Chapter Fourteen

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Milo

The past two weeks moved at turtle speed. I felt like a toddler right before Christmas as I anticipated the journey with Starlet. I couldn’t wait to escape my current reality and be locked away with Starlet for the weekend.

When Saturday came, I was beyond ready to be alone with her. I wasn’t used to this feeling of excitement. I’d spent so much time not feeling anything, yet now with Starlet, it felt as if every single emotion in the world was creeping back into my spirit. Fear. Joy. Happiness. Anxiety. I felt it all, and I wasn’t sure how to comb through said emotions. They just lingered within me. Plus, a part of me couldn’t stop thinking about the dirty possibilities of this trip. What if we somehow ended up lost in the woods, and the only way to stay warm was by pressing her skin against mine? What if she came to drop something off at my hotel room, and I invited her in to have her test out the bed?

I tried my best not to reveal my thoughts through my exterior, though it was hard not to react when she pulled up to my house in her Jeep, looking as beautiful as ever.

“You think you packed enough?” I joked. It was pitch-black out still, seeing how we were leaving early Saturday morning.

The sun hadn’t even begun to rise yet and wouldn’t for about another hour or two. Her trunk was filled with suitcases, winter gear, and hiking equipment. It appeared we were going away for a month’s time instead of two days based on how much she’d packed.

“Better safe than sorry,” she stated. For a split second, she paused and looked at me. She searched deeper than most people did when they studied me. She did that often as if she were seeking secrets to my soul that I’d never shared with others.

Her lips turned up into a smile. “You’re a morning person,” she stated as if she’d collected that data point from my eyes.

“I am with you,” I replied.

A wave of shyness washed over her eyes, but her gentle smile remained. “Well, good morning, sunshine.”

Her soft words shot straight through my hard exterior and landed against my soul. “Good morning, beautiful.”

There was a slight tremble to her as my words found her.

Do I make you nervous, Starlet?

Her lips parted, and she combed her hair behind her ears. “Let’s get on the road.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to drive?” I asked even though my night driving was shitty. Everything mostly blurred together when I had to drive at night.

“It’s about six hours away,” she said. “So I’ll do the first three hours, and you can do the second.”

“The person not driving is in charge of music,” I mentioned as I slid into the passenger seat.

“Deal. But please don’t have crappy music taste.”

“This could make or break our connection, now that I think about it, Teach.”

“We don’t have a connection,” she corrected.

I smirked.

We had a connection. Even if both of us denied it.

Something about us pulled us closer to one another. And I didn’t even think it was the dead mothers aspect. I sensed it the night at the party. Something about her felt so familiar to me—a stranger who felt sort of like home. I didn’t know that was a thing until I met Starlet.

Since her, I haven’t hooked up with anyone else. I didn’t want to. I didn’t reach out to anyone I knew, looking to roll around in the sheets to help me forget about my life. I was living instead of being the walking dead I’d been over the past few years. I was working hard on assignments, listening to audiobooks— for fun —and finding reasons to talk to Starlet any chance I could get. Meaningless sex or blacking out no longer had any appeal to me. I didn’t want to hide from the world anymore. I wanted to feel again. And Starlet Evans? She was a mastermind at making me feel again.

I hooked my phone up to Bluetooth and put on my favorite playlist.

Starlet instantly cocked an eyebrow as she began to drive. “Bullcrap. This isn’t your music.”

“Why not?”

“It’s smooth jazz.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“You like smooth jazz?” she asked, stunned.

“I do. I like all music like this. Along with folk and slow acoustic.”

“Wow. That surprises me.”

I arched my eyebrow. “What music did you think I’d be into?”

“I don’t know…heavy metal?”

I chuckled. “All that angst in me, huh?”

She giggled and shrugged. “I sometimes struggle with judging a book by its cover. That’s on me.”

I kicked off my shoes because I hated to wear shoes during long car rides, and then I got as comfortable as I could in her car, which was pretty easy with her heated seats and extra legroom. “I also play the saxophone.”

Her eyes widened as she kept her stare on the road. “Bull!”

“I’ve played since I was a kid.”

“Oh my goodness. Well, you must play for me at some point.”

“I don’t really do it anymore. Not since…” My words faded off. Not since my mom.

She nodded in understanding. “I get it.”

“I’d like to play for you,” I blurted out. I didn’t even know where that came from. What the hell, Milo? I really didn’t play music for anyone, yet I felt the pull to play for her. I wondered what she’d think of it. If she’d be impressed. If she’d like it. If she’d like me.

Why did I want this woman to like me so damn much? Why did she live in my mind more than most things?

