Her chuckle distracts me, her body calls to me, her defiance is a challenge. And I blame all three of those things when I completely miss the cue ball like some chump. She jumps off the table, a hiss of “Yes!” falling from her lips as she dances around me with a taunt in her eyes and an arrogance to her swagger from being victorious in her distraction.
Out of the blue, music blasts through the lobby. At first everyone freezes, then turns to where one of Pauly’s crew has plugged portable speakers into his laptop and is standing there looking back at all of us. Gus is his name, I think. I remember him because he always wears the most horrendous Hawaiian shirts that look like paradise got drunk and decided to throw up all over him.
“Let’s liven up this joint! We’re all bored stiff… so let’s loosen the fuck up!” Gus waves his arms out to the side for everyone to get on their feet, and the minute he stops talking, the room erupts in “Hell yeah” and whistling.
The lobby transforms instantly as the music is turned up louder so that the speaker crackles from the volume. The necessity to break up the doldrums takes hold of all of us – even the sticks-in-the-mud get to their feet and bob their heads to the rhythm. I glance over to see Beaux’s body sway to the beat as the familiar chords of a song by the popular band Bent begins to play.
Although I’m not normally one to dance, there’s no stopping me at the chance to feel her body against mine. The next thing I know, she’s walking toward me with her hips swaying and her body moving to the music. She sets down the cue and grabs my hand. We begin to move together in steps that don’t match the beat whatsoever. I spin her out and pull her back in like I used to watch my parents do across the kitchen floor when I was a little boy.
On another spin, we lose our grip on each other. Beaux’s shoulder hits the wall, and we double over in laughter at how horrible we are, but my God the laughter feels good. The smiles remain as we get back into the rhythm again, losing ourselves in the song as we dance in the space around the pool table. She raises her arms over her head and shimmies her hips as she lets the music take over, and hell if watching her body move like this doesn’t make me want to light the fuse to the powder keg.
I try to spin her out one last time as the final chords to the song hit our ears, and even though we are still laughing out of control – welcoming the stress relief from both the hours of waiting and the sexual tension that’s slowly building between us – we actually manage to keep our hands joined. When I pull her back into me, I do it with too much force because she lands against my chest, our bodies connected from shoulders to knees, breaths panting in unison as she looks up at me.
And something happens in the moment when the song fades and a new one starts, because neither of us moves. We remain motionless, but the way she looks at me changes somehow. It’s the craziest thing too, because as we stare at each other, chests heaving, the rest of the makeshift party going on all around us, my mom’s infinite wisdom chooses to flicker through my mind and take residence.
She used to always tell Rylee and me that she fell in love with my dad’s eyes first and foremost and that was how she knew he was going to be the one. According to her, eyes are the one thing on someone that never changes, so if you can look into someone’s eyes and see tomorrow, then you’ve found your forever.
Right here in this random moment with music fueled by spontaneity and the heat of her breath hitting my lips as she gazes into my eyes, I’m momentarily spooked by what I see there. And I think she feels it too, because even though we stay in the suspended state of inexplicable intimacy a beat longer, she pushes away from me seconds later, breaking the moment.
With enough distance between us, I can see the surprise I feel mirrored in her eyes. Right then there are so many things I want to tell her, and yet I have no clue where to start. It’s like we’ve both been stripped of that false bravado we had last week when she said she refused to touch me again and I told her I’d control the reins. It’s almost as if the moment were too raw, too real, and holding too much certainty that once we step over that edge, we won’t be coming back.
Beaux takes a step backward, her head shaking ever so subtly, but her eyes never leave mine. “I’ve got to…” Her voice fades off as she motions with her thumb over her shoulder. “I’ve got some pictures to edit.”
“Beaux?” Concern laces my voice as I ask her if she’s okay.
“I’m gonna go do that.” Her voice is anything but certain as she takes another step backward. “Now. Then bed,” she says as she grabs her camera from the table, turns on her heel, and strides out of the lobby.
I begin to go after her, feeling energized that she just proved to me her emotions are running as haywire as mine are when it comes to us. When I catch Pauly’s eye, my feet falter, and I know there’s no chance in hell I’ll chase her now and let him know that I care. He just nods once in understanding before throwing his head back and laughing over the beat of the music; then he approaches and pats me roughly on the back.
“Good luck with that,” he says as he tilts the neck of his beer in the direction in which she left. “You lucky bastard.”
Chapter 12
T
he sound of a car’s horn shocks me awake and scares the crap out of me. I reach over to the nightstand and grab my phone with one hand while I place my other arm over my eyes to block out the harsh morning sunlight coming in through the curtains I forgot to close. I peek at the time on my phone and curse the early morning hour after staying up and shooting the shit with Pauly long after the lobby dance party subsided. There will definitely be a lot of hungover journalists in this hotel today, and thank God I’m not one of them.
Between talking with Pauly and the image of Beaux’s face just before she’d gone upstairs, I decided to forgo the drinking. Besides, I had a hunch that if I drank, I’d be knocking on her door when I promised myself I wouldn’t do that again. And Christ how I wanted to do that again. But as I climbed the stairwell to my room last night, I hesitated before opening the door to my floor because every damn nerve in my body was begging me to keep going up a few more flights to her floor.
