Hard Beat

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.”