Page 11 of Unwrapping Love

“Are you sure? We don’t have far to go.”

“I’m fine,” she said. “Moving keeps me warm.”

They didn’t have far to go because he had parked in a luxury area.

He didn’t look to be much older than her, but maybe he was when he walked over to a black Range Rover that was worth more than she made in a year.

He opened the back and she tossed her bags in there. If she told her grandmother what she was doing, she’d get a lecture that would scare her enough to jump out.

But if she didn’t tell someone where she was, they wouldn’t know where to look if she disappeared.

When she got to where they were going, she’d drop a pin in her location and send it to her grandmother and say she was with a friend of a friend.

It was a lie, which she hated to do, but it was better than worrying the person who loved her the most in her life.

Thirty minutes later, they were driving further out of Denver. The two of them were just chatting about his friend Damon and some of the funny diabetic stories.

She added a few of her own.

Most times she didn’t enjoy talking about those things, but Rowan seemed to understand the nuisances of wearing a pump,having it fall off swimming, getting stuck and caught on things and having it show up under clothing. Not to mention loud alarms startling people if she forgot to put it on vibrate in the morning.

She’d gotten less self-conscious of it as an adult. It was like a radar as a teen. But now it was her superpower to see other Omnipods and Dexcoms on people out in public.

They climbed a mountain, but there were houses they’d passed on the way. She was still nervous and debated if this was a wise decision or not.

They pulled down a driveway, longer than she hoped for, then a garage door opened to a log cabin.

“This is your cabin?” she asked. Nothing like the small bungalow-type place she imagined he might rent.

Real estate in the Denver area was through the roof.

This place had to be worth millions, just from the views alone, even if it didn’t appear that big from this side of it. Two stories with the garage under it.

“It’s my brother’s,” he said. “I was staying here a few days skiing on vacation.”

“Oh,” she said. “Do you live in Denver?”

“Nope,” he said. They got out of the SUV. She grabbed her bags, and followed him into the house.

“Where do you live?” she asked. Her jaw dropped. They entered a finished basement. This was a single dude’s wet dream.

Pool table, darts, a TV covering one wall, glass doors looking out over the mountain and a bar next to it.

There were more doors that were shut.

They made their way up the stairs. “Long Beach.”

“What?” she asked.

“I live in Long Beach, California. You never said where you lived? Can’t be Arizona or you wouldn’t have worried so much about your supplies if you had them home.”

“My residence on paper is Arizona, at my grandmother’s house,” she said. This house just kept going. The first floor had the same view, an enormous deck she could see outside the wall of glass doors.

Massive fireplace from floor to the ceiling. Lots of wood everywhere, but still bright.

He dropped his bag on a table between the living room and kitchen. The area was open and vast.

“You’ll have to explain that part about your residence on paper,” he said.