Page 94 of Maid For Each Other
If I were being honest, bringing her here to this party tonight was a lot more about that than the notion of wanting to make my dad happy on his birthday.
Yes, my parents liked her and it’d definitely make the weekend more fun if they saw us together, but I hadn’t needed to bring her along. I’d spent a year pretending my girlfriend was too busy to go to these things with me, so no one was going to lose their mind if I showed up sans Abi this time.
But I hadn’t wanted to.
I wanted to start to figure this out. I didn’t necessarily need to tell her that’s what I was doing, but I needed to start to unwind the knot that was Dex and Abi, all that was true and false, and see what was left when everything was undone.
And averyfucking interesting aspect of this thing was the fact that she hadn’t said a word about the hotel room. My mother reserved one room, assuming my girlfriend and I would be staying together, and I expected Abi would immediately demand I get a second room.
Which I’d planned to do. Happily.
But she hadn’t said anything.
I didn’t know what that meant.
Was she nervous to broach the subject, or was she okay with this arrangement?
Asking her would be the smart move, but I was a dipshit who wanted to wait and see what happened.
Because I wanted to stay in the same room as her more than I wanted to breathe.
I knew I should be considerate, but the selfish part of me wanted to be around her all the time. I wanted to know what sounds she made when she slept and if she tossed and turned. Did she leave the TV on, or was it perfectly dark and quiet?
I’d book the second room in a heartbeat if she wanted it, no question. But the idea of sharing a room—and a bed—was really fucking appealing.
Thedingof the elevator startled the shit out of me, and I cleared my throat and stepped out as soon as the doors opened.
Get yourself together, jackass.
When I got to the room, I could hear the shower running.
“Dex?” she yelled, almost like she’d been listening for me.
I stepped closer to the closed bathroom door. “Yes?”
“Can you please come in hereslowlyand help me?” Her voice was loud but calm. “There is a scorpion blocking my exit from the shower.”
I slowly opened the door, thinking she was nuts because this was Kansas City, for God’s sake; there weren’t scorpions in the Midwest, were there?
But my eyes swept the room and holyshit, there was a brown scorpion on the floor right beside the walkout shower. That littlefucker was resting right in front of the glass door that opened outward.
I had to suppress a shudder because that motherfucker gave me the creeps. Fuck. I had no idea how the hell you took out a scorpion. I desperately searched the steamy bathroom, looking for the best solution as I became very aware of how unprotected—and naked—Abi was.
She was standing frozen in the corner of the shower with a towel wrapped around her body. She wasn’t under the spray of water—I was guessing she left the water on because she didn’t want to freak out that little monster by shutting it off—but she was pressing herself against the back wall as if trying to make it move farther from the scorpion.
Oh, God, that thing was creepy as fuck.
I was wearing shoes, so my best bet was to try to stomp that thing, but I was pretty sure scorpions were super poisonous. I briefly wondered how quickly I’d die after getting stung by it.
But I looked at Abi’s face, saw how terrified she was, and I knew I needed to act even though I had no clue what I was doing.
“Okay, honey,” I said slowly. “No matter what happens, you stay far away from the scorpion, got it?”
“Well, I wasn’t going to throw myself in front of it, but what is your plan?” she said without moving her lips.
“I’m going to stomp on it,” I said calmly, even though I had a hardcore case of the willies and kind of wanted to hide as well. “But I have no idea how the thing will react. So your eyes need to stay on the scorpion and the second he moves out of the way, you need to run out of here, got it?”
“But, Dex,” she said, sounding panicked. “Can the stinger pierce through your shoe? Do you even know?”
