Page 9 of Hideaway Whirlwind (Big Boys of Berenson Trucking #4)

Teagan

This is crazy, even for me. It shouldn’t matter to me that Elliott wanted to sleep in his truck.

If anything, I should have been happy that I’ve been spared another day to think through how I’m going to approach him with my appreciation for his help, as I’d thought about doing at the last motel.

But when I had wrapped my kids in my arms, squeezing us all together for warmth, our muscles slowly uncoiling, all I could think about was how the man who made this very thing possible was sleeping cramped and alone in his truck.

As soon as the kids had fallen asleep after eating the rest of the sandwiches and snacks while watching a movie, I slipped out of bed without disturbing them, shut the TV off, then hefted it down to the ground so it couldn’t potentially fall on any of them before I left the room, triple-checking that the door was locked.

With the stack of extra blankets almost as tall as me that I picked up from the lobby, I arranged everything on the floor into a makeshift sleeping bag.

Crazy as I might be, I wouldn’t go so far as to offer to let Elliott get in bed with us, but hopefully the padded floor will be comfortable enough for him to sleep on while easing my conscience.

Elliott’s hand is hot and rough wrapped around mine while I fumble with unlocking the motel room door, my muscles seizing with the cold.

Finally succeeding, I pull him inside the darkened room and around the bed to the warmest spot between the bedframe and bathroom wall, sweeping my hand out to show him the blankets.

“You sure?” he asks just above a whisper.

“Yes,” I answer simply, then have to tug my hand twice to get him to release his hold so I can bend and unlace my boots. I climb onto the bed, scooching into the middle to drape my arms over my babies with the flat sheet and comforter pulled up over our noses. “Goodnight, Elliott.”

“‘Night, Bir—Teagan.”

I listen as Elliott tosses for fifteen minutes, wondering if dragging him out of his truck was such a good idea after all, since the hard floor, even with all the blankets, might be more uncomfortable than his seat.

I flip over onto my opposite side and try to make out the lines of Elliott’s face when he sits up and fluffs the only pillow I was able to get before he lays down with a low huff.

After another ten minutes of tossing, a few headlights filtering through the moth-eaten drapes and intermittent slamming car doors in the parking lot, neither of us is finding any sleep just yet.

“What’s it like in Texas?” I whisper. “I’ve never been outside of Nevada, so I don’t know what to expect.”

Elliott’s rustling comes to a stop. “You want the truth?”

“Yes…” I answer, drawing out the word, burrowing deeper under the comforter. “Why do you sound so ominous?”

Elliott releases a muffled chuckle. “The truth is, we get a few months where we don’t have to run the A/C, though not always. Then all of a sudden, the weather turns, and we’ve entered pre-heat season—that’s March and April, and if we’re lucky, May too.”

“Doesn’t sound that much different from the desert,” I say with slight disappointment.

Elliott puts his hand up in a stop motion. “Now, hold on. Come June, the humidity is so high, it feels like stepping out of the shower and pulling on your clothes without toweling off first.”

“Oh. Sounds wonderful,” I say sarcastically.

“That’s not the worst part. Then come the mosquitoes, and there’s no escaping them. And then—”

“Oh, man,” I groan, scooting closer to the edge of the mattress. “What then?”

“Then comes August, and it’s like being thrown in a boiling stockpot with the crawfish and taters.

” He pauses and takes a deep breath between each sentence, as if he’s unused to talking so much.

Maybe he’s not. “The air is thick as soup, you never truly get dry, and everyone wonders why in the hell they still live in Texas.”

“You know, I think I’ve changed my mind. I’ve had enough of the heat. Do you think Marigold could find another trucker to take us north?” I ask, half joking, half questioning if I’ve made a huge mistake going east.

“No,” Elliott answers quickly, a little too loudly, cutting off my low laugh.

He clears his throat. “What I meant was, it’s not all bad.

We’re green most of the year, where I am.

Plenty of lakes and state parks to camp in and explore.

And we have the best food in the country.

Anything and everything you want to eat from all over the world, we’ve got it. ”

“That’s a big claim. Think you can back it up? ”

“Been to every state in the lower forty-eight, so I can confidently say yes. Big cities aren’t too far, so there’s plenty to do or see.

” Here he takes several more deep breaths, his voice louder now.

