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“Maybe we should go to the address Elaine gave us,” I suggest as Ansel and Ronan pull off their masks, their hoods, and their shoes.

“Maybe you should go shower,” Ansel retorts. “You look like death.”

“You don’t smell so great, either,” Ronan admits, though he offers me a soft smile in the moment before he tugs off his shirt.

My protest dies in my throat, and I can’t help but stare at his upper body. When we were teenagers, he was gangly and lean, just like Ansel. But now, my friend has gained an actual set of abs, and muscles that move smoothly under his tanned skin.

Holy shit, I can’t help but think to myself. When did he get this hot?

Ansel is nothing to scoff at, either. He’s kept that wiry strength in his muscles, instead of filling out quite like Ronan. But I’m just as enamored with watching him pace the room, plucking at clothes and bags while he looks for…whatever it is he’s looking for. Honestly, I don’t know what the two of them are doing.

I’m too busy just watching them do it.

A shirt hits me in the face, then a pair of boxers. Once I’ve got them in my hands, I meet Ansel’s eyes across the dimly room, mentally absorbing his wolfish grin. “Please, keep staring,” he invites, popping open the button of his jeans. “It really helps my ego.”

“You could stare at me more, instead,” Ronan drawls from just behind me, and when I do look at him, I find that he’s already shoving his jeans down his toned thighs.

Fuck, what was I even doing before this?

“Shower,” I say out loud, answering my own thoughts. “Right, yeah. I do feel gross.” it’s not a surrender, I promise myself as I kick off my shoes by the door and head for the bathroom so I can close the door between us.

It barely works to soothe my suddenly stuttering heart, even as I lean back against the heavy door and listen to them talk on the other side of it. Like the room itself, the bathroom is nicer than where I work. The long room has a sink set into faux marble, and across from it is a long shower stall built into the wall. It’s a bigger shower than I’d expect, but I am never going to complain if I can just sit down and let the water drown me for a little while. I just won’t consider the fact that I know how poorly the bathroom at The Rest Easy is cleaned, and how this place is probably similar in that regard.

I push that thought away, however, and strip out of my bloody, dirty clothes. My leggings are torn at the knees, letting the raw scrapes on my skin show through, and I know that they’re beyond saving. Outside of obligatory Home Economics in high school, I’ve never stitched anything myself. And even my crookedly-sewn pillows back then were proof of how little talent I have for the activity.

While the water heats up, I use my stained clothes to wipe away the worst of the blood and grime from my arms, scowling the whole time before dropping them into a pile beside the toilet. I won’t throw them in the trash. That’s just asking for a maid to find them, take them, and present them to the cops. But unless I’m willing to burn down the whole hotel, I’ll have to keep them with me until I can find a better solution than stuffing them in the toilet and hoping for the best.

I flip the light out and step into the shower spray, my shoulders dropping as the tension melts out of me. “Yeah, I could drown here happily,” I sigh, tipping my head back under the spray.

It’s not long before I sink down, sitting cross legged on the tile of the bathroom while pretending I don’t know how gross it probably is under the shine. The shower cascades down like a waterfall, soaking my hair and running in rivulets down my body.

In the dark, nothing from outside can find me. Nothing can hurt me, and certainly no one is looking to murder me over spilling water on their perverted asses.

Slowly, the tension and fear leaks out of my bones, seeping down the drain with the rest of the bloody water.

A knock sounds on the door. Light and soft. But I don’t stir. “I’m not dead,” I call when the soft knocking comes again. “Just waterboarding myself.”

The door opens, though the light doesn’t come on. It’s probably not that wise of me to not get up, but I decide that I don’t care about propriety right now when it’s most likely Ansel coming in to bother me.

“What do you want?” I call, even as I lean back against the tile wall at my back. The shower door opens a second later, and when I look up, it’s into the face of a very naked, very attractive Ronan.

“Oh fuck, you’re naked,” I whisper, like that isn’t obvious. “You are so naked.”

Ronan grins down at me, and there’s none of his usual sweetness or the shyness from when he was a child. Wordless, he kneels down, until the water I’m using to drown myself is hitting his hair and shoulders.

“Still into waterboarding yourself in the shower, I see,” he murmurs, his eyes dark with something I’m too nervous to name. “Hot.”

“Very,” I agree. “Super hot, since I’ve turned the water up to steaming.”

That has him rolling his eyes, and Ronan groans at my shitty pun. “Are you trying to distract me? Or are you telling me to get lost?” he asks curiously. “Tell me to stop. Tell me to leave you alone, and I’ll go.”

There it is. The small bit of uncertainty in his gaze, the touch of anxiety, like he hadn’t considered until now that I might actually not want him here.

But fuck, I could never tell him to leave. Naked or clothed…but especially naked. I reach out for him, my fingers stretching towards his face, and Ronan immediately leans into my touch with a sigh, like this is what he’s been waiting for.

“You’ve really grown up,” I murmur, feeling awkward the moment I say it. “Wow, no. Let me try that again. That felt very–”

Ronan doesn’t let me finish. He surges forward to press his lips to mine, and his hand comes up to cup the side of my face as his mouth finds mine under the shower spray.