Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 77118 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77118 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
“How much do I owe you?” I asked.
“Do you not want me to hit up your medical insurance?” he asked.
The Murphys were good employers. Which meant all of us had some kickass insurance.
“Do you have to put down how I got the injuries?” I asked.
“Not if you didn’t tell me,” he said, giving me a smirk because I hadn’t exactly told him what had happened.
“Okay. Well, yeah, you can hit my insurance then.”
“Perfect. I will get on that tomorrow. Do you have anything else you want me to look at? Even just small bumps or bruises could be hiding something more serious,” he added.
“I, ah, fell on my stomach,” I told him, sliding off the table to lift up my shirt. Dr. Price moved forward, gloved fingers probing. “Nothing?” he asked, pressing a little harder.
“No. It’s just a little tender,” I said, shrugging.
“Any trouble breathing?”
“When it happened? Yes, for a couple of minutes. But not now.”
“Okay. Again, if that changes, I want you to drop in for a visit.”
“I will,” I said, nodding.
“Let me write up that script, and then I will walk you to your car.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“Nyx?”
“Yeah?” I asked.
“I will walk you to your car,” he insisted.
It was the first time I saw a sort of… edge to Dr. Price. Somehow, I could imagine his well-trained hands fisting and fighting off an attacker.
“Okay,” I agreed, feeling a small bit of anxiety slipping from my shoulders as I waited for him to fill out the script, then walk me to my car.
I couldn’t be one hundred percent sure, but I thought I saw a bulge of a gun in the waistband of his pants.
“You have somewhere safe to be?” he asked.
Technically, yes.
If I were willing to ask for help.
The Murphys.
The bikers.
The thing was, I wasn’t quite ready to ask for their help yet.
“Yes,” I told him. And I wasn’t lying. Necessarily.
“Okay. Get there. Lock the door,” he said, opening the door for me, then closing it when I got inside.
He even stood there at the end of his path as I pulled away.
He was still there until I couldn’t see him any longer in the rearview.
I wasn’t going home.
I didn’t necessarily think that anyone was going to come back that night, but just the idea of walking in there and seeing the mess, knowing how close things were to going even worse, yeah, it made a cold sweat break out across my body.
There was only one option left in town.
The motel.
Was it safe?
That was debatable.
It was the home base for a lot of guys coming out of prison, for the guys who got kicked out of their homes by their wives or girlfriends, for people having illicit affairs.
But there was a lock on the door. There were… some cameras. And there were ears who would hear if something happened.
So I pointed my car in that direction, popping into the convenience store for meds and a drink when I was sure that no one I knew closely was there, then went across the road to the motel.
The Shady Valley Motel was, to put it nicely, an eyesore. Which was saying something because the hideous prison towered over the town, looking down at all of us with its razor wire and flood lights.
But, yeah, it was maybe from the fifties or sixties. Meaning that no one had upgraded the place since. The brick was painted an eye-aching canary yellow color.
Pulling up, I parked right in front of the office, a place that also hadn’t seen much updating since the place opened.
File cabinets lined one whole wall, some drawers open, paperwork spilling out and piled on top.
The desk in the center of the room was an old faux wood vinyl that was peeled up a bit at one corner. On it was more paperwork, books, a radio, and no less than six cups of coffee as well as a fancy all-in-one computer that probably cost more than spending an entire month at the motel.
At the sound of the bell, Jack’s voice called out, “Rooms are fifty-eight a night, week and weekend nights.”
He hadn’t bothered to look up from whatever book he was looking down at, giving me a chance to look at him.
Jack was hot in a sort of laid-back, ‘don’t give a shit about my looks’ kind of way. Fit, but not built, tall, with shaggy brown hair, blue eyes, and a beard that was probably just absentminded rather than intentional.
No matter the time of the year, you could find the man in well-loved, buttery-soft looking jeans and a flannel.
That night, it was a gray and white one, left open in the front to show a white tee beneath.
“Hey Jack,” I said, making his head jerk up, likely not expecting a woman.
“Nyx,” he said on an exhale, his pretty blue eyes taking in the damage to my face that had likely gotten darker and uglier as the night went on. “Who?” he asked, snapping his book shut without even marking his page.