It was as if Starlet was a drug to my mind, yet instead of making me dazed and foggy-brained, she cleared up my thoughts. She made the sad parts of me easier to bear. They weren’t completely gone. I knew that wasn’t how depression worked. But I felt less alone when I was struggling through them with her around. She saw the heavy load of my pain and offered to carry it with me in the most subtle ways. Plus, she’d do things that temporarily hit me with so much peace, like her smiles.

Starlet and her fucking smiles.

A big part of me was shocked that she agreed to drive up north with me and stay the weekend for this photo shoot. I thought she would’ve shut the idea down quickly and suggested we do a local hiking area or something.

Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t complaining. Being stuck in a car for six hours with Starlet Evans wasn’t my idea of torture.

Conversations between the two of us came easy. The first two hours of our drive flew by. I’d learned more about her mind and her humor in that timespan than I had over our few weeks in the library together.

At one point, I asked if we could stop to watch the sunrise. She did it without any question. She exited the highway and pulled over to the side of the road that overlooked the wooded areas below. The trees were all naked of their leaves, covered in the dusting of the latest snowfall. The wind pushed through, shaking said branches, scattering the snow gently to the ground.

We climbed on top of her Jeep and bent our knees into our chests. Her leg brushed against mine, and I hesitated to inch closer to her to feel her more. It only took a small touch to be filled with her warm energy.

The darkness began to fade from above as the illumination of the sky discovered shades of purples and blues. Soon after, pink and orange hues bled over the landscape, peeking through the clouds, finding their placements in the world. The warm glow spread across the sky, growing more intense with every passing second. The higher the sun rose, the more vibrant the tones became before they began to shift to softer, muted pastel hues. Each stage of the sunrise felt like its own personal masterpiece.

I’d never shared a sunrise with another person since Mom passed away. It was my own thing, my secret moment of solitude, but for some reason, it felt even better having her beside me. As Starlet studied the sky, I studied her. Her brown eyes grew glassy as she watched with such awestruck amazement.

“Wow,” she murmured in a complete state of bliss.

“Yeah,” I whispered, my eyes still on her. “Wow.”

Starlet felt like that to me. I hadn’t been able to place what it was that she’d felt like since the day I met her.

She felt like the sunrise.

Bright, vibrant, and awe-inspiring with such mind-blowingly satisfying warmth.

Starlet began to allow tears to travel down her cheeks. She seemed unashamed that she let them fall. Without thought, my thumb brushed against her tears, wiping them away slowly. She tilted her face my way, taken aback by my action.

“Sorry,” I muttered, feeling foolish for thinking I was allowed to touch her whenever I pleased. She wasn’t mine to touch, but damn, how I wished she was.

“Don’t be,” she said, pushing a few of the tears away on her own. “I’m sorry for being so emotional that I cry at freaking sunrises.”

“Don’t be,” I said, echoing her words. “I like that about you.”

She chuckled. “That I cry over sunrises?”

“No.” I shook my head. “That you feel. I like that you feel things so deeply.” It made me want to feel things, too.

I took a deep breath as I glanced at the now-fading sunrise.

Good morning, Mom.

We got back on the road not long after that. By hour three, the sun was wide awake, beaming through the windshield, so Starlet put on her dark sunglasses, and she asked me what my plan was after I graduated.

If I were honest, I hadn’t really thought of my plan.

I wasn’t one to have dreams or goals, which left me as a bit of a floater.

“Not a damn clue,” I told her.

“Have you considered college?”

“It’s too late to apply. Besides, I don’t even know what I’d study.”

“That’s fine. You can always take a gap year to figure things out or not go at all. College isn’t for everyone.”

“In my dad’s mind, there are only two main paths—college or the military.”

“Would you join the military?”

“Not a chance in hell.”

She glanced over at me, then back to the road. “If you could do anything, what would it be?”

“Anything?”

“Anything in the world.”

I narrowed my eyes. “No wrong answer?”

She giggled. “This isn’t a test, Milo. There’s no wrong answer.”

I loved when she giggled. It got me higher than any pill ever had.

“I’d be a wanderer. I’d buy an RV and go across America, witnessing as many sunrises and sunsets as possible. I’d make a vlog about it on YouTube or some shit and show different people the world and all the unique places.”

“Oh my gosh,” she said. I held my breath, thinking she was about to tell me how ridiculous the idea was. Instead, her eyes widened, and she said, “That’s one of my dreams! I’ve wanted to do that since I was a kid.”

“Bullshit.”

“Not bullcrap.”

I smiled.

I liked how instead of cursing, she used different words like bullcrap. It was cute.

