Текст книги "Hard Beat"
Автор книги: K. Bromberg
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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 23 страниц)
It was all a lie and none of it was a lie. —Rookie
It takes me a moment to really believe that the message could be from her, but I can’t deny she’s the only person I’ve ever called that nickname. I slowly exhale the breath I’m holding. Just when I’ve decided to get the fuck over her, she comes and slaps me in the face. No, not a slap in the face. She’s given me something to go off, and in Rylee’s book that’s a sign I can start fighting for her.
Damn. I guess it’s time for Prince Charming to learn how to ride a horse.
Chapter 26
Several times in my career I’ve heard the saying, “Ideas pull the trigger, but it’s instinct that loads the gun.” Until the moment I walked through the Kansas City International Airport, I never thought it would pertain to me. Or have led me to this moment.
I was disappointed but not surprised when I called the cell phone number that texted me, only to find that the call went unanswered and there wasn’t a voice mail. A quick Internet search told me the number was most likely from a disposable cell phone, meaning it was untraceable.
And even though my gut reaction was to immediately call her back, I was still confused. If she didn’t want me to come after her, why did she text me? Why send me a cryptic message instead of just letting me be?
I’m a reporter, someone who asks the tough questions in situations that are not easily answered. She had to know I’d go apeshit over having a clue to something that I couldn’t figure out. Was that her point? Was she in trouble and needed help, or was she just trying to tell me she was sorry in some fucked-up way? Or even worse, was she toying with me again to see if I’d come running and play right back into her hands?
I hated wondering as much as I hated thinking she needed me but was playing me at the same time.
The whole thing didn’t sit well with me. So after I had spent days calling in favors and being put on the back burner, one of my old military liaisons turned federal agent turned source took pity on me. Well, pity mixed with the delivery of a rare bottle of aged Macallan for the Scotch aficionado. Regardless, he attempted to trace the cell phone number for me.
And three days later I may not have had much more than that it was a disposable cell phone with no contract or traceability, but there was a single ping off a cell tower that occurred when the text went out. A single black dot on a map that gave me a triangulation range and let me narrow down a general location of where she was: the Kansas City area.
Something about it fit for me. The funny look on her face that first time we met up with Omid when I said, “We’re not in Kansas anymore,” tells me that I’m in the right place. But my problem is that I don’t have much more to go on than intuition, a determined heart, and a pocketful of hope. On top of that, the pocket has a hole in its bottom, an hourglass of sorts, and I’ve promised myself that this time around, when the hope bleeds out, I’m done.
My gut tells me that I need to visit the hospitals, need to work that angle because she was transferred to a U.S. hospital and will need to continue with her care even if she’s been sent home already. It’s a long shot at best, but she gave me an opening, and if I don’t follow through with it, I’ll always wonder what if. I’ll always question whether she was my once-in-a-lifetime and I passed her up.
By early evening I’m wiped out and feel like I’ve exhausted every existing avenue. I’ve been to all of the hospitals – Saint Luke’s, University, North Kansas City, Select Specialty, and even Kansas Heart – trying to leave no stone unturned. But not a single person recognizes her picture; nor will anyone confirm or deny that a Beaux or BJ Croslyn has been or is a patient. I’m so desperate to find her that I’m willing to try Children’s Mercy just to make sure that all of my t’s are crossed and i’s are dotted.
With my head back against the headrest of my rental car, I debate what to do next. Should I just say fuck it and catch a flight home? I mean really, what the hell am I doing here, looking for the pot of gold that doesn’t exist? Desperation doesn’t look good on anyone, least of all on me, and I reek of it these days.
Sitting in the parking lot of a strip mall, I glance at the map in my hand with the circles around the hospital icons as I set it down, unsure where to go from here. I was so gung ho when I got here and now just feel pathetic. The radio drones on, and I switch the station out of boredom, stopping when I come to a Cardinals baseball game and just leave it on for background noise as I debate my next move.
The smart thing would be to get a hotel, wait for shift change, and then head back to the hospitals, flash her picture, and try with the different employees. If I’m here, I’d better satisfy my need to be thorough when investigating a story, because that’s how I’m trying to treat this, like it’s a story. It’s the only way I can approach the Beaux situation and consider the possibility I might not get the outcome I want. Put the filter up, turn the emotions off, treat it like the hard beat I had in the Middle East.
