Chapter Eight
Eight
Tristan
Michelle follows me into the shitty-looking strip mall, her expression hidden behind her giant sunglasses. She seems totally out of place here in her heels and silky shirt—and all the more fuckable for it.
I shouldn’t have touched her face, because now I know just how soft her skin is.
I know how her breath catches when she’s surprised, and I want more of it.
“Where are we?” Michelle asks, concern furrowing her brow.
I pause, drawing up short in front of a pair of glass doors that house my surprise within.
Holding my arms out wide, as if to encompass a great crowd, I clear my throat and boom out: “Welcome to lesson one of How to Chill the Fuck Out—”
“You can’t call it that.” She raises one perfectly shaped brow.
I narrow my eyes at her. “You’re not the teacher.”
“I’m not calling it ‘How to Chill the Fuck Out’ when I’m reporting back to the team for Friday’s doughnut debrief.”
Exasperated, I rub the back of my neck, trying to get back into the swing of my prepared speech. “Welcome to lesson one of Michelle Lets Someone Else Be in Charge of Her for Once.”
Her eyes widen slightly, her face flushing at my words, just in time for me to realize the other way they could be interpreted.
Now I’m thinking about it, too. Imagining her wearing pink fluffy handcuffs to match the pretty pink bra peeking through her shirt that I’ve been trying so fucking hard not to stare at that it’s all I can do to keep my gaze above her chin.
I swallow hard.
Nope, I’m not going to blow this chance at more time with her. Not when it’s all I’ve wanted since the moment we met.
If it ends with her in handcuffs on my bed, then all the better, but I’m not going to ruin it by making the first move. If she wants me, she’ll let me know.
And maybe I’ll order a pair of fuzzy pink handcuffs in the name of preparedness.
“We’re at one of the first rage rooms in Los Angeles,” I finally manage, the words sounding stupid after the buildup.
Great.
Now my speeches have performance anxiety.
“Rage room?” she asks, peeking around me to see what’s inside.
Sighing, I push open the door for her.
What’s inside is an innocuous-looking lobby with a reception desk manned by a college-aged guy, a phone in his hand.
“Waivers are here, room rentals are in half-hour increments with a fifteen-minute reset in between tantrums.” He doesn’t look up from his phone.
“He’s a chill guru,” I lean down to mutter in her ear. “See how he didn’t even greet us? Learn from the master.”
Michelle snorts softly, and the sound feels like a fucking win.
“Do you want a Lover’s Quarrel special or the Banging for the Buck room?”
We gawk at him.
“We’re not…we’re not a couple,” Michelle tells him.
“Okay,” the kid says, finally giving us his full attention. His gaze snags on Michelle as he looks her up and down, a shit-eating smile on his face as he fully realizes how gorgeous she is.
My hands fist at my sides.
“We’re coworkers,” Michelle tells him, her back all stiff.
My hands unclench. I can’t be pissed off. She needs me to be relaxed. She’s not going to chill out if I want to punch everyone who finds her attractive.
Plus, that much punching would probably break my hands, and I need those for work.
“Cool. The Office Space room then.” He pushes two clipboards at us, pens jangling where they roll and hang off the side of the reception counter.
“Sixty bucks for a half hour, and the room is set up already. We have sanitized goggles for your protection. Put them in the bin on your right when you leave. An alarm will go off when your time is up.”
“How long did it take you to memorize that?” I ask him, barely paying attention to the waiver I’m signing.
“The first day I worked here we had twenty corporate retreats come in.”
“Gross,” I tell him.
He breaks into a grin, and Michelle stares between us like we’re aliens.
“Right.” I point to the bank of doors down the hallway. “The Office Space room is…?”
“First door on the right. It’s our most popular.”
“Thanks, man,” I say, pulling a few twenties out of my wallet and slapping them on the counter. Michelle finishes signing her waiver, and I resist the urge to grab her hand and pull her behind me.
Touching her is a bad idea.
I’m supposed to be helping her learn how to relax. Not thinking about how much I want to fucking touch her. Or touchingly fuck her.
I grimace.
“Ready?” she asks, staring at me with what can only be described as mild concern.
