Rival Riders

The GPS said three hours to Pine Ridge. I said I’d rather walk through a swamp full of broken glass.

Ely just grinned, that lazy, infuriating grin that made me want to slap the smug off his face. “Noted. But the car’s already packed, Bry. Your choice is ride or be left.”

My choice. Right. Like there was ever a choice when your ex-boyfriend’s best friend holds the only keys to a weekend you can’t afford to miss. My sister’s engagement party. The one I’d promised to be at, the one where my mother would be watching, judging, tallying every failure on her mental scorecard. Missing it wasn’t an option. Showing up with Ely, the human embodiment of a hangnail, was a punishment I hadn’t seen coming.

I threw my duffel into the back of his beat-up Jeep, the one with the dented fender and the smell of stale coffee and dog. “Don’t talk to me. Don’t look at me. Pretend I’m a piece of luggage.”

“Can I at least check you in?” he asked, sliding into the driver’s seat.

I slammed the passenger door hard enough to rattle the windows. The first hour was a masterpiece of silence. I watched the highway unfurl, a gray ribbon through a landscape of scrub and sky. He kept the radio off. I think he knew I’d rather listen to my own teeth grind than his voice. I focused on the road, on the way the light caught the dust on the dashboard, on anything but the way his forearm flexed when he shifted gears. I hated that I noticed. I hated that I noticed the small scar above his eyebrow, the way his jaw tightened when he was thinking.

Then the sky did something ugly. It went from hazy blue to a bruised, greenish gray in the span of ten minutes. The first fat raindrop hit the windshield like a warning. Then another. Then the sky opened up and dumped a lake on us.

Ely swore under his breath, leaning forward to peer through the frantic wipers. The rain was a solid wall, the kind that turns headlights into useless candles. He slowed to a crawl. Lightning cracked, close enough to make me jump.

“We need to pull over,” he said, his voice losing its usual tease.

“No shit,” I snapped, but my heart was hammering. I hated storms. Hated the noise, the feeling of being trapped in something I couldn’t control.

He spotted the sign for a motel just as the engine coughed. Then coughed again. Then died.

The Jeep rolled to a silent stop in the parking lot of the Ponderosa Motel, a place that looked like it had been built in 1972 and never touched since. The neon sign flickered “Vacancy” in a sad, buzzing pink. Rain hammered the roof like a thousand tiny fists.

Ely turned the key. Nothing. Not even a click. He sighed, a long, weary sound that was more admission than complaint. “Fuel pump. Or maybe the alternator. Doesn’t matter tonight. We’re stuck.”

I stared at the motel. A single-story row of doors painted a color that was either faded peach or dirty salmon. A vending machine glowed lonely by the office. It was the kind of place where people went to disappear or die.

“Great,” I said, my voice flat. “Just great.”

The office smelled of old cigarettes and Pine-Sol. The clerk, a man with a face like a crumpled paper bag, didn’t blink when Ely asked for two rooms.

“One room left,” he said, not looking up from his magazine. “One bed.”

The world stopped. I felt the blood drain from my face, then rush back in a hot wave. “Excuse me?”

“One room. One bed.” He finally looked up, bored. “Take it or leave it. There’s a shelter ten miles back, but they’re probably full.”

Ely’s hand was already on the counter, a twenty-dollar bill sliding across the laminate. “We’ll take it.”

I turned on him, my voice a low, furious hiss. “What the hell are you doing?”

“It’s pouring, Bry. The car is dead. We’re in the middle of nowhere.” His blue eyes were steady, unblinking. “You have a better idea? You want to sleep in the Jeep?”

I wanted to scream. I wanted to claw his eyes out. I wanted to be anywhere but here, with him, in this dump, about to share a bed like some bad romance novel. But I had nothing. No plan, no ride, no other option. The rain kept falling, a relentless, mocking drumbeat.

I grabbed the key from his hand. “You sleep on the floor.”

He laughed, a short, sharp sound. “We’ll see about that.”

The room was worse than I imagined. A lumpy double bed with a floral bedspread that had seen better decades. A dresser with a water ring on top. A bathroom with a flickering light. The whole place smelled faintly of bleach and mildew. It was a room designed for regret.

I dropped my bag on the floor and crossed my arms. “I’m serious. The floor. That’s your spot.”

Ely kicked off his boots, not bothering to untie them. He stretched out on the bed, folding his hands behind his head, looking for all the world like he owned the place. “You know what I think? I think you’re scared.”

“Of you? Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Not of me.” His eyes held mine, and for a second, the humor was gone. “Of being alone. Of not having control. Of sharing a space with someone who sees through your bullshit.”

I felt the words hit like a slap. Because he was right. And I hated him for it. I hated the way he said it, calm and knowing, like he’d already won some game I didn’t know we were playing.

“You don’t know anything about me,” I said, but my voice cracked on the last word.

He didn’t answer. He just watched me, his gaze steady and unnerving. The rain drummed on the roof. The neon sign buzzed. And I stood there, soaked and angry and trapped, with nowhere to go but that bed, and no one to share it with but the one person I wanted to hurt the most.