I start the car and turn out of the parking lot with thoughts of heading to a hotel, grabbing a quick shower, and then heading back to the hospital circuit. “And Ramirez hits one hard.” The announcer from the game breaks through my scattered thoughts. “It’s going, going, and it’s gone! A home run for the rookie to tie the game.”
It takes a few seconds for the words to sink in, but the minute they do, I flip a U-turn across the double yellow line and head back to the hospital because an idea has seated itself – and I swear that I know it’s going to be the break I’ve been looking for. Within minutes, I’m at Saint Luke’s, where I buy flowers in the gift shop, and then head to the front desk to greet the new person manning the desk.
“Hi there, what can I do for you today?”
I fidget back and forth as if I’m antsy, a nervous smile plastered to my face so that I can play the part, but at the same time I am nervous. “I think I’m at the right hospital. I just… I just need to see her.” While I speak, I dig in my pocket to make sure my boarding pass falls onto the desk between us.
“Calm down, sir,” she says sweetly, her head angled to the side and her eyes wide behind the lenses of her glasses. “Who are you looking for?”
“My girlfriend. I’ve been in the Middle East, and she was hurt. Brought here or University… I can’t remember which one because it was such a whirlwind, but I was able to get leave from my unit and I got here as soon as I could and I came straight from the airport and now I just need to find her to make sure she’s okay,” I ramble on as her smile softens.
“Of course you’re flustered. Thank you for your service, sir,” she says, and I nod at the assumption she makes about my being in the military, hating myself for implying it but at the same time, a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do and everyone loves a man in the service. Especially a middle-aged woman who could have sons of her own and can appreciate a man trying to get home to the woman he loves. “Now what’s her name and I can look her up for you, see what room she’s in?”
“Thank you so much.” I set the vase of flowers down and keep up the act to look scattered by collecting my boarding pass and stuffing it in my pocket. “Her name is BJ or Beaux Croslyn… but she goes by Rookie, Rookie Croslyn. So I’d try that,” I say, my hopes lodged in my throat as I spell out the last name for her.
“Just give me one second, sweetheart,” she says. Her fingernails click over the keyboard as I watch the reflection of the screen in her glasses, the blue hue an easy thing to see, but it’s the slight frown on her lips as her eyes flicker back to mine that has my heart stopping in my chest. She knows something. The hesitation, the pause in her fingers, and furrow of her brow tell me more than any words could. “I’m so sorry. There’s no one by that name,” she responds, shattering any hope I’d had. A defeated thank-you is on my lips when she murmurs to herself, “Only a Rookie Thomas.”
“That’s her!” I all but shout as I’m overcome with emotion. There’s no need to continue my Oscar-worthy performance because my heart leaps into my throat when I hear the name. It can’t be a mistake. Beaux used my nickname for her and my surname – the thought that she’s kept a part of my feelings for her alive knocks me back a step.
She has to be telling me something. What it is, though, I have no idea.
The receptionist’s face smiles broadly, all trace of the hesitancy I saw moments before gone. “Well good news, Mr…”
“C-Clint,” I stutter, her comment giving me an instant high, that buzz that’s been nonexistent since I left Germany running rampant for the first time.
“Clint.” She smiles again when all I want to do is tell her to spit it out. “Rookie was discharged three days ago, so I guess that means she is doing much better.”
I contain the stab of disappointment that rifles through me because as much as my hunch that she was here was right, it does me no good now. We’ve just passed like ships in the night, the only thing left being the ghost of memories. The problem is that I can’t let the sweet receptionist know my disappointment and realize that she’s just been duped.
So I use the think-on-my-feet tactics that have propelled my career over the years and only have a split second to hope that this works. “Oh that’s such a relief to know she’s okay!” I say as I bring my hand up and accidentally knock the vase of flowers over.
She shrieks and jumps back as water and flowers spill across the desk and toward her keyboard, which she quickly pushes to the side. “Shit! I’m so sorry!” I round the U-shaped desk in an instant. “I’m so clumsy. So excited she’s doing better. Oh my God. I’m so sorry!” I repeat the comments over and over, making sure I play up the bumbling boyfriend, all the while hoping this act is all worth it and that what I’m hoping to find is actually there.
