Page 25 of The No Touch Roommate Rule (That Steamy Hockey Romance #2)

Chapter

Fourteen

PARKER

S omething scratches against the truck bed liner. The sound pulls me from a dream about hot tubs and promises I plan to keep.

Scratch. Scratch. Scuttle.

My eyes open to darkness. The air mattress lists hard to the left—we definitely should have spent more on the self-inflating kind.

My hip digs into the truck bed through the deflated plastic.

Makena presses against my right side, one arm flung across my chest, her breath warm against my neck.

She smells like bug spray and the sandalwood soap she used at the campground shower, mixed with that Makena smell that makes me want to pull her closer despite the heat.

The scratching comes again.

Closer this time…

“Mack,” I whisper. My voice rasps from too much cheering at crawfish races. “Hey, Mack.”

She mumbles something that sounds like “five more biscuits” and burrows deeper into my armpit. Her hair tickles my chin. Any other time, I’d be thrilled about the full-body contact, but something definitely just moved near our feet.

I reach for my phone, trying not to jostle her. The screen blinds me for a second—3:27 a.m. The witching hour.

That doesn’t seem good…

“Makena.” I shake her shoulder gently. “Wake up. We’ve got company.”

“Mmph. Tell them we’re closed.” Her leg slides higher across mine, and now I’m distracted for entirely different reasons.

But then, suddenly, she goes from unconscious to airborne in half a second, her knee barely missing my balls as she scrambles upright. “Holy shit, what the fuck was that?”

“I think there’s a?—”

“Oh my God! My foot! Something touched my foot! With its creepy little legs!” She grabs my arm hard enough to leave marks. Her voice drops to a rough whisper as she hisses, “Parker, there’s something in here.”

“I know. That’s what I was trying to tell you.

” I finally get the flashlight on. The beam cuts through the darkness, illuminating our chaos—tangled blankets, the cooler down by our feet, Makena’s hair wild around her face.

She’s wearing one of my old t-shirts she stole for sleeping and not much else.

Looks like those shorts she had on when we went to bed vanished sometime in the night…

“There!” She points toward the corner near our feet. “Shine it there!”

I angle the light, and we both freeze.

A massive crawfish sits next to my tote bag, claws raised like it’s ready to start something. It’s got to be one of the racers from yesterday, bred for size and speed, ‘cause it’s way bigger than any wild crawfish has a right to be.

“How…” Makena breathes. “How did it get up here?”

The truck bed is a good four feet off the ground. I eye our uninvited guest with new respect. “I don’t know. Climbed? Flew? Teleported?”

“This isn’t funny, Parker.” But her voice cracks on a laugh. “There’s a fucking lobster in our bed!”

“Crawfish,” I correct. “Louisiana lobster, if you want to get fancy.”

“I don’t want to get fancy. I want to get it out!” She releases my arm to grab my flip-flop from beside the mattress. “What if there are more? What if they’re organizing?”

The crawfish starts scuttling toward our pillows, including the separation pillow that’s now just another casualty of a sleep gone awry. Its claws click against the truck bed liner—a weirdly menacing sound in the dead of night.

“Oh no, you don’t!” Makena lunges, flip-flop raised like a club. She swings and misses, her momentum carrying her forward until she face-plants into the separation pillow with a muffled “Fuck!”

“You okay?” I start to sit up, careful of my knee. I took the brace off to sleep, a decision I’m beginning to think was a mistake out in the wilds of Louisiana.

“No, I’m not okay! There’s a monster in our bed!” She pushes up on all fours, my t-shirt riding up to reveal those La Perla panties that have haunted my dreams since the flood.

She shakes her hair out of her face and glares at the crawfish like it gave her restaurant a shitty Yelp review. “Come here, you little shit.” I move to help her, but she points a warning finger my way. “No, Parker. You stay there. Keep your knee safe. I’ve got this.”

“My hero,” I say, only half-joking.

She’s pretty magnificent right now—fierce and ridiculous and sexy as fuck.

“Stop staring at my butt and hold the light steady.” She army-crawls forward, trying to corner the crawfish between the cooler and the wheel well.

The campground is mostly quiet around us. Someone snores in a tent nearby. A dog barks in the distance. The night air hangs thick and humid, making everything feel like we’re moving through warm soup.

Mosquitoes buzz outside our mosquito netting, probably placing bets on who wins this fight.

The crawfish darts left. Makena dives right, flip-flop swinging wild. It scurries under our blanket. She rips the covers off like a magician revealing a trick, except the only thing revealed is that our air mattress is a rapidly deflating piece of shit.

“It’s heading for the cab!” She points a finger as the crawfish makes a break out from under her pillow, gunning for the gap between the cooler and the truck’s back window.

“Block it with something!”

She grabs the cooler—still full of ice and beer—and heaves it into the crawfish’s path, but luck continues to be on the mudbug’s side. The cooler tips, the lid pops open, and ice floods out. A Pbr rolls past my hip as cold water soaks the bottom of the mattress.

