A couple hours later, Jonas was sitting up in the darkened room, his forearms on his knees, staring at the dark television screen nailed to the opposite wall. A line of morning sunlight leaked under the curtains and blazed a trail on the floor beside the bed.
The floor under the bed tilted. His fingers curled into fists. Most people wouldn’t notice it, but Jonas felt every sway of the tall building.
Rhiannon stirred in the hotel bed beside Jonas. Her body, still warm with sleep, dragged the covers around his waist as she sat up. She asked, “You awake?”
“I suppose.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah, fine,” he lied.
“Do you sleep sitting up?”
“Sometimes when I can’t sleep, I watch television in the middle of the night.” Or morning, or whatever time it was.
She cuddled up to his back, and Jonas closed his eyes at the shocking comfort of her soft flesh. “The television’s off,” she said.
“I didn’t want to wake you.”
“It’s okay. Go ahead and watch. Do you have insomnia a lot?”
“No.” He didn’t reach for the remote on the nightstand. “I generally try to book rooms on the lower floors, but they were all taken.”
She ran her palms up his back, scrunching the tee shirt fabric in her fingers. It almost felt like she was trying to take it off of him, which would have been a fantastic development if he had any damned condoms.
She asked, “You afraid of heights?”
“It’s not that. The upper floors sway.”
Rhiannon’s hands on his back stilled, and she held her breath for three heartbeats. She said, “Oh, yeah. I can kind of feel that.”
“They make taller buildings elastic, so in case of an earthquake, they flex rather than crumble.”
“Are we having an earthquake?” He could feel her swing her legs around to evacuate.
“No. It’s just windy out there. I think there’s a storm rolling in.”
“That is kind of freaky. Now that you’ve mentioned it, I can feel it moving.”
He reached back and found her arms, pulling them around his waist, and tucked her under his arm. He breathed a little easier. “Have you ever been in an earthquake?”
“I only moved to Southern Cali four years ago. Just some little temblors. Nothing big.”
He leaned back, resting his cheek on the top of Rhiannon’s head. Her thick hair still smelled like herbs and mint. “I was in a really bad one.”
Her arms tightened around his waist.
In the dark, it was easier to say. He couldn’t see the pity in her eyes. “I was fifteen. Our house fell in. My parents and little sister were killed.”
“Oh, Jonas. I’m sorry.” Her hand stroked his arm. “Were you in foster care?”
“Yeah.” He had lived in a series of group homes for a year, but the pissing contests had become an outright brawl for alpha male dominance. He had already been over six feet tall and muscular from sports, but knowing he could beat their scrawny, angry asses didn’t mean that he wanted to. Those teenage packs were not normal life. Integrating into the dysfunction would have meant losing hope, so he had run away and couch-surfed with friends, orbiting around their families, breathing in the second-hand care. “It wasn’t too bad.”