6. Ephemeral
Chapter six
Ephemeral
I ’m sure only the most deranged of the crazy people out there will be wearing one of those bubbly cat window backpacks and looking tear-stained and rumpled while banging on the beat-up motel door of an almost complete stranger.
The cab driver I kindly asked to wait for me while I tried not to break out into ugly crying yet again now watches me furiously pound the door, then literally freaking rolls up his window and drives off.
Because I’ve stopped slamming my fists against the metal door, I hear the thunder coming from inside. I feel it too. The concrete under my feet shivers. What the fuck? Right now would be a seriously bad time for an earthquake, but bad things usually happen in threes.
More like threes of threes of threes.
The door gets ripped open so forcefully that I feel for its hinges. My brain computes the fact that the shaking I just felt was this man’s footsteps as he walked to the door. Is that even possible?
Maybe here. As far as this place goes, I’d call it a solid dive, which begs the question… This guy is rich. Blow your mind rich. I looked up his net worth. So why is he here instead of a five-star hotel? I’m not sure why he uses different names like he’s two different people, but he said he owns the place, so it has to be him.
One name for the office.
One name for the field.
There was no photo of him anywhere, and just a brief personal bio. The whole thing focused far more on the company itself and all its services. I scoured the internet, and I mean scrubbed down emphatically and metaphorically, for more information using either of his names, but I came up with nothing. It’s like he’s wiped it all clean.
Big surprise.
I’m so upset that the mythical creature in my vision wearing grey sweatpants slung low on muscular hips, carved abs in all their glorious glory, hard pecs and shoulder muscles bulging and comprising the top of a beastly triangle that probably spans at least thirty-six inches from arm to arm, barely affects me.
Hardly.
Okay, I get a few small—or not-so-small—twinges in places I ignore.
So what if he’s ripped? Plenty of guys are. It doesn’t matter. This one’s an asshole, and it kind of ruins the whole sinisterly mouthwatering vibe. He didn’t just step into my life. He stepped all over it. The way he’s ruining it is still trickling down, and he’s going to fix it or pay, and I don’t mean pay as in I slip something into his drink that gives him one too many burritos explosive diarrhea.
I shove my phone in the jerkwad’s face. So what if I have to reach way, way up to get it there? He stares, nonplussed, at the black screen. Right, he isn’t going to get much info from that. His dark eyes trace my face next, his pupils doing their laser best to try and figure out what my deal is. He’s so implacable that I doubt he’s ever had a single emotion in his life.
Training.
I know it’s training, but even long before he was an adult with an adult job, he was probably the perfect candidate to do things like…uh…like special ops people do. What that entails exactly, I have no idea.
I’m sure it was what I read in the comment, and I’m sure it was bad. Once I read it, I couldn’t unsee it.
He’s going to stand there like a wall of ice until I tell him what my problem is. He’s not going to ask. I’ve never met someone so cold, callous, and infuriating.
“I’ve been getting emails all night from the show organizers. They all know each other and communicate with each other. They have to. There’s no way they’d all just trickle on down, one after another, unless it was communicated and then a unanimous decision made. They said they’re not sure they can handle, and I quote, ‘this high of a security risk for the show circuit right now.’”
I get more stares. Not even so much as a crease in the forehead, a twinge in the facial muscles, a twitch of the lips, or a tremor of an eyelid.
“I’ve basically been blacklisted!” I screech. It’s four in the morning, and I’m sorry, but any respect I have for anyone else’s sleep is nonexistent at the moment. I’m at the height of panic here. “All the shows that are coming up. The rest, in the far-off future, are undetermined, but I can only imagine they’re just biding their time until they email me too.”
Still nothing.
It makes me want to reproduce the door pounding but on this guy’s chest.
Though that would involve touching him.
Which is a solid no.
It’s only the heat of anger blazing through me.
His eyes scan the area behind me, taking in the perimeter for threats. I bet he answered the door only after checking the peephole or whatever hidden camera he installed here because he’s freaky like that.
“You had better come in.”
Like I’m falling for that trap.
