Amira’s hands trembled, a mixture of the frosty air and her own nervous temperament. Her recent run-in with Joey, the pretty brunette who’d accosted her in A Novel Idea, had left her reeling. She’d seen the other girl around but they’d never spoken, never had any reason to really, but what Amira had learned had that day had left her head spinning.
It wasn’t so much that she was surprised to learn Killian was looking for her, necessarily. She’d seen his texts, the missed calls too. She’d deleted voicemails, opting to wipe them from her phone before playing even a second of them, knowing that hearing his voice would surely send her running back in a heartbeat. He hadn’t tired in his efforts to bring her home, yet hearing it spoken out loud, from a real person with wide eyes, a look of concern, and a beating heart was entirely different. It had shattered something inside of her. She’d stumbled back to her motel in such a state of disarray, barely even recognising how she’d gotten there to begin with.
Days had passed since their meeting, and she’d fought the urge to call him ever since. Her chest ached in ways that she’d never experienced before. Being away from Killian had been unimaginably difficult, yet knowing he was so close and stopping strangers in the street in an attempt to find her... somehow, this was worse. It gave Amira the kind of hope she didn’t think she’d earned, a yearning to be back with him, as though no time had passed, and no damage caused.
Now she sat nervously in the motel lobby, head hung low to avoid the curious stares of the employee behind the desk; the same woman had watched her make this very trip three times a day in the past week, never biting the bullet and making that call. She gripped the receiver of the motel payphone, her other hand hovering over the coin slot, coins placed precariously between her fingers, and finally dropped her coins in and tapped Killian’s number into the machine.
The shrill dial tone made her wince, her head spinning at the volume with which the phone rang, her eyes squeezing shut with anticipation. She expected the call to amount to nothing, that nobody would answer, and by the time she heard the rasp of Killian’s all too familiar voice she realised she wasn’t quite ready at all. She hadn’t prepared herself for what it might do to her, hearing him after all this time, his greeting a simple uttering of her own name, a question in his tone.
With a sharp intake of breath, her throat constricting, she squeezed the receiver tight, willing herself to say something.
“Hey there, Killer,” she breathed, suddenly at a loss for words. “It’s good to hear your voice.”
