One trip to the local mall, and two hours of shopping later we were in the lobby of a Marriott hoping they had a room. That was the one drawback of this fly by night plan, we had no reservations anywhere. It wasn't an issue at the moment, but it could be if we went to any touristy areas that were full of spring breakers.

"Can I help you, sir?" asked a young man at the front desk as we approached. It was a deserted lobby, hopefully a good sign for getting a room. According to his name tag, his name was Todd.

"Yes, I was hoping you had a couple of rooms available, preferably adjoining." I said.

"Let me check the availability." Todd said.

"Actually." Blake interjected. "We just need one room, double if you have it."

I looked at her with a raised eyebrow. "We do?"

"Yep, doctor's orders. We're a team, we do everything together," she said with a smile.

I sighed. "Sorry Todd, just one room."

"That is fine sir, we do have one available with two queen beds."

Once we were settled up with the front desk, we took our bags and piled into the elevator, pressing the button for the 4th floor.

"Did Doctor Merritt really say that or are you just trying to fluster me again?" I asked Blake. She was hard to read sometimes, so I couldn't tell.

"Does it matter?" she asked innocently.

"I don't know." I really didn't at this point. The elevator door opened, and we walked down to the room. It wasn't anything fancy, just a standard hotel room with two queen sized beds, a desk and TV. All we really needed for the night. "Which bed would you like?" I asked.

She opened her mouth to say something, my bet was that she was going to try to make me blush again, but then she just smiled and said, "The one by the window please."

"You got it." I dropped my stuff in a neat little pile near the closet and lay down on the bed for a minute.

"Ethan? Are you okay?" she asked, sitting on the edge of her bed.

The truth was, I wasn't sure. Her appearance had thrown the whole trip for a loop and kept bringing me back to my previous trips. On the other hand, she certainly made the trip more fun, it was nicer driving with someone than driving alone, and she was great to hang out with and talk to. She was also smart and had a great sense of humor, so the conversation was varied and ended up going off on random tangents that always entertained me.

All of that in the first day of driving.

I laced my fingers behind my head and looked over at her. She was looking at me with worry in her eyes. "Honestly, I'm a little scared. Obviously, I told you about my other trips, and getting dumped. That was one of the reasons I decided to take you with me, because I wanted you to continue your trip too, even if it was a different one than you expected."

I could see her smile at that. "Thank you for bringing me, really. If I hadn't run into you, I don't know what I would have done. Probably just got on a bus back home and been miserable."

"Exactly, that is what I had done on my trips, and I didn't want that for you. Doc told me to pay it forward, so that was what I was wanting to do."

"So, you took me because the doc told you to?" she looked hurt at that.

"Nope. As soon as you mentioned coming, I wanted to say yes. But I was nervous about it. I just asked doc if it was all right because I wasn't sure if that was what she had in mind for my trip."

Blake smiled in return. "I'm so glad you did. I never really had a chance to thank you before, and seeing you again has been so great."

"That's what scares me though." I said sitting up. "That was an amazing night for me too, even if I didn't realize it at the time."

"But you got dumped by that Vicky girl," Blake pointed out, a little confused.

I sat up and swung my legs over, so I was on the edge of the bed as well. "When I went on that trip, I was supposed to be celebrating a big sale. To me that was an accomplishment that I had been working on for 5 years. For me, that was a highlight. But then, the whole snow thing, and I met you and your mom, and you know everything from there."

"Yes, I do," she said brightly.

"But here is the thing. That night I was laying on your sofa because I couldn't sleep for a bit, I was just too tense. Your brain ever just whirl around sometimes like a little chipmunk? That was me that night. Anyway, I realized my sale didn't mean a whole lot in the big scheme of things but finding you and your mom did."

"It did?"

"Absolutely. The thing I sold just makes a difference to a few companies who probably could have done something similar with one of my competitors. At the end of the day, it saves them a little bit of money. Well, a lot of money, but it doesn't matter to real people, just CEOs and their bonuses. But meeting you and your mom, that felt like I had made a difference for you, that I did something good for another person."

"You did, you really did," she smiled broadly, "You have no idea how much that meant. We were terrified when we slid off that road, and then this random stranger comes by and takes us home without even hesitating. That was amazing."

He felt a bit of a blush creeping up his face at her version of it. "But that is what scares me."

She stopped smiling and looked a little confused. "All right, this time you're the one that lost me."

I looked down at my feet, this was difficult to get through, hard to admit. "I've always liked to think that you and your mom thought highly of me as a person. Other than my sister you'd be the only ones that do. You mentioned karma before, and I kept hoping that a good deed like that would make a positive difference in my life, so I changed things and went on the rest of the trip myself and it really helped me settle down."

"We do!" she said quickly.

"But what happens if something bad happens on this trip, and you end up hating me? I don't know if I could handle having you hate me. Do I lose all that karma? That's stupid, right?"

"It isn't stupid. You think I don't worry about you hating me at the end of this trip? That thinking that you might end up regret having even saved me in the first place doesn't terrify me?" Blake asked with a trembling voice.

"I'd never feel that way," I promised her.

"Would you have even let me come on the trip if you hadn't met me before?" she asked quietly.

"Would you have sat at my table waiting for me?" I countered.

"Fair point."

"Yep."

"So, what do we do?"

