Packing the car, he swept the house for anything he might have forgotten, then locked it up and headed out. The drive was slow-going, given all the snow and slush, but that was somewhat mitigated by the lack of traffic, so getting out of town took longer than usual, but not as long as he'd feared it could.
Hopefully, by the time Arden and Michi realized what had happened, he'd be long gone. His phone was tucked away, kept for emergencies but turned off so even Michi would struggle to find him.
All that was left, really, was to figure out where he should go. Nowhere he knew, because if he knew it, so did everyone else. Not that he really had any option except 'back to the family that had been trying to murder him.'
How depressing that when he so desperately needed help, he had no one to run to. Well, no, there were people that would help him, especially Arden and Michi. How could he turn to people for help knowing full well they could be killed? No, that wasn't happening.
Stupid. It was all so stupid. All this trouble, all those people dead, because the Lost Shifters wanted to make things better for…
The Lost Shifters. That was an idea. He couldn't just wander in to any LSF office, though. They'd think he was a crackpot or part of the problem. Which, not wrong, but it was more complicated than 'yet another asshole raccoon.'
Argh, he just wanted to make cupcakes, drat it.
Okay, so, the LSF needed to know what was happening. Iskander might have told them, but he also might not have, and Oakley couldn't ask without risking giving away his location. Not that 'a few miles out of town' was going to be hard to figure out, but hopefully he'd be more difficult to find than that in another hour or so. For one, they had no idea which way he'd gone; he'd picked his direction solely because it was the one he'd come to first that hadn't been completely obstructed by snow.
Thankfully, the highways were maintained by the county, and they were good about keeping the roads cleared, pretreating them and having the plows ready to go on a moment. So while getting out of town had been a fight, now he was knocking the miles down with relative ease.
What he needed was to get word to someone that the LSF would listen to, take seriously. Someone who could corroborate his story with Iskander, and then relay to the people who could do something about it.
Easy enough idea, but executing it… who would be willing to listen to him? Nobody, that was who. Oakley laughed bitterly, the sound much closer to crying. Nobody would ever listen to him, least of all the LSF. Any remaining hopes he had at adoption had been firmly stamped out. 'Family decided murdering me was the answer to their problems' was the exact opposite of a ringing endorsement. He'd have more luck if—
Realization struck him.
If he was an adorable, formally feral snake shifter who'd turned the world upside down by being allowed to adopt two wolf puppies. Of course. If there was one person in the whole world who might listen to him, it was a fellow misfit. Though that really wasn't a fair comparison, given that Skylar had endured things a thousand times worse than Oakley would ever have to worry about.
Still, he felt his chances were better with Skylar than anyone else.
Thankfully, he knew roughly where Skylar lived, or at least where the pack he lived with was located. It was one of the biggest and most respected packs in the state.
He pulled over at the next exit and punched in the address on his GPS, after he fumbled around trying to find the stupid thing, which wound up being in the backseat for no good reason.
Back on the road, with nothing but the GPS and the radio to keep him company, left him with entirely too much time to himself.
To dwell on how badly he wanted to turn around and go home. How badly he wanted to cozy up before a fire with Michi and Arden and forget about the rest of the world for a bit.
God above, how had he wound up with both. Even his wildest fantasies couldn't handle that level of impossible. But they'd both kissed him, and while they were all in the same room, and they'd kissed each other. Oakley would surrender everything he owned, up to and including his business, to enjoy that sight for the rest of his life.
Hopefully he would be able to enjoy it still, once this stupid mess was cleared up. They were probably on the warpath by now, especially since his phone was turned off. But what was he supposed to do? Go back and sit around doing nothing while a murderer took out whoever he needed in order to successfully get rid of Oakley? Not happening. Leaving aside the way his heart would shatter into a million pieces, what about their families? Whatever Arden's contention with his parents, they loved him. Michi's family clearly was deeply fond of him.
He wasn't going to ruin dozens of lives—more than he already had—when he had the ability to remove the problem. Even if the problem was him, and leaving was destroying him.
Okay, thinking of only the negative wasn't going to help anything. Positive thinking, like what he'd do once this whole crazy mess was cleaned up and over with. Well, and pretending his whole life wouldn't immediately be consumed by trying to get Sweet Nothings back on its feet, if there was even a business left to save by that point. Problem for later.
He'd take a whole week off, make them pick a house, and spend every moment of it relaxing, cooking for them, or… well doing a whole lot of X-rated things he wasn't going to think about, or this drive would become even more miserable than it already was.
Like how much fun it would be to be in the middle, or to sit back and watch them go at each other. He and Arden could pounce Michi, or he and Michi could team up and…
Argh, not thinking about it. Since when had he become a masochist?
Shifting in his seat, in a thoroughly bad mood now, Oakley tried to think of other things. Like what he'd cook. Japanese food would clearly be a good way to go, but he'd never really done that sort of cooking, outside of like, fried rice, which didn't really count. If he could find the time to learn, it would definitely be worth it.
Arden was easy. As long as there was a whole lot of meat involved, he was content. He also liked seafood and almost any kind of fish. Dessert was even easier, though he should probably figure out what Michi liked other than cupcakes.
He smiled faintly, but mostly it just hurt. Everything hurt, and the further away he got from everything he cared about, the worse the pain got. But going back wasn't an option. If he wasn't there, the murders would stop. Eventually, his family would have to call the whole thing off or something.
Though Oakley would be infinitely happier if he could do something that got the bastards arrested for all of it. Get rid of them once and for all. Give the Lost Shifters and all their supporters that much more of a chance.