“Shit!” Makena steps backward, out of the mess, only to trip on a pillow and go down.

I reach out to catch her, careful not to twist my leg. She lands on my other one, half on me, half on the rapidly deflating air mattress.

“Sorry!” She tries to roll off me, but there’s nowhere to go. The truck bed isn’t that big, and now it’s full of ice, beer cans, and one very annoyed crawfish. “Are you okay?”

“Perfect,” I say, and weirdly, I mean it. Even with ice melting under my ass and a crawfish on the loose, having her pressed against me feels right. “Where’d our friend go?”

She pushes up on her elbows, scanning our disaster zone. My phone landed somewhere near our feet, its beam pointing uselessly at the truck canopy above us.

“There! It’s back by your bag again.” She spots movement near the corner. “It’s making a stand by the tailgate.”

“Probably calling for backup.”

She snorts, already moving toward our escapee. “Let it try. I’m making it and all its friends into breakfast étouffée.”

Clearly sensing its days are numbered, the crawfish makes another break for the cab, shooting across the truck bed with surprising speed. Makena shrieks and falls backward, landing ass-first in the puddle of ice water. “Cold! Oh my God, so cold.”

I can’t help it. I laugh, a full belly laugh that makes my eyes water. She glares at me, soaking wet and indignant, then starts laughing, too.

“This is insane,” she gasps between giggles. “It’s three in the morning, and I’m fighting a crawdad in my underwear.”

“Okay, new strategy.” I sit up carefully, mindful of my knee. “What if we trap it? Like, humanely. Give it a nice home until morning. Maybe in my coffee mug? It has a built-in air vent at the top.”

She considers this, wringing water from the hem of my t-shirt. The move flashes her stomach, and I definitely don’t stare.

Much…

“Fine. I’ll herd, you catch?” She eyes my position. “Can you do that without hurting yourself?”

“Yeah, I’m good. The knee’s actually happy tonight. It’s just my pride that’s wounded from my crawfish defeat.”

“Our mutual defeat,” she corrects, as she reaches back, digging into the picnic basket for the travel mugs we rinsed out earlier.

I keep my phone light trained on our intruder, who hasn’t moved from its spot by the wheel well. It’s probably as exhausted as we are from this whole adventure.

“Okay.” She takes a deep breath, stretching her neck to one side as she sets the mug by my hip. “Operation Crawford the Crawfish Capture, take one.”

“Remember, gentle but firm. Like you’re catching a tiny, angry lobster.” I tuck my phone under my chin, holding the light relatively steady as I reach for the mug.

The final approach requires teamwork. Makena comes at Crawford from the left, flip-flop extended like a shepherd’s crook. I position myself on the right with the mug. The crawfish, sensing the pincer movement, tries to dart between us.

“Now!” Makena shouts.

I reach down and somehow, miraculously, manage to scoop Crawford up from behind. The crawfish waves its claws indignantly, but I slap the lid on before it can scramble up the side.

“We did it!” Makena claps her hands as Crawford rustles inside the mug, probably composing strongly worded letters to management. “We’re heroes.”

“We really are.” I’m grinning so hard my face hurts. “Mostly you, though. Good work, woman.”

“Thanks.” She carefully sets Crawford’s prison in the corner, wedged between my duffel bag so it can’t roll around. Then she crawls back to me, navigating the mess we’ve created. Her knees are red from the truck bed, her hair’s a mess, and we’re both soggy.

But it was hot as fuck anyway.

I honestly don’t mind the ice-assisted cab coolant.

“Same,” Makena says when I share my preference for camping on ice. “Let’s never go camping in Louisiana in the summer again. Charlotte was right. This was a dumb idea.”

“But still kind of fun,” I say.

“Yeah, it was.” She lies down, curling against me on the less deflated side of the mattress as the ice continues its slow melt into the truck bed.

Tomorrow’s going to involve a lot of towels and probably some creative explanation to our camping neighbors about the three a.m. shrieking, but I know I’m going to remember this night fondly all the same.

“We make a good team,” she says, sounding sleepy again.

“Yeah, we do.”

The words settle between us, warm and right.

Through the clear panel in the truck bed cover, I can see stars fading as dawn creeps closer, and I’m glad I splurged on the fancy camper package. It’s nice to watch the stars wink out with Makena in my arms.

She yawns against my chest, her body relaxing into sleep. “Hey, Parker?” she mumbles.

“Yeah?”

“Wake me up if he breaks free, okay? I’m too tired to keep watch.”

I press a kiss to the top of her head. “Will do, warrior princess.”

I’m tired, too, but I stay awake for a good while after, memorizing how perfect she feels sleeping on my chest. Like she was always meant to be here.

Crawford rattles his prison, a tiny chaperone warning that I’m in trouble.

“I know, buddy,” I whisper. “I know.”

But it’s the deepest, best kind of trouble.

The kind that has me counting the hours until we get to our hotel and I can finally show this woman how much she means to me.