The minute I breach her space behind the desk, my actions reflect a contrite man, head down, hands busy helping to push the water away from her paperwork and electronics, but my eyes are laser focused on the computer screen. It takes a heartbeat for my eyes to find the name Rookie Thomas and to not sag in relief when I see the address listed below her name.
That damn buzz? It’s full-blown electric shock right now.
I read it several times to etch the street and numbers into my head. “Let me go get some paper towels,” I offer once most of the water has been pushed to the floor so that nothing on the desk is compromised. “I’m so sorry. I don’t —”
“Towels. Please,” she says, her patience wearing thin, and I’m perfectly okay with that. I rush over to the lobby restrooms. Once inside, I immediately pull my phone out and type in the address so that I don’t forget it before grabbing a handful of paper towels and heading back to help pick up the mess I made.
Chapter 27
So many emotions course through my veins as I get out of my car and walk toward the quaint little clapboard house on Elm Street. And I can’t help but feel now as I did last night sitting and watching the house that it doesn’t fit the Beaux that I know. None of it. She’s all hard lines and fiery edges and not a postage-stamp-sized patch of grass in the front yard in need of mowing, petunias in the planters, and a porch swing that sits a tad crooked.
Even though I sat parked on the street for a few hours last night, watching as the lights in the front windows went dark, it took everything I had not to knock on the door. But I knew I had to wait. I had to be patient until the morning to see if John got into his manly little Prius and went to work. Because a good husband goes to work every day, right?
So after a restless night of sleep when all I could do was think about what I was going to say to Beaux when I came face-to-face with her after almost three weeks of wondering and hurting and missing her, I sat for three hours this morning, waiting to watch John amble out of the house and into his car, briefcase in hand, with a wave hello to the neighbor before driving slowly away.
And then I waited – just to make sure he didn’t forget anything, didn’t come back for one last kiss from his lovely wife – before getting out of my car. As I walk down the quaint, tree-lined street, everything I’ve felt over the past few weeks comes back with a vengeance, and for some reason it’s anger right now that I hold on to the most. Now that I’m seconds from seeing Beaux face-to-face, the hurt of her deception hits me the hardest.
I knock on the front door with my heart in my throat and venomous words ready on my tongue, each second I wait making them even more poisonous.
And then she opens the door.
The startled gasp she lets out does nothing to rival the freight train of emotion that bears down and slams into me. Every single word I had ready to say dies on my lips now that I’m face-to-face with her. Her perfume, her hair pulled up with pieces hanging down, the startled O of her lips, all of it hits me like a battering ram, but more than anything it’s her eyes. That flash of utter surprise quickly followed by pleasure before it’s smothered out by what looks like anger. Or fear. I can’t tell which she’s feeling, because the sucker punch of seeing her after all of this time clouds my ability to reason.
But it sure as fuck doesn’t cloud my ability to feel.
“Tanner… what? What are…” She leans her head out of the door and looks back and forth quickly before grabbing my arm and pulling me into her house. In complete contrast to her actions, she says, “You can’t be here. You have to leave!”
And my God, the feel of her touch on my skin is like connecting jumper cables while standing in a puddle of water. That connection between us is still there, stronger than ever, and I know she feels it too, because she jumps back the minute I’m inside her house.
Inside another man’s house.
Eyes locked, we stare at each other, leaving words unspoken as we let the invisible current between us die down some.
“You can’t be here, Tanner,” she says again, and for the first time I notice the cast on her left forearm before looking back to her eyes full of concern. And the question I ask myself is whether the apprehension is because she hurt me or because she’s more concerned about hurting her husband.
“I think you lost the ability to tell me what to do the minute you forgot to tell me you were married.”
“We can’t do this right now. It’s not safe, Tanner. It’s just not safe,” she says, backing up until she hits the wall behind her, almost as if she forgot where the walls in her own house are. And her words, the look in her eyes, eat at my anger.
“Why is it not safe, Beaux? Does he hit you? Does he hurt you? Tell me the word and I’ll have the cops here in a second and I’ll take you away so that —”
“No! No. It’s nothing like that. I can’t explain. I can’t,” she says, her voice rising with each word, and I stare at her, shaking my head back and forth because I don’t understand. And I don’t know if I believe her. Why would she be telling me to leave when our connection is still so irrefutable?
