"Afternoon ma'am." River greeted the housekeeping lady as she took towels into one of the bedrooms.
"Merhaba, merhaba." She smiled at him and then disappeared into one of the bedrooms to continue doing her job.
The door was slowly closing behind her and as quick as a flash River stopped it from closing with his foot, balling something into the jam.
He then gestured for us to carry on walking until we had turned the corner and got out of sight.
"What did you just do?" I whispered, anticipation building up inside of me. I hoped to god he wasn't going to risk that lady's life as well.
He peeked out at the door she had gone into, watching and waiting. "I got us a free room for the night."
She exited the room letting the door fall to a complete close and then wheeled a trolley away. River beckoned me to follow and when he pulled on the handle the door opened. He clawed out a ball of paper from the jam and smirked at me satisfied with his street-smart skills.
"Where did you learn to do that?"
"I grew up in the system remember? You know how many times I ran away? Crashed at hotels for free because some of the houses I lived in were toxic or abusive."
"You never told me that."
"I didn't want you to think I couldn't handle it."
The hotel room was pretty basic, it had two bedrooms and a bathroom. It wasn't this extravagant hotel but it was clean and by the looks of thing's comfortable so it surpassed my wishes.
"You two want to take the main bed?" River asked, still juggling our sleeping child in his arms.
"She'll be okay in the smaller room, we don't usually co-sleep."
I followed him into the secondary bedroom, watching as he very gently lowered her into the bed. I knew once she was asleep, nothing would wake her. But River was so careful and delicate, every movement made super slowly. I couldn't help but hold back a giggle. He closed the door extra slow too, wincing as the old hinges creaked.
I relaxed on the bed while showered.
Then he relaxed on the bed while I showered.
"Now what?" I asked genuinely interested.
"I guess we should probably get some sleep." I laughed at him.
"I meant, now what do we do? Where do we go from here? What's your plan?"
"We go to your home, I'm assuming there's more resources available to use there. People available to watch Everly who you can trust."
"Well yeah, but-"
"I can work from your home, find Leighton. I just need internet access, I need to get onto the dark web and track him down. Find out his plan and then we'll go from there. For now, we act normal. Resume everyday life, blend in and not draw attention to ourselves."
I lay down on the bed, lounging comfortably next to him. "So you haven't been home in a while, huh?"
He smiled a little, "this isn't really my home."
"Well when was the last time you came back here?"
"I've never been back here, not since I left." He sucked in a breath, "There were many memories here. I didn't want to look at your life from the outside and know I could never be part of it. So I just didn't come back."
"You could've been part of it."
"No Millie, I couldn't. I was right to leave all of those years ago. It wasn't safe then and it's certainly not safe now."
