Rory's Christmas

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

When Rory woke, she found herself next to a rather naked stranger.

Correction. When Rory woke with a million stupid hammers screaming around in her head, she found herself cradled against the chest of a rather naked stranger who seemed to be wearing nothing else but a bright red, if somewhat torn, Santa hat.

Her first instinct was to scream, so that’s what she did—or at least, tried to.

The arm that had been resting on her waist tightened suddenly and pulled her closer, muffling her cries until she was practically making out with his pectorals; and when she tried to inhale, all she could smell was sweat and a really weird scent she couldn’t name.

“Can’t—you—urrghhh—”

Santa Hat Guy just yawned, patted her back, and then she felt something hit the top of her head. A chin.

A few minutes later he started snoring.

It took Rory a good twenty minutes to untangle herself from him, and she had to stop every few seconds to make sure he wasn’t actually waking up. Santa Hat Guy kept murmuring things in his sleep—no actual words, just random mumbling that didn’t make any sort of sense at all.

She resisted the urge to groan in pain when she finally managed to roll away. IT felt as though there were knives stabbing into every inch of her body, and the commotion in her brain still hadn’t lessened any. What the hell was wrong with her?

She sat up, rubbing her eyes. Her jaw dropped.

She was in a hotel room—well, motel, by the looks of it. The curtains weren’t full drawn and through a slit she could see the windshield of some car parked outside. Bright sunlight was streaming through the same opening, illuminating enough of the room that she could see but not so bright that she felt like she was blinded.

The place was a mess. A chair had been knocked over and somebody’s jeans were carelessly draped over it. The table was a mess of beer bottles—empty ones, she noted with a wince, grimly accepting that she was the unfortunate victim of a very bad hangover—and some ripped pieces of paper. More clothing items were spilling out of the cupboard drawers, and the bed…

The bed was tiny, and she had been sleeping in it with a stranger.

She glanced down the cover to assess herself. Bra and sweatpants. And nothing ached. Okay, so she probably hadn’t been raped or anything. But where was the rest of the clothes?

The other stranger let out an ear-splitting snore and Rory nearly fell off the bed.

The party inside her head was obviously a hit. She felt like her skull was being cracked open, one nanometer at a time. She spied a half-open door near the one that led outside, and cranked her neck to catch sight of a toilet reflected in the mirror behind it. It looked like Heaven—a perfect place for her to try not to puke her guts out.

Rory moved again, freezing when Santa Hat Guy groaned a little and mumbled something incoherent. When he still didn’t wake up, she let out a quiet breath and got out from under the covers.

Her feet touched soft fabric instead of hardwood floor, and when she looked down she saw that she had stepped on somebody’s shirt. She picked it up and pressed it to her chest even though the stranger was still snoring slightly, evidently asleep, and tiptoed to the bathroom.

She locked the door behind her, looked in the mirror, and nearly died of fright. She was a mess. Her naturally pin-straight hair resembled a massive tumbleweed, there were smudged black marks all over her cheeks and random bits of dirt everywhere, and her shoulder was covered with clusters of strange little. Her neck too—the bruises were splattered all around her neck, and Rory felt a moment of cold fear. Had someone tried to choke her? Had the stranger back in the bed, with which she had obviously fallen asleep with, tried to kill her?