So now my dick is hard as a rock with thoughts of her on my mind. And they’re all indecent ones. I’m faced with a decision: hot shower and jerk off, or go hit the gym and work out this frustration in the hope that maybe I’ll get the real deal sometime soon. It’s sad that this is my dilemma of the morning, but fuck, I’ll take it.
Maybe jerking off, then the gym and then the hot shower. It definitely doesn’t hit the same pleasure spot, but at least something’s getting hit. Besides, taking one for the team doesn’t mean I can’t still get lucky later.
Thoughts of Beaux are still front and center as I shove up out of bed and get ready to work out. I’m out of my hotel room and in the stairwell within twenty minutes of waking, earbuds in, and muscles tense with my mind running in a million directions, but sexual frustration front and center. When I’m three flights down, I turn on the landing and come face-to-face with Beaux.
Déjà vu hits, and although we’re standing apart this time, I still feel as if my body has slammed into hers. And what knocks the air out of me is not just catching her like this when the images of all of the ways I want to fuck her have owned my thoughts. Not hardly. It’s the look of shocked surprise in her eyes mixed with the realization that I’ve noticed she’s wearing the same clothes as last night, camera slung over her shoulder, hair piled on top of her head.
Again.
Disbelief marries with hurt before it rifles through me. After that moment we shared between us last night, how could she have gone out and spent the night with someone else? I force a swallow to compose myself as I watch her eyes widen and her head shake back and forth rapidly as she realizes she’s been caught. It’s too much; I can’t deal with this, with her, with the disappointment spreading through my system right now. It just doesn’t make sense, and I’d rather feel the anger than the confusion.
And it’s just the briefest of
hesitations on my part as I allow myself a moment to feel stupid before I begin to rein my feelings in and turn to walk away. That slight falter gives her the opening she needs to reach out and grab my arm as I start to turn away. “No, Tanner! It’s not what you think!” she shouts in the empty stairwell, the echo of her denials bouncing off the concrete walls and hitting my ears to reinforce her words.
The incredulity I feel at being caught in this same moment again on top of my mistrust toward her right now has me primed for an argument. “What the fuck do you mean, it’s not what I think?” I growl as I turn around to face her, shrugging my arm from her grasp. “Because it looks pretty damn obvious to me. Guess the joke’s on me… or whoever else you were with last night. You sure as hell have a way of making someone feel like you have eyes only for them… when in fact you give everything else instead.”
I know it’s a dickish innuendo to make, but it’s true. What I don’t expect, though, is the flash of hurt that flickers and then remains in the green of her eyes. When normally I’d be turning on my heel and stomping my ass down to the gym, that fucking look has me frozen in place.
“Just…,” she says, and then stops as she rolls her shoulders, a war waging across her features over the confession I can see trembling on her lips. But the simple word and the tone in which she says it does its job, because I don’t move. “All I’m doing is taking pictures.” She holds her camera up in front of her as if its mere presence is proof. And of course the notion lingers that we’ve been here with the camera between us before and when I called her bluff, I was in the wrong. “When I feel restless, I go out and take pictures… I get lost in seeing the world through a filter, can distance myself… and sometimes it’s not until the sun comes up that I realize I’ve been up all night long. I don’t know how else to explain it, other than it calms me.”
“What? Here? Are you fucking crazy?” And yes, I should really be reading between the lines, but fuck, I’m a guy. I react without thinking, jump to judge without hearing anything beyond helpless female all alone in the wild fucking West. “It’s like willingly walking into the goddamn lion’s den out there! I told you not to go out there by yourself! You promised that you wouldn’t!”
“Yeah… well, I unpromise.” And there’s something about the contrast of the tone of her voice in comparison to mine – detached versus animated, defiance instead of compassion – that shocks me into realizing it doesn’t matter what else I say because she’s going to do it anyway. I search her eyes for a reason, a connection, anything at all, but all I find is disassociation and a complete lack of caring, and that only pisses me off further.
How can she pull away when all we’ve been doing is connecting, bit by bit, word by word, minute by minute, every day over the past week and a half? It’s like she’s slapping me in the face.
“Are you purposefully trying to push buttons to get a reaction? Because it doesn’t take much to ignite my temper, and, frankly, knowing you’re out there on your own is doing it already.” I step closer to her, willing the warmth in her eyes to return. “What’s really going on, Beaux?”
“It’s how I deal, okay? End of discussion. Drop it.” She retreats a step, and luckily the wall is at her back, because that means she can’t run away now.
“Deal with what? Is shit that bad at home that you’re willing to risk your safety here so that you don’t have to go back?” I immediately feel like a jerk for my original assumption that she’s sleeping around, but now I’m worried about what she’s withholding from me. And a small part of me cringes because I sound a lot like Rafe did to me when I wanted back here. I hate not knowing what has put this look on her face and the uncertainty laced with something else I can’t quite pin down in her eyes. “What the fuck are you running from?”
“Nothing.” She remains expressionless.