She had the same dream as me. That created an odd sense of tumult in my thoughts. I couldn’t stop but wonder if Mom did this. Did she make Starlet for me? Did she somehow force our paths to cross? Did something in the stars bring us together? I didn’t believe in destiny, but I hoped for that to be true. That was something new for me, too—being hopeful.

“My life goal was to take a school bus or an old van and transform it into a mobile home,” she explained. “I’d spent a ridiculous number of hours looking up videos like that. In my perfect world, I’d have an RV home and go everywhere with it. That or a tiny house. I think tiny houses are the coolest houses. Or a tree house!” she remarked with such excitement.

“Star?”

“Yes?”

“I think I just fell in love with you,” I half joked.

She didn’t laugh, though. If anything, she grew a bit too somber.

“I was kidding,” I said, feeling like a dumbass for making that comment.

“No, I know. It’s not that. It’s just…I like when you do that. I really like that.”

“Like what?”

“When you call me Star. Only the people closest to me call me Star.”

That damn muscle in my chest began to beat faster. “And you like it when I do?”

She nodded. “I like it when you do.”

“Does that mean we’re close?”

She turned her head toward me, her brown eyes locking with mine. It was only for a slight second before she turned her attention back to the road, but it felt forever wrapped in her stare. I hoped she’d look at me like that more often. As if when she met my stare, she saw forever.

“We should pull over and fill up on gas,” she said, shifting the conversation. Clearly, I’d crossed a line asking her that question, but to be fair, she walked me toward said line when she mentioned me calling her Star. Plus, each day, it felt as if our lines of appropriate and inappropriate was drawn in the sand, and with one small breath, it could’ve been blown away.

Blurred lines, Starlet. We were walking on blurred lines.

As she exited the freeway and pulled into a gas station, I hopped out of the car to fill it up.

“Oh, no, you don’t have to—” Starlet started, but I stopped her.

“It’s cold out here, and you don’t need to freeze your ass off. I’ve got this.” One thing I did learn from my father was the fact that you never allowed a woman to fill up the car tank. Honestly, my father imposed a lot of good life lessons on me before he was lost to grief. He always treated Mom like she was his queen, and he was a peasant who was lucky to even exist in her orbit. That was one thing my father excelled at—loving my mother.

I filled up the tank and told Starlet we could switch driving since we were about three hours from our destination. She agreed. I opened the passenger door for her, and she slid into the car. As she situated herself, I bent down over her, grabbed her seat belt, and slid it slowly across her body. My knuckles glided along her chest as I moved the buckle into place. I clicked it in and winked at her. “Safety first.” Then I shut the door.

I was thankful for the two-second walk to my side of the car in the cool air. I needed to calm myself down from the slight touch of her chest against my hand.

“I’m a bit shocked that you trust me to drive your car,” I said after getting into the car and turning the key in the ignition.

“What can I say? I’m a bad judge of character. Don’t make me regret it,” she joked as she hooked up her music.

Kendrick Lamar blasted from her speakers, and she speed-rapped the lyrics of the mastermind lyrical genius.

And just like that, I wanted Starlet Evans more than ever before.

***

Once we made it to the boutique hotel, I was ready to sleep for a few hours before gearing up for our hike and photo shoot. As she went to check in for our rooms, I gathered our suitcases to take inside. When I entered the boutique, I saw the rage on her face as she went back and forth with the receptionist.

“No, no. You don’t understand. We have to have two rooms,” Starlet argued. “How could you have overbooked? I booked two rooms!”

“Yes, ma’am, but unfortunately, you went through a third-party website, and the other guest went through our site. Therefore the room must go to them. But your room is one of the best. It’s our extra-large honeymoon suite.”

“Honeymoon suite? I like the sound of that.” I smirked as I approached Starlet, but the annoyance in her body language made me realize it wasn’t a joking manner.

“Is there another hotel nearby?” Starlet asked the worker.

“Yes, but they’re all booked due to the winter festival this weekend.”

Starlet slammed her hand against the counter and groaned.

The employee looked at me and batted her eyes. “I mean, I could think of worse-looking men to share a room with,” she teased.

Starlet raised her head and made the most dramatic eye roll I’d ever witnessed. “Please don’t stroke his ego.”

“No, by all means, stroke it. I love being stroked. Tell her, Star. Tell her how I love being stroked.”

Starlet smacked my chest as she grew bashful. I caught her hand against my chest. My stare fell to our touch, just as hers did, and I held her hand for a second longer than I should’ve.

She yanked her hand away from me and combed her hair behind her ears. She always did that when she was nervous or thrown off by my absurd comments. It was cute. There were so many cute things about her. My mind made a mental list of everything I found adorable about the woman.

