The Sun Down Motel Novels & Stories

Even if it breaks your heart into pieces. * * * We don't say more than a word to each other for the rest of the drive. Finally, sometime after nine o'clock and just outside of Washington D.C., Ward pulls us into a place called the Sunshine Motel. It's painted taupe. Definitely not what I think of when I hear the word "sunshine."

Well, Alpha Marcus did try, but he had no idea who he was messing with. Still to this day, none of Alpha Marcus’ pack know that Tyler and I are part of the Sun Moon pack, which gives us a leg up. Well, it doesn’t really matter now whether we have a leg up or not. We don’t have to worry about Alpha Marcus. He is gone.

Delia: Just at a little motel by the beach – so cute here! Evelyn: Which hotel? V and I planning a trip, looking for recommendations. Delia: Sunrise Starfish. He can probably afford fancier, though! Evelyn smiles and then goes back into the gas station to ask the attendant for directions. A few minutes later, Evelyn and Ian park in the lot of the Sunrise Starfish, a cute little beach motel with a pool out front. “Wowww,” Ian says, smiling at it. “Can I go swimming?!”

--- The motel looked like it belonged in a crime documentary. Chipped paint, flickering neon, a front desk behind bulletproof glass. The kind of place where people didn’t ask questions, and you didn’t leave a real name. He parked the car at the far end of the lot, angled so the front faced the exit. Always ready to run. I stayed in the passenger seat for a beat too long, staring at the cracked sign that read Sunset Inn. The irony stung. There was nothing golden about this place. Just the promise of silence.

Tonight, he sounded like he was drowning. And Ava… Ava was already on her way to him with no hesitation. When the car pulled into the dim, nearly empty parking lot of the Suncrest Motel, Ava’s breath caught. This wasn’t a hotel. This wasn’t a safe anonymous conference lodge. This was a place where secrets went to rot. A neon sign flickered overhead, half the bulbs dead, the rest glowing a sickly pink. The parking lot was uneven and cracked. A vending machine sat outside the lobby, humming like a dying engine.

The journey was spent in business talk between them and a short stay at service station for a washroom break. Joseph parked the car at Xavier's favorite place to just take away the order he had placed while on the way. Marcus and Xavier added a few more items because they knew they wouldn't get even a single bite of the food they ordered for Angie and Caroline. ----- Tabby

I sobbed uncontrollably. "Damn you for dragging me into this!" I screamed. Speeding towards the address on the paper Dante had given me, I kept glancing at the rearview mirror, half-expecting to see flashing lights or a car pursuing me. —None. The street was empty. It was just me, alone, driving. The motel loomed ahead, a faded neon sign flickering sporadically "Sunset Vista," it read, the "S" fading out. Pulling into the nearly deserted parking lot, I could hear my heart pound. The place looked like it hadn't been renovated since the '70s, the kind of place that held an eerie secret.

In my sixth year of running an inn in Rimevale, I'm diagnosed with bone cancer. I leave the inn in the hands of my fiancé, Eric Jones, and head to Varenia with nothing but an old enamel mug. Once I'm there, I start a livestream called "My Last 100 Sunsets." Every day at 7:00 pm, I turn the camera toward the snowcapped mountains and make coffee just out of frame. On my 31st livestream, a comment suddenly catches my eye. "Wait. Does that mug at the edge of the frame have a V-shaped chip in it?" Six years ago, when a blizzard left us stranded in the mountains, I kept that same mug filled with hot spiced cider for Eric all night. The chat explodes. "That's Alice Graham from Veylune Inn!"

The Sunset Motel wasn't exactly five-star accommodation, but it was what I could afford on a garage mechanic's salary. I stumbled to the tiny bathroom and splashed cold water on my face, avoiding my reflection in the cracked mirror. Three weeks of living like this had taken its toll. Dark circles under my eyes, stubble I couldn't afford the time to shave properly, clothes that smelled like motor oil no matter how many times I washed them in the motel's coin laundry. My phone buzzed with a text from Tommy, my supervisor at Mike's Auto Repair: Need you to pull a double again today. Rodriguez called in sick.

The thing with my mom back then—she was nineteen, maybe twenty but without makeup she looked more like sixteen, maybe seventeen. Is that your baby, miss? That can’t be your baby. There was the motel outside the desert. Flat heat and hissing sand. The Setting Sun. That was the name. The guy who ran it looked at my mother with such black fascination I could tell he scared her. The way she wouldn’t look back at him, not directly at least. So unlike her to hide her eyes. The way she wouldn’t stick around to chat with him, even when she was handing him money and he was trying to stare down her shirt.