“Born ready,” I tell her, puffing out my chest like an idiot just to coax a smile from her.
When it works, I feel like I’ve won a million bucks.
“How many Hulk jokes are too many?” I ask as the dude behind the counter points at the various smashing implements on the wall. I grab a heavy crowbar, and Michelle takes a minute before deciding on a sledgehammer.
“You already hit your limit,” Michelle says.
“The limit does not exist,” I tell her.
“Did you just quote Mean Girls at me?” she asks.
“I have three sisters. Mean Girls was the most watched movie in my house growing up. What about you?” I ask, laying the crowbar over one shoulder and plucking a pair of safety glasses from a bin with my other hand.
“Only child,” she answers.
“Oof.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I get it now.”
She levels a no-nonsense look at me. I love the attention, and I flex a little. “Get what?”
“Why you think you need help getting that stick out of your ass.”
A little sound of shock puffs out of her. “That is so rude—”
“It’s not your fault. Your parents put it there.”
“And you’re what, the middle child?” she asks.
“See? You get it. That’s why I’m so laid-back. No one remembered I existed long enough to put any kind of expectation on me at all, much less a whole stick up my ass.” I grin at her, and together we push open the doors to the room marked Office Space.
“That’s a really disturbing image,” she says.
“Effective, though,” I say. “Is it wrong?”
She gives me side-eye so full of annoyance that I huff a laugh.
We both set our respective weapons on a folding table, where there’s a laminated list of rules I assume the guy out front didn’t feel like sharing.
I point at one. “You’re not allowed to hit me with your sledgehammer.”
“Shut up.”
“That’s no way to talk to your esteemed coworker and chill guru,” I tell her. “But I’ll allow it in the rage room.” I nod like I’ve made a major concession.
She laughs again, some of the tension she had out in the lobby disappearing.
Every time I make her laugh or smile, it feels like a goddamned achievement. Better than any trophy I’ve ever won.
“Ladies first,” I tell her, gesturing broadly at the rage room.
“Do you do this often? Come here to hit stuff when you need to relax?”
“Nope,” I pop the p. “I watch The Great British Bake Off when I need to relax. Obsessively. On repeat. Nothing soothes me like watching people make elaborate desserts.”
“You’re joking.”
I laugh. “I’m not actually. I love a Bake Off binge. I don’t bake often myself, but I’ve learned a thing or two from old Paul Hollywood.”
“Is that right? Like what?”
“I love a warm cookie, fresh from the oven.” I stop myself from winking suggestively, but it’s a close thing.
“What kind?”
“Any. Sugar is sugar.” I shrug. “Are you interrogating my cookie preferences because you’re nervous to do battle with the rage room? Or are you trying to get on my good side by bribing me with cookies?”
“I’m not nervous.”
She gapes around at the room, decorated pretty authentically with a bunch of ugly office shit.
A leather chair that looks like it got picked up from someone’s curb after being scratched to hell by a rabid cat, several blocky printer/copier combos that very well may ignite her flight or fight, a couple keyboards that look like they were used to play Oregon Trail on (or maybe even used on the Oregon Trail to take down the odd squirrel), and inexplicably, a ceramic elephant glazed in an improbable poisonous green.
Michelle’s white teeth nibble her lower lip.
“There’s no wrong way to do this,” I tell her. “Just smash some shit.”
“Why?” she finally asks, her eyes blurred behind the cheap plastic safety goggles. “Why did you bring me to a rage room?”
I can’t exactly tell her that I googled fun first dates, but I am the master of chill, apparently, so I roll with it.
“Pent-up aggression can make it hard to let down your guard. So I thought you could smash down your guard.” It sounds stupid to me, but she nods slowly, thinking it through.
I hold back a sigh of relief, my palms sweating.
I might not have a stick up my ass, but who the fuck do I think I am, telling this woman crap like that?
Someone who never thinks shit through, not really.
A good-time guy. So I might as well give her a good time.
She rolls her shoulders back, hefts the hammer, and shoots another anxious look at me.
“You can do this,” I tell her, cupping my hands around my mouth. “Let it go. Full Elsa.”
A laugh bursts out of her at that.
“Elsa?” She shakes her head.
