I know my dad did me wrong, but I still had to check up on him. I didn't know how he was feeling, didn't know what Dean had done or said to him after I left, and didn't know if his condition had worsened overnight. I just needed to hear his voice and know he was still okay even if I was still furious at him.
I woke up and just sat there on the hotel bed for a while. I didn't even know what time it was. The room was quiet and for a moment I forgot everything, forgot my dad, forgot Dean, forgot all of it. Then it all came back the way bad things always do, rushing in before you are ready for it.
I knew I couldn't stay in this room forever.
I picked up my phone and dialed my dad's number.
It rang twice before he picked up.
"Jessie." His voice changed and I noticed it immediately.
"Dad." I pulled my knees to my chest on the bed. "How are you feeling. How is the medication, are they still taking care of you properly?"
"I'm okay," he said too fast unlike the way he talks to me. Everything felt congested between us and I couldn't figure out why.
"Dad are you sure because last night when I left you didn't look"
"Jessie listen to me." His voice dropped lower. "I need you to listen very carefully to what I am about to tell you okay."
"Dad you're scaring me what is"
"Just listen." He paused and hesitated before he could answer me and I guessed someone whom he wouldn't want to hear our conversation could be there. "I love you very much. You know that right? Whatever happens, I need you to know that."
My stomach dropped.
"Dad who is in that room with you?"
He didn't answer.
"Dad."
Nothing.
That was when I heard another voice on the phone.
"Good morning Jessica," Dean said. "I was wondering when you would call."
I couldn't speak for a second. He had been there the whole time. Sitting right there beside my father's bed while I called to check on him like everything was normal. Listening to every word I said.
"Where are you staying," Dean said.
"I'm not telling you that."
"You don't have to." His voice didn't change at all. "Your father already told me everything I needed to know."
I looked around the hotel room. The small desk by the window. The door with the chain across it. The bag I had packed in five minutes was sitting on the floor by the bed. None of it felt safe anymore.
"I didn't say anything," my dad's voice came back. "Jessie I didn't say anything I swear to"
"Put Dean back on," I said quietly.
A shuffling sound. Then it was Dean again.
"You have been in that hotel since last night," he said. It wasn't a question. "Room 14. Third floor. You paid cash at the front desk."
Immediately i screamed and my blood went cold.
Who's Dean and what does he want from me, he literally knows every step I take I'm no longer safe anymore.
He already knew. He had known before I even called. This phone call hadn't given him anything he didn't already have. He had just let me talk so I could figure that out for myself.
"What do you want," I said.
"The same thing I have always wanted," Dean said. "You have until I get there to decide whether I am walking into that room as someone you called or someone you didn't."
The line went dead.
I sat there for a long time after that staring at nothing. Then I got up and walked to the door and took the chain off because what was the point of it anymore and sat back down on the bed.
The knock came twenty minutes later.
I opened the door.
Dean was standing there in the corridor looking at me the same way he always looked at me, like he had never once doubted this moment was coming.
"I told you there is no way out of this," he said. "But you took my words for granted. Now look who follows you everywhere."
I stood there in that hotel doorway and looked at him and I had nothing. No words. No plan. No next move. Just the understanding settling into my chest like something heavy and permanent that this man was not going anywhere and neither was I.
I was trapped.
And we both knew it.
He didn't wait to be invited. He just walked in and I was still standing at the door and he moved past me like the room already belonged to him, like he had stayed here before, like everything in it was already his including me.
He started walking around the room slowly and there was a small smile on his face that made my skin crawl.
"I told your stubborn poor father," he said, moving around the room like he was inspecting it. "I told him but he thought I was joking. Now I have gotten you on a platter of gold."
I felt the heat rise up my neck immediately.
"Don't you dare call my dad those names again," I said.
He stopped walking and looked at me.
"But you know that is what he is," Dean replied.
Anger was boiling inside of me inside me. I turned around and faced him and before I even knew what I was doing my hand was already moving toward his face.
He caught my wrist before it landed.
His grip was firm but he didn't squeeze. He just held it there between us and looked at me with that same expression, not angry, not surprised, just calm in that way that was worse than anything else he could have done.
We stood there like that, my hand caught in his, my chest breathing heavily, his eyes on mine, neither of us moving.
It just dawned on me that I had tried slapping him. I didn't even know what Dean was going to do to me next
