Hard Beat

“Losing someone that close to you is so hard,” she murmurs, compassion in her voice.

“See, that’s the thing,” I say, almost feeling like I need to explain that the connection I shared with Stella went so much deeper than a normal friendship. “Out here… when you’re forced into this situation, right away everything is much more intense. Relationships, bonds, friendships, all of those things are magnified and reinforced by the isolation of the job, so yeah, we were friends for ten years, but it’s almost as if she were my twin in a sense. We had each other’s backs, could finish each other’s sentences… We were a unit… so losing her is just…”

The silence consumes the room, but I allow myself to feel the grief for the first time in what feels like forever. And yes, I did the shrink thing for the brass, talked to them about everything, but right now with Beaux is the first time that I’ve talked about it voluntarily with anyone other than my family since it happened.

And for some reason it feels like a thousand-pound weight has been lifted from my chest.

“I’m not trying to replace her, Tanner.” I don’t respond, because I know she’s telling the truth, but it sure as hell doesn’t make me stop feeling guilty over the fact that if I accept her as my new photographer and anything else she becomes in my life, it’s an eerily similar fashion to how Stella and I fell into lust.

Putting my hands behind my head, I lie back on the bed and find a strange comfort in having Beaux beside me beneath the blanket. What possessed me to lay all that information out there to Beaux of all people when I haven’t done that to anyone before?

“I know you’re not.” I whisper the words into the room, telling myself to believe them and knowing it’s human nature to not want to forget someone and to feel guilty when you begin to feel like you are.

“And I promise that I’m not trying to pull one over on you.”

I just murmur in acknowledgment, fighting my skeptical nature but pleased that she said it anyway.

“So without the threat of another shot, I answered one of your questions…,” I say to try and break up the solemnity of our conversation. Her sigh in response is audible, cutting through the silence of the room. “Tell me something about you.”

“I’d rather not.” The disassociated quality of her voice pulls on my curiosity when moments before she was so full of compassion and intrigue.

“Let’s think of this as us trying to get to know each other so we can start fresh again.” I angle my head up so that I can see her face looking in my direction. And even though the room’s only light is the one from the open bathroom door, I can see her dark hair against the white sheets and the softness in her smile. It looks like she appreciates my efforts to get off on a new foot.

“Well, if we’re starting over, my name is BJ Croslyn. What’s yours?” The warmth is back in her voice as she reaches down to shake my hand, and hell if my arm doesn’t buzz like exposed live wires touching when our skin connects.

“Tanner Thomas. And I’m the one.” Her laugh fills the room as she shakes her head at hearing me use her comment from that first night. When our handshake ends, she doesn’t pull her hand from mine, so they rest on the mattress in the space between us. “Everyone has a story. I just told you some of mine… so tell me, BJ, what’s yours?”

And because our hands are joined, I can feel the subtlest tension rise in her muscles from my question.

“There’s a reason I chose to go on assignment, okay?” she says, the detachment returning to her voice. “Sometimes escaping behind my lens, out here in no-man’s-land is better than the alternative…” Her voice fades off, and images of scenarios I can’t picture her in flash through my head.

What is so horrible she has to run from it? Bad home life? An abusive ex? I can’t picture her putting up with either, and yet here she is. I hold on to her promise that she’s not playing me, force myself to hear it for the first time so that I don’t try to dig holes through her response to my question, and just allow myself to accept it for what it is, worry and all.

“Sometimes out here it is easier to create your own reality. Ironic as hell considering it’s our job to report on the actuality of what’s happening here when I also use it as a place to make my own… so I get it. I do,” I confess as I roll on my side and adjust my positioning so that I can link my fingers with hers in a silent show of understanding to reinforce my words. And as much as I want to ask her so many more questions, my investigative journalist mode humming in full force, I don’t.

“It doesn’t sound like things have been easy for you either. I’m sorry for that. You want to talk about it?”

“No,” I murmur, not ready just yet to rid myself of that guilt I carry over Stella’s death. We’ve each shared a small piece of ourselves, and yet I’m not ready to delve into the rest of the shit in my mind. “I should get going.” When I start to push up out of the bed, Beaux just holds tight to my hand.

“Stay?” And there’s something in the way she asks that tells me she’s not asking for sex, but rather for companionship, a warm body beside her in this place that leaves you feeling isolated from real life, good and bad, in more ways than one.

“You sure?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

I rise from the bed, toe off my shoes, and pull my shirt over my head before crawling back up the mattress. Once I maneuver myself beneath the covers, I don’t even think about what I’m doing when I scoot up behind her and pull her body into mine, her back to my front.