"I don't know. I can't think of anything that triggered the breakups before. Even Vicky, I knew she had been scared and we got to her grandmother's house late, but I didn't think I had done anything worth breaking up with. So how do I avoid fucking things up with you?" I really didn't know how to stop it, for all I knew it was just my personality that drove people away.

"Then we have to be honest with each other. We have to make sure we talk, and don't keep anything inside. If we're open and honest and don't let things fester, then we should be able to head any problems off," she suggested.

"That seems good in principle. Do you think we can do it?" I asked, curious.

"Well, let's try. What would you normally not tell me?" she asked.

"I get to go first?" I said, surprised.

"Yep, you're a gentleman, I can tell," she said with a wink.

I thought for a bit. Is this really what I wanted to tell her? And how? "Fine. All right. Blake, I really like you. I saw you this morning and couldn't help it. I would normally have loved to ask you out if I wasn't on a road trip."

She laughed a little at that and I was crushed. "Ethan, we're supposed to tell secrets. I already knew that."

Shit.

"I'm that obvious?" My face had to be as red as a tomato.

"Well, about that, yeah. But don't worry about it, it's cute. Now, gimme a secret."

If we're going to do this, then I might as well jump in with both feet. "When I was 18, my dad killed my mother, and then took his own life. I haven't talked to Doctor Merritt about it yet, and while I tell everyone I'm over it, I always worry that something could be wrong with me like him."

She was quiet after that, then came over to my bed and sat beside me, hugging me while I cried on her shirt. "I'm so sorry Ethan. I can't imagine what that feels like." I slid my arms around her as well, it felt good to be comforted, I couldn't remember the last time that had happened.

We sat like that for a few minutes before she retreated to her side of the bed, I immediately missed her warmth. "I'll give you a free one." She said softly. "I don't know my dad. Well, really, I don't remember him. He left when I was 3, so I have no memories of him. My mom and I love each other though, and have a great relationship, so I'm okay with it."

I smiled over at her, free though it was it was nice to have her sharing too.

"I have one I don't want to tell you, but after you went, I feel like I have to. But you have to promise me you're not going to hate me."

"I'm not going to hate you." I promised.

"Uh huh. Turn around." She demanded.

"Why?" I asked, confused.

"I don't want to see your face when I say this, I might not recover," she said, blushing as I had been earlier.

"All right, you got it." I didn't know what she was going to share, but if we were going to do this together, I was willing to accept her conditions.

I heard her take a deep breath. "I started writing back in high school, I've always loved it and I've taken every creative writing class I could. I posted a lot of my writing online, mostly for fun, some of them I was proud of. But it never really took off. I had some people that liked it, but I never seemed to find anything that got a big audience. In college I started to take it more seriously, I wanted to write novels and have something that would really strike a chord with people."

I nodded along with her story; I would want to do that same thing. "I love reading, that sounds great!"

"Let me finish," she pleaded. "After the night you met me and my mom, I might have become a little infatuated with you."

I turned my head over my shoulder to look at her, shocked by her revelation.

"Stop! Turn around! I'm not at the secret yet!" she yelled.

Wait, that wasn't it? "Sorry!" I stammered.

"Anyway, my writing changed after that night. I started writing a more mature book, a fantasy about being saved and how I could repay the person who saved me," she said softly, but loud enough that I could still hear. "It got pretty steamy."

I could feel my face turning red again, I couldn't believe what she was saying.

"The book was a hit. I'd never seen such a response to anything I've written. It got me a contract to write more books, but they wanted more like it. So, I gave it to them. It was almost too easy; I just wrote my fantasies about you down and gave them to the publishers and they freaked out. They even had me give your description to their artists so they could draw a representation of you on the covers. So, I guess my secret is that, while you may not know it, you're an adult novel star. And according to the cover artists, you have awesome nipples."

I turned around to see her laying on the bed facing away from me, her head buried in the pillows. I had no idea what to even say to that. How do you process that someone had been fantasizing about you for a year and a half, and you didn't know?

I slipped over and lay down beside her, spooning her as I wrapped my arms around her. "Thank you for sharing that. I don't think I could ever be more flattered. It was amazing," I whispered into her hair.

I could hear her crying under the pillows, and I felt horrible. "Blake, please don't cry, I know that was difficult, but I truly loved that story."

She turned over in my arms, "Are you sure? I was worried you'd feel violated. You never asked to be written about like that." Her face was stained red with tears and I wanted to make sure she knew they weren't necessary.

"Blake, it's all right, really. Nobody knows who you were even writing about, right? I'm flattered actually."

"If it helps, I never used you last name. I didn't even know it until Todd mentioned you as Mr. Sheridan downstairs," she said through her drying tears.

"Holy shit, you're right. I don't even know yours!" I realized. "But see, it is fine. I'm not even a little violated. But I hope no future girlfriends read your books, not too sure I could live up to what you wrote!"

"I'm betting you'll live up just fine," she said with a shy smile. "And my last name is Denton."

"Well then it is nice to meet you Blake Denton," I said with a smile. "We're good?"

"Yeah, we're good."

I fell asleep holding her, trying to assure her that she hadn't offended me. I had told her I was flattered, but honestly, I was a little scared. Not that I had a problem about her writing about me, but more that it was clear that they were her fantasies and that she potentially had feelings for me as well. The worst thing was that I was having a good time being with her, and if the trip kept going well, I would want to take it further. But I was scared that the real me would disappoint her.