“We could take a family trip down to the beach for the weekend. Drive right on the sand and up to the water in some areas. Go fishing on the pier. And we could take the kids to San Antonio or Houston for the Rodeo,” he says, growing more animated than I’ve heard him speak thus far.

“They’d love the carnival rides and deep-fried Oreos, I bet. We could also—”

I cut him off when I ask with a squeak, “We?”

Elliott takes a long time to answer. “You,” he says in a subdued voice. “You and Goldie, I meant.”

I nod, silence stretching between us. With my heart beating too fast to find any rest, and Elliott tossing again, I tell him, “We’ve never gone on a family trip before.

” At least not one I can remember from my earlier years when I still lived near Grandpa.

And certainly not after Mom remarried. “And you’re right.

As gross as it sounds, I bet the kids would lose their minds over some deep-fried Oreos. ”

“They’ve never, uh, never gone on a trip with their dad—dads?” he asks, stuttering out his real question.

“Dads,” I answer. “And no. When I was with…my first, we weren’t allowed to leave.

And with Kendall’s dad, we were too broke,” I say, upset by the reminder that the kids have missed out on so much.

Missed out on having a big, normal, happy family.

Though, believe me, I tried building one for them. And failed epically.

Elliott shoots upright. “What do you mean, ‘allowed’?”

I pinch my lips together to contain my groan at my slip-up, but Elliott isn’t letting me off the hook, squinting and leaning closer until I can feel the force of his question like a living being breathing down my bruised neck.

Though I’ve told as few people as possible about where I come from, I find myself wanting to open up to him, and I scoot closer, on the cusp of falling off the bed.

Maybe it’s the dark that makes it easier to tell my story, or the traumatic experience we’ve shared that loosens my tongue.

Or maybe it’s just the simple, human connection I crave.

Whatever the reason, I start by asking him, “Have you heard of the Zeraxists?”

“The polygamist sex cult out in the desert that worshiped some kind of fake galaxy or something like that?”

“Zeraxy,” I confirm with contempt. “Our galactic version of paradise that we’re supposed to ascend to when we die and populate with our insane amount of children to battle the aliens of the Gonarfa Galaxy for control of the universe.

” My insides feel like they’re being squeezed in a vice when I think of the absolute lunacy of my time in the crackpot, demented cult and what it cost me— everything , except for my children.

“Tell me you’re joking.” Elliott leans his shoulder against the mattress. “I heard they were raided because of the…the child brides and…and…” Elliott clears his throat, tipping his chin down. “Fuck, I don’t even want to say it.”

“Yeah. You name it, we did it,” I say, focusing everything I have on the lock of hair that falls across Elliott’s forehead and not my rapidly beating heart as we trudge through my awful past.

“You were really a Zeraxist?”

“Not me—my mom. She joined when I was ten. Even at my age, I knew it was all crazy bullshit. I couldn’t believe she’d fallen for it.

She was my stepfather’s third wife. I was my husband’s first,” I say, still trying to determine why I feel comfortable opening up to a man when it backfired so spectacularly with Quincy.

Elliott shoves his hair back on his head with a low growl. “How old were you when you got married?”

I move my hand up slowly so Elliott won’t notice when I have to clamp it over my mouth until I can speak without wanting to vomit.

“Fourteen. I was lucky,” I say sarcastically—a tone that would have earned me two days and nights sleeping on the concrete stoop without food or water, waking up with sandy grit in my eyes and teeth.

“At least Guxxer was my age, and we weren’t related.

He wasn’t as bad as the rest.” At first .

“We loved each other, in the beginning. Or what I thought was love. Some of my stepsisters weren’t so lucky. ”

“Birdie…” My shoulders hunch up to my ears when he lays his hand gently on my head, but slowly settle when he simply slips a few strands of my hair through his fingers before letting his hand drop. “Were you with the kids who were rescued before the cult blew up their compound?”

I shake my head. “I wasn’t a kid by then,” I say with a bone-deep ache for my lost childhood.

“Some of the boys who were kicked out over the years joined a group that helped smuggle women and children out of the cult. I escaped right before the raid with Dustin and Sydney. But my husband…he never made it out of the compound.” I smile behind my hand.

Just a little one. Private, all for me. “Neither did my mom. I kept begging her to leave, but she chose to stay with her husband.” I try and fail to keep my voice down when I say heatedly, “I would never do something like that to my kids. Never.”