her voice still sounds like she smokes five packs a day. “That’s the future, and you know there’s no point in getting upset about something that far ahead. Things change.”

“But they don’t change,” I tell her. “Callum is only seven. I’m his guardian for another eleven years. Tehachapi is my prison until then.”

“Look, Maggie, it’s a prison for a lot of people. Literally.”

I don’t want to talk about it anymore. It feels futile and more than that, I feel rotten for even wanting to leave. Without me, my brothers and sisters have no one to keep their lives running. We’re all in this together, whether we like it or not. And not one of us likes it. Every one of us wishes and prays every night that we could get our parents back, but wishing and praying doesn’t change a thing.

“So how is your writing going?” Annette asks, quickly changing the subject.

It’s not a better one. It’s literally the worst question you can ask a writer.

“It’s going…okay,” I say slowly after I take a gulp of wine. It’s a lie. It’s not okay. Every night after everyone goes to sleep I try and steal an hour for myself and write but it’s becoming harder and harder. I’m not inspired–I’m tired.

“And you’ve given up on the local paper?”

Ah yes, the local paper, The Tehachapi News. Not exactly what I was aiming for when I went to NYU but now I’d die for an opportunity to write for them, even if I’m just covering the local mountain bike races. But as many times as I’ve shown up at their office and emailed my resume and samples and enquired about writing for them, it doesn’t seem to go anywhere. I get the brush-off in a form letter without so much as an explanation.

“I’ve given up on a lot, Annette,” I tell her, smiling as I do so because I don’t want our outing to turn into gloom and doom. Quit complaining and live in the moment, I tell myself. Enjoy this time out of the house and with your crazy friend while you can.

“Looks like you’re not the only one who has given up,” she says, nodding to the bar.

My eyes drift over to a man who is hunched over on the counter, seemingly sleeping or passed out. I had seen him earlier when I walked in here, my mind registering him as piece of the background. But now that Annette has brought him to my attention, I find myself focusing on him differently.