Page 5 of Sunny Undone

I smile at that. Under the light of the motel lot, I can see he has the most unusual green eyes. “You wanna know an amazing fact about green eyes?”

“You noticed my eyes?” he asks, the corners of his mouth lifting in a charming…no…lascivious smile.

“Green eyes have absolutely zero green pigment in them.”

Sunny’s jaw drops, for a second. “Nah. My eyes have been green my whole life; they’re definitely green.”

“It’s an optical illusion, Sunny. It’s caused by the way light scatters through the stroma…that’s the translucent layer of your eye…and how it combines with the amber or light brown melanin base.”

A wrinkle appears on his brow. “So, my eyes aren’t green? They’re brown?”

“It depends how you choose to define them. They definitely appear green, so they’re green. But really, they’re brown and the light is playing tricks on you.”

Sunny runs a hand over his jaw. “You’re fucking with my head, Indy. I’m gonna look in the mirror when I’m brushing my teeth and have an existential crisis.”

I look down at my muddy hiking boots, for a moment. For some reason, I’m not completely ready to sever this interaction. “Thank you for rescuing me tonight.”

“My pleasure. I’m gonna watch you to your door,” he says.

I bat a piece of hair that has begun bothering me away from my face. “No, it’s okay, you can go. I’m fine from here.”

Sunny reaches over and tucks the curl behind my ear. His fingertips warming the skin they touch. “If I was gonna hurt you, I would have done it somewhere in the last ten miles where I could dump your body in the water and no one would ever see you again because I’d slit your throat like chum in the water, then get a couple of alligators mad enough to chew you up.”

I’m not sure I’ve ever been around anyone who could talk about murder quite so casually. His leather cut and the little one percenter diamond patch suggest he might already have firsthand experience of it as part of a criminal enterprise. What does it say about me that it doesn’t scare me like it probably should? That I’m more concerned about the way it felt when his fingers brushed my cheek? “Pleasant, but point taken. Ride safe.”

I turn to face the motel when Sunny starts belting John Williams’s famous theme song for the Indiana Jones movies.

“Da-da-da-daaa, da-da-daaa.”

I can’t help but chuckle, but I do still turn and playfully flip him the bird.

It strikes me again that he’s an attractive man, and on a normal day, I might have been too nervous to even look his way. I’m the geeky girl who, unlike just about every rom-com that includes a geeky girl, never had the glow-up.

I wear glasses. Carry a few extra pounds. Have thighs better suited for carrying technical equipment for miles than lingerie photoshoots. I need to stop pretending his smile is anything more than an unexpected man being kind.

But as I turn back to focus on my motel room, I notice the door is slightly ajar, and an incredibly dim glow escapes around the edges. Like someone left the bathroom light on but the light can’t quite bend enough to reach the door frame.

I stop moving halfway between Sunny and my room.

Shit.

Shit.

Shit!

Sunny’s bike engine revs a little louder, and he pulls up alongside me. “You good, Indy?”

I point in the direction of my motel room. “I think someone is in my room. Or has been. The door’s ajar.”

Sunny kills the engine in the middle of the lot, then eases off his bike with the most casual of movements. He’s a man fully at ease. When he stands, I realize he must be close to six and a half feet, because at five eight, I’m not short.

“Wait here,” he says, opening the box on the back of his bike before pulling out a gun.

“Oh my God. No. We can just call the police.”

Sunny glances over at me. “I don’t know what mess you’re in or where you’re from. But the cops suck and won’t be here for a while, and I’m here. Go take cover behind that truck over there.” He tips his head in the direction of a white truck.

“Okay.”