It probably wouldn't do anything for his chances at adoption, but it would help others—help children, which was the most important thing in all this mess. Children shouldn't suffer because adults all too often were selfish, greedy, despicable people. If nothing else came of this, at least let it help the kids somehow.
Having to accept he'd never get to be a father cut deeper than all the rest, but it wasn't like it was a newsflash. He'd been fighting an uphill battle from the start. Hardly surprising he'd lost. It wasn't like there was ever a guarantee he'd have been a good parent anyway. Who knew, maybe this whole mess was sparing some kids getting stuck with a horrible trash panda for a father.
Ugh, maybe he should just go back to the thoughts that had left him sexually frustrated.
Instead, he fought with the radio until he found a station of stuff that he could mostly sing along with and focused on that until the worsening weather took all his concentration.
Given he was headed into the mountains, the weather wasn't likely to improve any time soon.
He finally pulled over at a motel that looked only moderately shady and paid in cash, handing it over to a clerk who was clearly happy to keep their interaction to the bare minimum before returning to the back room and the porn that undoubtedly awaited.
Oakley drove down the lot to where his room was dead last and hauled his belongings inside. Thankfully, the room looked and smelled clean, with nothing so glaring that it immediately jumped out at him. Dumping his things on the nearest of the two beds, he headed for the bathroom.
When he was done, he poked around until he found some delivery menus. By some miracle, he had options greater than pizza. Once food was on the way, he dug out what he needed for a quick shower and took care of that.
All the while, he tried not to think about where he'd rather be, how worried Michi and Arden must be—and how painfully they would kill him once he was able to go home. Hopefully they wouldn't do something stupid like try to come find him.
The urge to call and check in was painful, but if he turned on his phone, that was it, game over. Even if they didn't find him that way, the paranoid part of him had to assume the killer very well could. He wanted to believe there was no way the asshole would go to this much trouble, but given all the trouble he'd already gone to… his phone had to stay off, no matter how badly he needed to hear Michi's voice, Arden's laugh. He'd settle for them yelling at him; something was better than nothing, at least in this case.
He startled, not quite yelping, when a knock came at the door. Rolling his eyes at himself, Oakley went to answer it. Twenty-five bucks later, he had a burger, fries, cookies, and a six pack of beer, because sometimes it was nice to be in a place where people didn't ask questions as long as nobody was causing trouble.
It was far removed from the evening he'd much rather be enjoying, but so far as 'on the run' went, it wasn't half-bad. Grabbing the TV remote, he settled on bed, got his food and beer situated, and surfed for something to watch while he munched on still-hot fries.
Eventually he settled on a bake-off, which happened to be doing cupcakes, giving him an easy target to vent all his worry and frustration by snidely judging the efforts of people under pressure that would break him before the first commercial break.
By the time it ended, he was full and so exhausted that keeping his eyes open was almost painful. Oakley cleaned up, triple-checked the door was locked, wedged a chair under the knob just for the hell of it, and set the eighties-era alarm clock on the nightstand to wake up him at six.
Curling up beneath the thin, cheap motel blankets, he tried not to think about how badly he wanted to be home, learning what it was like to share a bed with two other men.
All in all, the day could have been worse. That being said, he'd never been so miserable in his life. Hopefully the morning would bring a better day.
*~*~*
Clearly that had been hoping for too much, because instead of waking up to better, he woke up to sleet and a warning for an ice storm that made driving anywhere a suicide mission. Damn it, damn it, damn it.
So now he was stuck here for at least another day, probably more, since ice storms tended not to clear up instantly, especially when they were this bad.
Groaning, Oakley bundled up and ventured out on foot, first to take care of his room for a couple more days, and then down a couple of blocks to a nearby gas station to get survival junk food—and some bananas and apples, by some miracle—to see him through, along with some drinks, including more alcohol.
Despite the fact he'd brought his good winter boots, he still nearly wiped out six different times on his way there and back. Ugh, ice was the worst.
Back inside, he turned the heat up a bit, found another cooking show to snark at, and ate his meager breakfast of bad coffee, prepackaged donuts—powdered sugar—and a banana. When he was finished with that, he fetched his bag of boredom prevention devices, because not being able to use his phone was absolutely maddening.
Half an hour later, he was ready to scream. Or say screw it and risk death by sliding on ice over the edge of a mountain road and into the abyss.
Okay, maybe not quite that desperate. But a couple more hours and maybe. Just maybe.
Tossing aside the book he'd successfully failed to read for the past half hour, he dug around in his bag for something that might prove more successful, coming up with a 3D puzzle he'd bought 500 years ago and a book of word searches and crosswords. Hmm.
He cleared off the desk, put some folded-up paper under the wobbly leg so the stupid thing would hold still, and spread the pieces of the puzzle out. Then he fetched a beer from the minifridge and settled in. He'd never done a puzzle quite like this, so hopefully it would prove distracting, if only because he was going to suck at it.
Once put together, it would form—
He yelped and jumped, knees hitting the bottom of the desk and sending puzzle pieces scattering, as the phone rang. What in the ever living heck? Oakley glared at the phone, which thankfully stopped after several rings. Wrong number? Probably. He couldn't be the only one stuck in this place, and there were bound to be at least a couple of assholes who thought it was fine to put delivery drivers in danger.
He'd only just started collecting pieces when the phone started ringing again. Then a third round. Okay, what in the world? Was it really a wrong number? Or was someone trying to see if he was indeed the occupant of this room? If that paranoid thought was true, was it a couple of pissed off boyfriends—were they his boyfriends now?—or a murderer trying to check off his last to do?
Well he certainly wasn't bored now. As the phone started up yet another round, Oakley wavered on what to do. Answer it? Unplug it? Say screw it and get the heck out of there?
Why couldn't his life go back to simple and boring?