“Don’t nothing me, Beaux. Or is it BJ now? Because I expect that kind of crap answer from BJ, not from you. Not from the woman who looked at me like she did last night before bailing out of the lobby like she couldn’t get away fast enough.” She holds my stare as my words punch her one by one.
“Like I said, I’m not running from anything.”
“Nice try but I’m not buying it.” I know she’s going to try and run the minute she averts her eyes. Good thing too, because I reach out to grab her shoulders and keep her in place at the same time she tries to shrug past me. “Uh-uh. You’re not going anywhere. In your words we’re going to settle this right now. What’s your story, then? We’ve sat for the last week talking about everything under the goddamn sun, and yet I know nothing about you.”
Oh I’ve definitely got her attention now: the sharp intake of air, her eyes flickering left and right, the stiffness in her posture.
“Yes, you do!” She sneers back.
“I know you went to Dartmouth, your reasons for freelance… but I don’t know the person you are at home without using that fucking camera as a shield in front of you. So tell me, BJ,” I say as I step well within her personal space so that I can feel the heat of her breath on my lips. “Who the fuck are you, and what the hell are you dealing with?”
“Back off, Tanner.” The warning sound in her voice is clear as day, but I don’t care. I’m in big-brother mode now, and all I want to do is make sure that she’s okay.
“No. You know me, right? Know how stubborn I am? It comes with my career choice, so I suggest you start talking.” We stand there in a silent standoff that I sure as hell am going to win. “Is it your family? Are you running from them?”
“No. Don’t have any.”
“Everyone has family.” I laugh in disbelief at her lie.
“Not me. They’re dead.”
I never knew you could get whiplash from words alone, but there’s always a first for everything, and she’s taught me a lot of those in the short time that I’ve known her. “Wh-what?” I stutter the word out as dread drops through my body for pushing her. I was sure she was going to look like the ass in the end, but it seems I’m taking the lead position in that race.
“My parents died my senior year of high school. Car crash. They were driving to school to bring me a project I forgot at home. Both were gone instantly. I’m an only child as were they, so there’s no one else. I sold the house to pay for my college tuition. My blood money. So when you tell me no one understands the guilt you feel over whatever happened to Stella, you are so very wrong. I wear the crown most days.”
Her eyes are steadfast on mine, her voice still void of emotion, but I understand her a bit better now that I know the why behind it. Detachment is a necessity, and yet I want more from her.
“Where are you from?”
“Doesn’t matter. Podunk, USA. A black dot on a paper map. I’m giving you the answers you want, so the where is irrelevant.”
Except to me it’s all relevant when it comes to her. Every piece of information I can get will help me understand her, figure out the enigma of the female mind, and yet I don’t push her any further. I know by the look on her face she’s given me more than she ever expected to, so I’ll take it and tuck it away and decipher it all later.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what to…” I release her shoulders and step away from her, raking a hand through my hair and blowing a breath out as I try to digest everything she’s told me along with the fact that she goes out at odd hours in this fucked-up place on her own. “So you go out at night to take pictures so you can deal with their passing?”
“No. I dealt with their deaths a long time ago.”
And the whiplash strikes twice as I lower my hand from my neck and look at her like she’s lost her fucking mind. She’s dropped one confession after another on me, and yet none of them explains the reason she’s being so foolish going out alone.
“Do you mind telling me what the hell is going on here? Because I thought we were past playing games and now you’ve sucked me right back there. You said you go out and take pictures to deal… What the hell has you so upset that y
ou’re outside the walls when for safety’s sake you shouldn’t be?” I’m all worked up, agitated, and annoyed, but all it takes is her single-word answer to knock every fucking emotion from me.
“You.”
I snap my head up to meet her eyes, and the clarity in hers surprises me, engages me, confuses me. The air thickens in the small space, a blessing and a curse all at the same time because that means I’m breathing her in, and that in itself – her perfume, her shampoo – is addicting and distracting. My throat feels like it’s being constricted as the silence stretches only to be interrupted by the stutter of our breaths. I clench my jaw and fists, restraining myself, from what I’m not exactly sure: from begging her to explain? From pushing her up against the wall and kissing her with the savage desire I feel until every carnal urge within me is satisfied?
Both are damn good options.
When I step into her and her breath hitches, I swear I can feel it deep down in the pit of my stomach. The anticipation of what we know we’re about to do and can’t take back connects us and defines the moment with such poignancy that as I reach out to touch her, I swear I’m moving in slow motion. Attraction sparks between us like a current when our skin touches, my palm to the side of her cheek. I lean forward, my eyes asking for consent and my lips already tasting hers.
As my heart races, I realize everything about me is affected by her proximity, and the next thought that crosses my mind staggers me. Why does this one woman get to me so profoundly?
Our lips hover inches from each other, our eyes still locked, amethyst to emerald, and bodies already on high alert when the sound of my telephone ring shrills in the small space and makes us jump apart like teenagers getting caught making out behind the gym. I swear as she laughs, the nervous energy between us has grown so palpable that I’m part relieved, part pissed off, and one hundred percent consumed by her as we both take a breath for what feels like the first time in minutes.