“Help me understand!” I shout, shoving a hand through my hair because if it’s there, then it’s not on her, and God, how I want to be touching her. “Why didn’t you tell me you were married? Why did you tell me you loved me? Why did you lie to me?” I could ask about a hundred more questions, and yet no more come because all I can feel is anger when all I want to feel is her.
“It’s complicated,” she says softly, her voice even for the first time and her body stilled.
“Fuck complicated because I’m worth complicated. Jesus Christ!” I grit out as I take a step away from her and try to hold on to the sanity that she is stealing from me with each and every word. How frustrating is it to have the one thing you want so desperately right at your fingertips? Beyond that her behavior is making me feel like she is a million fucking miles away. I don’t know what I thought was going to happen once I showed up. That maybe she was going to open the door, see me, and then profess that she chooses me over John. And clearly that’s not happening. So the only thing I allow myself to feel is anger; the acrid taste of rejection is already churning in my gut, and I have a feeling that I’m going to have a long time to taste that because the reaction I’d hoped for from her definitely isn’t happening.
“You are worth it, Tanner. Worth every bit of it, but not from me. I can’t give you what you need.”
“That’s bullshit!” I yell as I get in her face, needing to do something to expel the ache in my chest. “Then why not leave well enough alone, huh? Why send me the fucking text? Why give me false hope?”
“Because… because…” Then she stops with her eyes welling with tears I don’t want to see. I fell for them once. Believed them once. I won’t be as quick to fall again. Our faces are inches apart, and it takes everything I have to keep from pulling her to me or pushing her farther away. “I wanted you to know that how I felt for you was real.”
“Goddamn it, Beaux!” When I slam my hand on the console beside me, the sound resonates through the empty house just like her words do through my heart. “Tell me what he does to you! Tell me so that I can try to make it better. Tell me so that I’ll stop going fucking insane trying to figure out why you told me you loved me when you were married to another man!”
“Tanner —”
“Don’t Tanner me. Don’t anything me!” I yell, my mind spinning from her mere proximity.
“You need to go,” she says again.
“No! I won’t go until I hear you tell me that you don’t want me. I know what we had was real too, Beaux. Why do you think I’ve tracked you down and am fighting like hell to get you back?”
“I’ve never been yours to fight for.”
Her words leave her lips and die in the space between us, and yet she never says what I need to hear to force me to walk away. I step closer so that she’s backed against the wall, and my body presses into hers. And even through the anger, I can still feel the snap of the live wire of our combustible chemistry when we touch.
“Tell me you don’t want me.” I grit the words out as our breaths mingle and lungs breathe like one.
“I don’t want you,” she deadpans. For a second I believe her. For a moment I hesitate, plan to step back and walk away. But I know her. I know how feisty she is and how she doesn’t back down until she’s won, and I don’t see that right now. Not a single ounce of the fire within her that I’ve come to love, and so I take one last chance to win back the girl that by now I don’t think I ever really had.
“Bullshit,” I sneer at the same time my mouth slants over hers and takes everything I’ve been wanting and then some for the past three weeks. The kiss is horrible and wonderful all at once because it’s like coming home and being shown what you’re going to no longer have.
She struggles against me, pushing against my chest as our mouths fight a savage dance of denied desire and frustrated passion, shifting into resistance and acceptance, as our tongues meld and teeth nip and throats moan with want.
She drags her mouth from mine, her eyes drugged with desire beneath heavy lids, and lets her words slash out at me. “I don’t want you.”
“Don’t you fucking dare lie to me again! I deserve better than that. Tell me! Tell me that again!” I shout at her with one of my hands gripped in her hair and the other digging into her hip.
She doesn’t say a word. She just stares with tears filling her eyes until she whimpers. “I can’t, Tanner. I can’t.” But afterward she leans forward and presses her lips to mine in the most tender of kisses. It’s like a drug and a poison to me, pulling me further under its haze and hurting me all at the same time.
“You can,” I urge, my own voice thick with emotion when she brushes another kiss on my mouth, but this time I can taste the salt of her tears on her lips, and my chest constricts at whatever is going on that I can’t comprehend.
