15 Days Before I Left Him novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Room Nine

I turned my phone off at the second gas station and put it in the glove box.

Raylan watched me do it.

"You can read them later," he said. "They'll keep."

"I know."

He drove another hour, past Kalamazoo, and neither of us talked.

I kept my hand on the console.

At some point his fingers laced through mine and stayed there.

At three in the afternoon we pulled off the interstate at a motel with a flickering sign and a vending machine out front.

Raylan went into the office alone.

He came back with a metal key on a plastic diamond and held it up.

"Room nine," he said. "It's ugly. I don't care."

"I don't care either."

The room was brown, with a bedspread the color of tea and a heater under the window that rattled.

Raylan closed the door and slid the chain across it.

Then he stood with his back against the wood and looked at me.

"I need to ask you one thing," he said. "Do you still love him?"

I thought it was a fair question.

"I loved him for seventeen years," I said. "I stopped two weeks ago, in a hospital corridor, holding his coat."

"That's not an answer."

"It is." I stepped closer. "I'm standing here in a motel in Kalamazoo. I'm not thinking about Roscoe. I haven't thought about him since the gas station."

His eyes dropped to my mouth.

"Say that again," Raylan said.

"I want you."

He crossed the room in two strides and kissed me against the wall.

It wasn't careful this time.

His hand slid into my hair and tilted my head back, and I opened my mouth to him, and he made a rough sound deep in his chest.

I got my hands under his jacket and pulled it off his shoulders.

He tugged my sweater over my head, and the cold air hit my skin for a second before his palms covered me.

He groaned against my neck.

"God, Clara."

"Take it off," I said, pulling at his shirt. "Everything. Now."

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