“You know you don’t have to tell me that.”
“I do know,” he said, his voice heavy with irony.
“Why would you buy something in a place where you might actually be in proximity to me? Since you hate me so much. Apparently.”
“Why do you sing about the end of our relationship every single day?”
Ouch.
“Because it makes me a lot of money.” He didn’t say anything after that. Neither of them did. Finally, the lights of the hotel came into view.
“I’m surprised there’s still power,” she said.
“There’s a backup generator, and some backup solar as well, with energy stored that we can feed off of. Because this is so rural, these kinds of things are a problem, even when the weather isn’t this bad.”
She huffed, and pushed through the lobby door. It wasn’t a huge hotel, but it probably had about one hundred rooms. All in a big, gleaming log-cabin-style structure. The furniture was made of rough-hewn wood, with big geometric-patterned rugs over every surface.
She had always found the place restful. And had also found that nobody here was overly impressed with celebrity even if they did realize who she was, so she enjoyed the peace that came with it.
There was no peace now, though. There was Flint.
“What brought you to Oregon? Because you know this is where I am.”
“Weirdly, Flint, I didn’t think of you at all.” She had enjoyed staying in Oregon when she had come with him, and they’d done quite a bit of traveling around the state with the rodeo. The Pendleton Round-Up and the big event in Sisters were both huge, and she had enjoyed being there every time.
That was all. She didn’t necessarily think of Flint when she thought of the state.
Liar.
“Right. Fair. So maybe I didn’t think of you when I thought of Tennessee.”
“Except you sorta said you did.”
“Maybe it was because a certain song came on the radio. Tough to say.”
“Which room am I in?”
“Well. You can take your pick,” he said. “The one we have you down for is the suite, though, and I imagine, given how fancy you are these days, that’s what you want.”
She scoffed. “What do you mean how fancy I am?”
“Don’t tell me those aren’t six-hundred-dollar jeans.”
She blushed. Because yes. Her jeans were expensive. She had never imagined she would become that person. It was the weirdest thing. The way her money meter had adjusted. How she had gone from spending thirty dollars on a pair of jeans to one hundred, to more. And each incremental increase, as her income had gone up, hadn’t really seemed like much of anything at all.
And to think, she’d once been so disdainful of people she thought of as excessive. But she hadn’t done much to keep herself from enjoying certain kinds of excess that had come with her success.
She didn’t drink, she didn’t do drugs and there had been absolutely no sex since parting from Flint, so surely expensive clothes and a new truck were reasonable. Also a new house. And a house for her mother. Of course a house for her mother. That had been the most important.
“There’s no reason for me to not take the suite,” she said.
“Full-service. I’ll walk you there.”
“You don’t need to,” she said, holding her hands out for her bag and her guitar. “I’m going to go get settled in.”
“All right. Do you want some dinner?”
Her stomach growled. And she really wished it hadn’t, because she would like to say that she didn’t need dinner, but she had been planning on eating here. The food was wonderful; she remembered that from her last visit. Except...
“Where is the food going to come from?”
“There was a certain amount preprepared by the chef in anticipation of the weather.”
“Great. I’ll have some of that after I get settled in.”
“Well, let me get you your key.”
He went behind the counter, the counter that he had been behind when she had first walked in, when he had stood up and nearly given her a heart attack. He took out a key card, and ran it through the device that programmed it before handing it to her.
“Thanks,” she said, but his fingertips brushed hers, and she hadn’t expected it. And all of the air in her lungs felt like it had been removed. Evaporated.
They just stood there for a moment. And memories swirled through her head. Memories she’d rather not have.
She took a step back. Decisively.
She needed a shower. She needed to get her head on straight. This was all unexpected, and a little bit too much.
She walked up the big, curved staircase—made of the same sort of log as the rest of the big lobby area—and headed down the hall toward the room she had stayed in before.