“I can’t,” she says again, but her words don’t match her actions because her hands find their way beneath the hem of my shirt, her touch branding my flesh so that I know even when I walk away it will be like a tattoo there, permanent and painful.
I know before our lips meet again, before my hands slip beneath her shirt and skim up the line of her spine, before I let her undo the buttons on my jeans and slide her hands inside my waistband, before she tells me she “can’t” again that this is such a very bad idea. That I’m going to end up hurt and reeling with one more memory to cling to and to be haunted by simultaneously. That this time around I’m just as guilty as she is because I’m knowingly cheating with a married woman.
But I can’t stop myself. It’s impossible to hold back. With the taste of her kiss on my lips and the scent of her perfume in my nose and the feel of her skin against mine, I hope that if she can just feel me again, remember what we have together, if we can have just one more moment, then she’ll know it’s me who she wants.
Me who she’ll choose.
Me who will keep her safe and her eyes dry from tears.
Our breaths are shaky, our kisses are bittersweet, and unspoken emotion swells between us as we help each other undress just enough so that we can race with unsteady hearts toward the ultimate pleasure that I’m pretty sure will result in more pain. But I push the rational thought away, quiet her lips telling me she can’t over and over with my own.
We move in hurried but meaningful motions: my hands pushing her pants down, her hands stroking my dick. My fingers spread her open, the groan in my throat when I find her soaking wet. Hands skimming over warm flesh, the weight of her breasts in my hands, the creak of the console as I lift her hips up and she parts for me. The adamant repeat of “I can’t” morphing into a soft sigh of need when her muscles tense as I push into her.
And that singular sensation, my hard cock sliding into her resisting muscles undoes me. Consumes me. Blinds me from seeing the truths that I don’t want to face. That this is a good-bye to rival all other good-byes. Our kisses have communicated it all along, and now our bodies do the same through slow strokes, the tilt of her hips up to meet mine as I grind into hers, the bite of her nails in my shoulders, our unsteady breaths as we break momentarily from a kiss only for her to repeat her mantra before I kiss her again to stop her protests.
I move my hips slowly at first, the emotion and sensation almost too much to bear because how can we be this close and yet so far from how we used to be? But I find as much comfort as I can in the familiar little things: the gasp she emits when I brush my thumb over her clit, the texture of her tightened nipple against my tongue, the tensing of her thighs around my hips.
She won’t look at me, though. And I can’t have that. Can’t have her trying to shut me out now, so I still my hips when I’m buried to the hilt in her, leveraging her weight against mine, and bring my thumb and forefinger to her chin so that she’s forced to meet my eyes. Only when she holds her face steady, emerald eyes drowsy with lust but glistening with tears, do I continue the slow withdrawal from her body and then the bittersweet thrust to join our bodies again.
She comes in a violent shudder, her muscles tensing around me and my name on her lips for the first time since we started, but her voice sounds thick from the tears lodged in her throat.
“Beaux.” I groan her name as a blinding flash of heat surges through my body and possesses my movements so that when I grind into her one last time, I lose more than just my orgasm to her. Oh fuck. I lose so much more, but thank God I’m blinded by my climax so that I can’t think about it just yet.
We remain motionless for a moment, our bodies connected in the most intimate and carnal of ways, our arms wrapped around each other and our heads resting on opposite shoulders as we try to come to terms with what just happened and what I feel deep down I know is going to happen next. I’m afraid to speak, afraid to move, because once I do, I know I’ll never get this moment back.
“Beaux,” I murmur into her shoulder, “please… I need to understand.”
“We shouldn’t have done this,” she whispers. “You need to go.”
“How can you say that? How can —”
“Just please go. Forget I ever existed.”
I snap my head up painfully, eyes searching hers for answers she won’t give me as I try to dredge up the promise I made to myself before I walked onto the flight: to walk away and never look back if she rejected me. The hard thing is my feet are rooted in place, just like my heart.
“I could never forget you. Never.” I grit out words that have never been more true in my life. My hands come up to frame her face tenderly, her bottom lip trembling with the emotion I feel but don’t think I can show her because then I’d just give her another piece of me I’ll never get back.
And she already holds too many pieces of me as it is.
