Page 35 of You Can Run

“The ring. I told him you're my wife. You walk around here without it, he starts asking questions.”

She looked down at the chain, then back at him. “You don't get to just?—”

“I need you to.”

Something moved through her expression that he couldn't hold onto; it came and went too fast, and he had the sense that if he looked too closely at what was underneath it, neither of them would survive the next five minutes in this car.

She didn't speak for a long moment. Then she reached up and unclasped the chain. Her fingers weren't steady. She slid the ring free and held it for a moment, just looking at it, and he watched her throat work once before she put it on.

It fit perfectly. It had always fit.

Dante felt a fire ignite in his gut. Seeing that stone on her finger didn't make him feel like a protector; it made him feel like a man who was about to lose his mind. He looked at her hand, then up at her mouth, and for a heartbeat, he almost leaned across the console and ended the two-year drought right there.

“Okay,” he said, voice thick. “Let's go.”

He put the 'Cuda in gear and rolled to the back of the motel.

He pulled into the spot behind Room 12. The door was a faded blue, the paint bubbling from the heat. He cut the headlights but kept the car running for a moment, listening to the silence.

“We leave at five,” Dante said. “Before the sun is up. Before anyone notices we were here.”

Jessica didn’t answer, though he felt her attention shift toward him. He reached for the key, for his bag, for anything that kept his hands occupied and away from her.

The motel room lock turned, and the door opened on a stale pocket of air that smelled faintly of mildew and old perfume.

He stepped inside and flicked the light.

The room came into view in a tired wash of yellow laminate surfaces, heavy curtains, a plastic chair in the corner. And in the center of the room, under a thin, polyester bedspread, sat a single, sagging queen-sized bed.

Dante stopped in the doorway. “There's only one.”

Jessica stepped in behind him, the door closing with a soft click that sounded too final for something so small.

“It’s fine,” she said, though there was a crack in it. “It’s just a bed.”

Dante moved to the window, peeling the curtain back a fraction, checking the car, the lot, the long stretch of nothing beyond it. The motion gave him something to focus on that wasn’t the fact that she was here, that she was close, that the ring on her finger had turned a lie into something dangerously convincing.

“I’ll take the floor,” he said, dropping his bag by the wall.

“The floor is concrete under that carpet,” she replied. “You’ll last an hour before your back locks up.”

“I’ve slept on worse.”

She hadn’t moved far from the door, but something in her had shifted. “It’s a big enough bed,” she added, softer now.

Dante exhaled slowly, the sound dragging out of him. “Jessica?—”

“We’re not those people anymore,” she said, cutting him off, though there was no bite in it this time. “You already made that clear.”

She crossed the room and sat on the edge of the mattress, the springs giving beneath her. Her hand drifted to the ring on her finger, turning it once.

Dante watched her do it, then made himself stop. He leaned forward, bracing his forearms on his knees, staring at the carpet. “You should take the bed. Get some sleep.”

She let out a quiet breath, almost a laugh. “Sleep,” she repeated. “Right.”

The reality of their situation didn't hit Jessica when the door locked. It hit her when she walked into the bathroom and saw the two wafer-thin towels hanging over a rusted rack.

She had nothing. No toothbrush. No cleanser to strip the stage makeup that felt welded to her skin. No change of clothes. Not even underwear.