Page 64 of His Trick

My mood soured, and I sighed. “Your sister is my fucking girlfriend of a year, ya know.”

He ignored me, walking forward, practically skipping to the damn lobby.

Inside, the clerk didn’t even look up from his magazine when I slapped cash on the counter and asked for rooms.

“Two rooms, please.”

The clerk man grunted. “Nope, sorry. We got one. You and your butt buddy can have that one. I ain’t got two.”

My stomach tightened, and I felt my blood drain from my face. “Are you fucking kidding me? How? Too many drug addicts and hookers tonight?”

One room? With Carrington?

The slob behind the counter shrugged, finally looking away from the swimsuit magazine to size me up, along with Carrington, who was poking some stain on the wall with a fake plant leaf.

“Don’t know. Don’t care,” the clerk said. “You want it or not, pretty boy?”

I opened my mouth to argue, but before I even knew what was happening, Carrington was in front of me, gripping the man’s hand so hard I could hear bone cracking in his grip.

“Look, I know he’s pretty. But don’t you fucking dare say another word except ‘Yes, Sir’ and hand this pretty boy our key, got it?”

The clerk grimaced, panting in rage and pain. I couldn’t move. I watched a dark cloud take over Carrington. The clerk turned his body awkwardly, still held in Carrington’s strong, bruising grip, and grabbed the dangling green key from a wooden pinboard.

“That’s a good boy,” Carrington said mockingly, gesturing for me to reach out my hand to the worker. “Now give the man his key and go back to the real magazine you’re hiding behind the Sports Illustrated. Your butt buddies await you.”

Ah. That made sense.

The only thing out of this weird fucking interaction that did. I reached out my hand, letting the moron drop the key in my grip, and shrank away from Carrington when he let go of his wrist.

“Great job. You are an excellent consumer slave.”

Carrington patted him on the head like a dog, and the man yipped, backing away from us. Carrington’s eyes were…black. The dark, dangerous, all-consuming cloud of rage had swallowed the gold.

“Hey,” I said carefully, reaching forward to touch his shoulder, trying to give him something to bring him back to the world and out of his trance.

I knew how this felt.

It was how I felt in the woods when I almost killed that woman. Carrington was doing all he could to avoid killing the motel manager.

“It’s okay, Care Bear. Let’s go to our room. It’s been a long night. We need to get some sleep.”

Carrington stared at my hand on his arm, his eyes swirling with the tiniest amount of gold. Little by little, I pulled him outside of the office, and he started to soften for me.

“It’s okay. Let’s get to the room, okay? I’m here,” I said again, trying to ground him. “Don’t leave me, Carrington. Don’t go there.”

Don’t leave me?

I realized I actually didn’t want him to leave me, and that scared me more than being hunted by him.

“Yeah,” he responded a bit absently, his eyes blinking slowly. “Sunshine. Here. For you. Sunshine.”

I didn’t know why I did it. Maybe it was because I hated the fucking rage that I knew physically hurt, maybe it was because I wanted him to come back to me, or maybe it was because I needed it, too.

I leaned forward, gripping the back of his head, linking my fingers in his soft, tousled black waves.

“Come back, Care Bear. Come back.”

Before I could make sense of it, I pulled him to my lips, pressing my weight into him, forcing him to respond. At first, he was stiff, robotic, and barely interactive.