Free Romance MF: A Suspense Story With A Dark Hidden Secret (romance short story, suspense romance, romantic short stories, adult romance Book 1) by Carol Lawson Page A

this one woman with bleached white dreadlocks on the run from the police. He took in a deep breath and slowly exhaled. Everything was clear, crystalline.
                  “I told you,” he repeated with a shrug, “I’m not abandoning you.”
                  She gripped his hand and they both left the hotel, her leading and Shane following close behind. Clearly she’d done this before, he guessed, as she pulled up the window in the hallway and slide through onto the steel grate of the fire escape. He followed after her and shivered as a cold wind bit down.
                  At the bottom rung Lily jumped and landed and he jumped after her. The impact of his feet on the cement was jolting and he felt a sharp pain in his heel that ran up his legs, and swore under his breath.
                  “C’mon, we have to hurry,” she said.
                  “Wait, let’s take my car, they aren’t looking for me,” he said, “you stay here, and I’ll drive around.”
                  She hesitated for a moment as if taking into account all her options, and finally nodded. “Okay, but hurry,” she hissed and crouched up against a green steel industrial garbage container behind the hotel.
                  Shane tried to walk as normally as he could around the hotel and saw that there were two cop cars parked outside the hotel already. There was a marshal holding up a picture to one of the guests who was smoking cigarette on the porch, and several more officers were inside questioning the freckled acne-faced kid behind the counter.
                  He held his breath as he walked past them and toward his Toyota that had been parked on the street just down the block. He thanked his lucky stars that none of the police seemed to notice him as he pulled around and tried to slowly make his way behind the hotel. Lily was waiting for him and threw herself into the backseat.
                  “Stay down,” he warned, “there’s two cop cars, I don’t know how many more.”
                  “Shit,” she said, plastering herself to the floor of the Toyota as Shane pulled back around and passed the hotel parking lot. He saw one of the officers raise his head and peer at him from behind black sunglasses, and it was enough to freeze his blood.
                  As they pulled onto the main street, he kept his eyes on the rearview mirror, but for all intents and purposes he was confident they’d made their escape. He didn’t stop driving until he reached a small rest-stop, just before the turn-off back to the cabin. He stepped outside and leaned over again, his hands on his thighs, and waited for the spell of nausea to pass. I can’t believe I just did that , he wanted to shout. He felt alive – it was horrifying, scary, stressful. But it was also real .
                  Lily appeared behind him and put a hand on his back. “Are you okay?”
                  “Just… overloaded, y’know?”
                  “Yeah, I do. Believe me.”
                  “I don’t regret it,” he said, trying to reassure her, “anyway, we need to figure out what we’re going to do next.”
                  She nodded. “Chris dumped the Volvo, but he has another friend in Port Angeles. He sent me a text saying he wants to meet up. We should wait for the police presence to die down though, they’ll probably be watching the highways. There’s another village, if we keep following his road. It’s right at the end, we can camp out near a lighthouse. For now we should find somewhere to lie low though. After that…” she waved her hand as if to indicate that anything was game.
                  “Okay,” he said, picking himself back up.
                  “You sure you’re okay?” she asked.
                  “I thought that