“Nieces,” I tell her by way of explanation. “They were obsessed a few years ago. I probably watched it a hundred times over the course of one week.”
Something in her expression softens slightly, or maybe it’s a trick of the light on the safety glasses. She strides past the table and into the weird facsimile of a cube farm that has me grateful all over again that my profession looks incredibly different from whatever gray hell this is.
Her first hit is timid, the sledgehammer cracking the plastic side of one of the giant copy machines sitting next to a fake shiny-leafed plant.
I cheer all the same, though.
The next thing I know, Michelle is going absolutely ham on the damn thing, plastic parts flying as she swings the sledgehammer over and over again into the copy machine.
My eyes widen, my clapping hands stopping of their own accord. I grab the plastic safety goggles from the table in front of me and put them on, not willing to risk blindness via dismembered copy machine.
She’s shaking as she continues destroying the damn thing, until it’s nothing but a heap of gray and off-white plastic parts.
“Stop, stop, he’s already dead!” I yell, caught between wanting to laugh at the destruction and slightly terrified by the fact that I’ve unleashed it.
Her heels click along the linoleum floor, and the sledgehammer swings an arc as she takes out a monitor.
The image of a pristine white beach turns to pixelated rainbows for a nanosecond before turning completely black.
No printer or phone or keyboard is left untouched, and she moves with an athletic fluidity that leaves no doubt in my mind about what a force she must have been on a soccer field.
When there’s barely anything left whole, she pauses.
Chest heaving, she drops the sledgehammer, cradling her arms around her chest.
Did she hurt herself?
Fear hits me.
I’m moving before my brain’s had time to catch up, running to where she stands in front of a tornado of office chaos. Pink flushes her cheeks, her eyes glittering, and I pause, thunderstruck.
She’s so alive, so beautiful, and when she lets out a maniacal little laugh, I can only stare at her.
“That felt…incredible.” Grinning, she wipes the back of her hand against her forehead. “I think I might see what you mean about needing an outlet.”
I nod, because what the hell am I supposed to say to that? I mean, yeah, I made up some bullshit about it, but—
She throws her arms around me in a hug, and she’s tall enough to come up to my shoulder and lean her cheek on it.
The perfect fit.
I don’t think twice, wrapping my arms around her and just…holding her.
“Thank you,” she says finally, stepping away.
God, I want to pull her back to me. I want to kiss the sheen on her forehead, the arch of her cheekbone, and the curve of her upper lip.
“You don’t need to thank me.” It comes out rough, and my hands twitch with the need to touch her again.
“Of course I do.” Her gaze darts around, and she huffs out another laugh as she surveys the wreckage. “Or apologize. I didn’t really leave anything for you to smash.”
“I think I soaked up enough secondhand smashing from you,” I tell her honestly.
Her brown eyes find mine again, and they’re so open and sincere that I wish I could keep her like this forever. Unafraid. Powerful.
Gorgeous and slightly sweaty.
“What?” she asks, her lips quirking up in a sincere smile.
I mentally shake myself. “I think we can both be very proud of the progress you’ve made here.”
She steps back, some of that professionalism sliding back into place. “Of course. Smashing things is the way to chill. Not sure most therapists would agree with that, but it was definitely cathartic.”
I start to snort when a growling sound catches my attention. “Was that your stomach? Did you skip lunch?”
“I didn’t skip it,” she tells me.
My eyes narrow at her.
“I didn’t,” she insists. “I just haven’t eaten yet.”
“Good. I know just what you need.”
“Oh, do you?” The question is laced with sarcasm. “Let me guess, you’re going to say food.”
“Absolutely not,” I tell her, adopting my most serious expression. “I was going to say tacos. Stat.”
“Stat,” she repeats with a laugh.
Fuck, I love that laugh. I love that I’m the one who keeps getting her to do it.
“It’s the only prescription. More tacos.”
Bending down, I pull the sledgehammer off the floor. I want to reach for her, as if we’re on a real date and not just the result of her being cajoled into going out with me because she lost a bet.
The thought is sobering, and I clamp down on it.
It needs to stay at the forefront of my mind. Not her laugh, not how fucking delectable she looks, but that she’s only here with me because she lost a bet.
Not because of me.