Page 4 of Wrong Number, Right Grizzly (Dial M For Mates #7)

RONAN

The last place I expected to be when I woke up this morning was stuck in a roadside motel, one that was decades past its prime.

And to have me there with a complete stranger?

This was a scenario I had never once envisioned.

If anything, it resembled something off of a sitcom, only it was hard to think of any humor when your car was broken down on a road that wasn’t passable, during a storm that set off the emergency broadcast warnings.

Yet here I was, checked into a single room with a stranger at a motel so sketchy they only took cash. And I honestly had no idea how to handle any of it. So what did I do? I reverted back to a childhood coping mechanism. What Nix must think of me.

When I was little, I used to spend weekends during the summer at my grandmother’s house in the country.

I absolutely adored her, and my parents wanted me to spend time away from the city.

They loved all that city life had to offer by way of culture and activities, but they understood that nature mattered too.

I didn’t mind. She was my favorite person.

Back then, I used to get nightmares, especially at her house.

Growing up in the city, I’d never experienced true darkness.

The streetlights were always on, and emergency lights in the hallways were always lit.

But my grandmother’s house was different.

She lived in the middle of nowhere, where there were no streetlights and the nearest neighbor was a half-mile away.

Unless the moon was high, looking out the window of my bedroom, all I could see was darkness.

It was fine for years, and then I made the mistake of watching a monster movie with one of my cousins.

Being little, there was no amount of convincing me that monsters weren’t real, and obviously, they only came out in the dark.

I was 100% sure they were on their way to the house to eat my nose.

Why my nose? I had no idea, but it needed safeguarding.

Grams tried the normal ways of calming me down: telling me that my dreams were my brain’s way of making peace with my fear, and that if I just rolled to the other side, they’d go away, or that a magical hug could drive them away.

None of it worked. I was always sure there was something outside coming to get us, and my fear wasn’t even just for me.

I feared for my grandmother’s nose too. In hindsight, it was so silly, but at the time, it ruled my nighttime.

That was until my grandmother told me that she bought me a magical blanket, one that could protect me from anything.

All I had to do was pull it over my head.

And the first night I used it, I did that, and I slept soundly.

Same with the second night and the third.

I loved that blanket so much. I used to take it back and forth between my house and hers.

I still had it in my closet. I no longer believed that it could ward against evil, but it was still magical.

All I had to do was hold it and it brought me back to that time filled with grandma’s house, smiles, and cookies.

How I wished I had it with me now.

After I’d walked into the hotel room, everything hit me all at once—the fact that there was a good chance my car was going to be flooded out, that I’d gotten into a car with a stranger, that I’d checked into a hotel with that stranger, and that I was now was trapped for who knew how long in this place, this place that smelled like mildew and looked like something that came out of a page of a horror novel.

It was too much to handle, and I started to shut down.

I yanked off all my clothes, washed my hands and feet because they were both freezing, and then jumped into the bed, pulled the covers over my head like I did as a child, and hid away.

I needed to regroup, to think, to figure out what to do next.

It wasn’t right that Nix had paid for the hotel.

It wasn’t fair that he was being stuck in this craphole.

He deserved none of this, and it was all my fault. I could’ve stayed where I was and gotten drinks with everyone else. There was no need for me to get back home other than I wanted to. I’d made a bad choice, and now it wasn’t just me suffering.

Obviously, I couldn’t have known my car was going to die. That just happened, but I was way too close to that storm on a road that had so much potential to be dangerous when it did. I’d known better. This was 100% my fault.

As I lay there, shivering cold, trying to figure out what to do next, I realized that the one reason I used to pull the blankets over my head, fear, had no place here.

Nix was a stranger. He was big and brawny, had an animalistic type quality about him, and yet not once was I scared of him, not even a tiny bit of unsureness had seeped in.

If anything, he felt like a friend, someone I’d known forever, which was unsettling in itself.

I rolled to my side and pulled my legs up to my chest, willing myself to sleep.

My logic said that as soon as I woke up, we’d be able to go, and going to sleep early made waking up happen sooner.

It didn’t. But that didn’t change my plan.

And really, we didn’t know what was going to happen tomorrow.

Everything was dependent on the flooding situation.

Fingers crossed that everything was perfect come daylight. I wasn’t sure what we were going to do if we had to stay here another day. I had a little bit of cash, but I couldn’t remember exactly how much, and now that I was hiding away, I didn’t want to go to my backpack to look.

My underwear was wet, and it was starting to get clammy. I tucked the blanket behind my head and wiggled out of the wet garment, dropping it out from under the covers onto the floor.

Nix was such a sweetie. Not once did he say anything to me.

He just let me go through this process of coming unraveled and gave me the space that I needed.

I waited for the sound of the shower, expecting that he would pop in there, but he didn’t.

Instead, he just let me be. I didn’t even hear the sound of him sitting on his own bed.

Was he standing there watching me, wondering what was going through my head?

Or maybe he was looking out the window at the rain or tapping on his phone to see if there were any updates.

He could be doing anything. The only thing I knew for sure was that he hadn’t left.

I would’ve heard that. The door stuck coming in, which meant it would stick going out.

The thunder was close, so close we could feel the lightning strike, and I pulled my legs even closer.

This time I was hiding in fear. If this building got hit, then what?

There was no place to go, and the fire trucks wouldn’t be able to get here, not easily.

Another boom, and another hit in quick succession.

They didn’t feel closer, but they definitely weren’t much further away.

Footsteps came closer to the bed, and I grabbed onto the blanket tighter, not wanting it to be yanked from me. Not that that felt like something he would do. It was more instinct than anything.

“Did you want me to turn on the light?” Nix asked.

I hadn’t realized he’d turned it off.

I shook my head, realizing quickly that he couldn’t see it. “No, the light’s fine,” I assured him. I actually preferred it off, as a rule. I was no longer scared of the monsters in the dark.

“Is there anything I can do for you?”

“No. I’m sorry to have bothered you as much as I already have.”

Another footstep came closer, and then he must have changed his mind, because they started going farther away, giving me space, I assumed.

I turned to the other side, trying to get comfortable, but I couldn’t. I needed something to do, something to wear me out. An image of climbing into bed with the man beside me flashed through my mind. My brain was heading in a very wrong direction.

Nope, not going there.

It wasn’t even like he’d given any indication he wanted me to do something so bold. He’d been a complete gentleman. This was 100% my own pervy imagination.

Screw it. I was just gonna take a shower. That would help. If nothing else, it would stop me from being so cold.