“I’ll walk away, Beaux. I’ll walk away and never look back if you ask me to… if that’s what you want. It’ll kill me because I don’t understand, but I’ll do it for you. God, I’d do anything for you right now,” I plead as my voice breaks with the weight of what I’m saying to her. “Just please tell me this wasn’t all a lie. Please tell me the nights we spent on the rooftop and the laughs we shared and the sex we had wasn’t just a joke to you. I need to leave knowing that what was between us wasn’t all in my head.”
“Tanner…”
“Can you give me that? Can you answer me so that I have something to hold on to?”
In an unexpected move that startles me, she takes my hand and places it on her chest over her heart with hers on top of mine. “Can you feel what I’m thinking?” she asks as her heart beats an erratic staccato beneath my palm. When she looks back up, her eyes are filled with tears, and one slips off her cheek and hits our connected hands. I bend my knees so that we’re face-to-face and she can’t escape from answering me with words. “I meant what I said about everything,” she whispers, and it makes my mind whirl.
About loving me? About not being able to be with me? About what? I want to shake her shoulders and insist that she answer all of my questions, but I know it’s no use. I know how stubborn she is, know how she’ll close down. Well at least I think I do, because I thought she loved me too and now she’s pushing me away.
My jaw is clenched, and my pulse is pounding a useless tempo because I’ve lost her. I close my eyes for a brief second to gather the wherewithal to walk away, angst slowly giving way to anger and resentment that she gets to make all the decisions here. “Don’t do this, Beaux,” I whisper more for myself than for her.
“If you ever loved me, you need to do this for me. Walk out the door and don’t look back.”
“I lov—”
“Shh! Not now. Not like this,” she says as she puts a fingertip to my lips, her head shaking side to side. “You need to go.”
There are so many words I want to say to her, so many things she needs to know, but as I start to lower my hands from her face, disbelief burns like a cannonball in my stomach. I grab her cheeks without warning and press my lips to hers in a kiss teeming with need, want, desire, desperation, and good-bye.
Once I break off the kiss, hoping it tells her everything I haven’t said, because I know I could keep at it forever, I stride from the house, heart on my sleeve and a hole in my chest. All without meeting her eyes for a last time or saying another word.
Let her think about that kiss on the nights when she’s lonely.
My feet eat up the sidewalk. Then finally I slide into my car and bang my fist against the dashboard. It would be so much easier to walk away if the sex had been savage and carnal and full of spite. A quick fuck to work each other out of our respective systems so that we could move on. A little piece of physical satisfaction to mask the anger and hurt vibrating beneath the surface. It would have screamed that we weren’t meant to be together. That we were a fucking flare of desire that had already hit the high point and was crashing to the ground, burning itself out.
But it wasn’t. Not in the least. We made love. It was slow and emotional and so real that I can taste more than just her kiss still. So it’s that much harder to walk away because you can’t fake that. You can’t connect with someone on every level like that and have it be a goddamn farce.
It gave me hope. A false hope. And false hope is the worst kind of all.
I made a promise to myself to walk away if she pushed. Well I pushed back when I shouldn’t have, tried to help her, love her, be with her, anything with her, and now I have to walk away and never look back. So I choke back all of the emotion within me that threatens to come bubbling out. I won’t allow it.
As I drive away from the perfect little Stepford house growing smaller in my rearview mirror, all I keep thinking is that looking back is all I want to do.
Fuck the popular theory that if you love something, you should set it free; I came back and look how that turned out.
Whoever said love is like war, easy to begin but hard to end, knew exactly what he was talking about.
For the next couple hours I drive aimlessly, losing my way and not caring if I find my way back because frankly I have nowhere to go. I vacillate between thinking what a huge mistake it was coming here and knowing that Beaux does love me.
How in the hell can I walk away from her without more of a fight?
When my phone rings, my hopes surge that it’s her calling me to come back. Seeing Rafe’s name, I ignore the call, in no mood to speak to him. He calls one more time. Then my phone alerts a text. When I look down, my curiosity is piqued when I see the code 9999, the one that we’ve used over the past five years for him to tell me that a story’s about to break and he wants me on it.
I stare at the screen for a few minutes. The fact that I’m interested but the buzz of adrenaline I thrive on is thready at best tells me that my head is elsewhere. I contemplate ignoring the text and heading back to Beaux’s house, but know I’ll kick myself later if it’s something huge that I passed up for a woman who’ll no doubt reject me again.