I smiled at her annoyance as I slid my hands into my pockets. “We’ll take the room,” I told the employee. Clearly, Starlet was in the middle of an emotional breakdown, so the sooner we got her into a room to have her full-blown freak-out, the better.

The staff carried our luggage to the room, and I thanked them for the gesture. Not long after, a bottle of champagne was sent to the room. They must not have known I was underage, yet Starlet’s ID showed she was over twenty-one. I called it a win. Starlet called it a disaster.

“This is bad. This isn’t good. This is so, so bad,” she muttered, pacing back and forth in the room. It was an impressive space. It was large, with a California king-size bed, a pullout sofa, and a bathroom with a deep soaking tub.

“Don’t worry. I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“Milo.” She sighed, walked into the bathroom, and stood in the shower that was blocked off by a see-through wall. “You’ll be able to see me showering!” she grumbled. “Why even put up this wall if it was going to be see-through?!”

“If it makes you feel better, I’ve already seen you naked.”

“Milo!”

“Okay, okay, you’re stressed out a bit.”

She headed back over toward me and collapsed onto the giant bed. “This is the worst day of my life.”

“That’s funny. I thought it was the best day of my life.”

She dramatically flipped her head in my direction, still lying on the bed. “Why are you such a pain?”

“I was born this way. Don’t worry. When you shower, I’ll head out of the room and give you your space. Scout’s honor.” I walked over to the bottle of champagne. “Want some—”

“Don’t you dare open that, Milo Corti! No drinking this weekend!”

I smiled. “I like when you use my full name. It turns me on.”

“Well, turn off. There will be ground rules for this sleepover.” She pushed herself to a sitting position, kicked off her shoes, and then crossed her legs like a pretzel on the bed.

“I hate rules.”

“Yeah, I can tell. Which is why we need them.”

I plopped down on the sofa across from her. “Okay, let me hear it.”

“Absolutely no touching.”

“Disappointing yet fair. Continue.”

“No sexual remarks of any kind.”

“I’ll do my best. Next?”

“No slipping into my bed.”

“What if I slid into it?”

She gave me a stern look.

I tossed my hands up. “All right, no cuddle buddies. Got it.”

“And last, we keep things surface level.”

“Says the digger who always asks me questions about my mother.”

Her eyes softened, and she shook her head. “I know. I’m just adding to the confusion, but I feel as if we are on a slippery slope, especially with us sharing a hotel room. I’m not blaming you for any of this since I’ve been a willing participant. Yet I think now I realize how many lines we’ve crossed.” She swallowed hard. “I can’t lose my job, Milo. This means too much to me.”

I sat up straighter, less relaxed. “Star, I know I make a lot of inappropriate jokes, but I would never do anything to jeopardize your career. I’m a dick, but I’m not that big of a dick.”

“Thanks, Milo.”

I grabbed a pillow from the bed and tossed it onto the sofa. “Take a nap,” I told her as I lay down on the sofa, not bothering to pull it out into its bed form. “We’ve got a long, cold hike to take in a few hours.”

She smiled.

I loved it.

But I’d keep that secret to myself. I didn’t want to push her buttons unless I knew she’d push mine back.

I tossed and turned on the sofa, trying my best to get comfortable. Unfortunately, my legs dangled over the edge, which made it damn near impossible to get situated.

“Fine.” Starlet sighed.

I opened one eye and glanced her way. “Fine, what?”

“We can share the bed. It’s clear you’re uncomfortable.” She took all the pillows on the bed and made a barrier wall right down the middle. “You stay on your side, and I’ll stay on mine.”

I smirked. “That’s quite generous of you, Teach.”

“What can I say? I’m a good person.” She pointed a stern finger my way after I climbed into the bed. “Don’t you dare touch me.”

“I’ll keep my hands to myself. Unless you change your mind,” I teased. “Because if you change your mind, my hands are going straight for your puss—”

She swatted me with her pillow. “Go to sleep, Milo.”

I did as she said, hoping my dreams would be of me between her thighs.

***

After a few hours, I was awakened when I felt an arm brush against mine. I opened my eyes and found the pillow barrier was completely gone. Somehow, Starlet moved closer to my side of the bed, and her head rested peacefully against my shoulder blade.

I thought about pulling her closer, wrapping her body in my arms, and allowing our heat to merge. Instead, I left her where she was because I feared that if I moved her, she might wake up and remove herself completely from my touch. Having her sleeping against my shoulder felt like a dash of joy I didn’t want to lose.

Therefore, I closed my eyes and went back to sleep, hoping she’d slowly inch closer.