But I’m about to start crying again. I’m barely holding it together. This is my everything that’s at risk. I came here because I was desperate for one thing and one thing only. That this man, who shot it all to shit times a thousand, should fix it.
Plus, if I have a meltdown again, Peach Lips will get upset. I should let her out of the backpack. She’s been in there long enough.
“Fine,” I huff.
He doesn’t move.
He’s so solid that he’s like the brick wall they slam cars into with those crash test dummies in them to ensure their safety ratings perform. I can’t go anywhere until he steps back.
He closes and locks the door after me, then walks around in the pitch black and switches on a lamp.
Yeah, solid dive territory, alright.
The walls are old wood panelboard. There’s a tube TV on a beat-up dresser, a queen-sized bed that’s saggy, frightening stains on the brown carpet, and a nightstand that’s missing a big chunk out of the top.
Thorn has nothing but a backpack set on top of it that I can see.
It’s a very odd, juvenile relief when I see the bed is perfectly made, its faded nineties-inspired brown, purple, and pink streaked quilt crisply made up. Does this guy not sleep? There’s not even a chair in here. Was he standing? Half-naked? Maybe he tried lying down, and his nuts hurt because he got the sacking of a lifetime, and then when I banged on the door, he straightened the covers so they didn’t even have a body indent before he answered? That’s absurd, I know.
I’m just so glad the sheets aren’t exposed, rumpled, sweaty, and smelling like manly scents and musk. Citrus, lemons, and sandalwood. Even seeing the bed and this man who looks more like a mythical god than an actual man, with stacked muscles on stacked muscles, I imagine him in there. On his back. With those sweats stripped away. It would hurt to even straddle someone that broad. The delicious kind of burning hurt. I’ve never had cheerleader flexibility.
Holy fucking hairballs.
My distraught, overwrought brain is melting down. Those thoughts are just proof of it because normally, I’d take a good wheel of cheese over the company of any person, let alone sex with a man I’m not interested in. Not in my head, heart, or any other bits.
I swipe my damp palms on the dress I haven’t taken off. I was just getting ready for bed on the bus when the first email came in. I panicked and tried to figure out how to do damage control when I got the second. It went on like that for the past few hours. After that, I just sat there crying silent tears until my eyes hurt so badly that I could barely force them open.
“Sit there.” Thorn points at the edge of the bed. “Take Peach Lips out of the backpack and get her comfortable. Let me read those emails, and you wait while I make some calls.”
I want to explode at the pompous, unfeeling way he’s ordering me around, but I don’t. Instead, I swallow back my anger, knowing it’s irrational. I can’t get mad at him for fixing this in his gruff, brusque way when all I want is to be taken care of.
So I do what he says.
All of it.
About an hour, several phone calls, and far too many Neanderthal-style grunts later, Thorn slams his phone thunderously into his sweats. The motion causes them to ride just a little bit lower, exposing even more olive-skinned, bronzed flesh.
I gulp and look down at my lap, where Peach Lips finally curled up. She sniffed the bed for a while before deciding my lap was the safest and cleanest bet.
“You’re going to have to stand down and lay low. Let it all blow over. In a few months, no one will remember any of this.”
“What?” I whisper-shout so I don’t disturb the slumbering cat ball of devastating cuteness. “I can’t just…just…let it all blow over .” That just shows how little he cares. “Would you let your merger thing blow over ?”
A shadow passes over his face. “We’re not talking about me.”
“Yes. Yes, we freaking are! I’m losing followers because of you. You should see what people are saying! I’ve been banned from shows. Barred from my own life. In a few months, no one will even care about me or Peach Lips at all if we just disappear.”
He gives his head a barely perceptible shake. “That’s not true. You let my team handle it. We’ll fix this. All of this. But that includes giving them control over your socials and letting them do this their way. You need to take a media break. You need a break from all this. We’ll get it sorted out. I promise.”
I’m tough. I am . But my eyes are doing more than just prickling. My nose aches, my chest is going to implode, and the ugliest of ugly crying is about to commence. “This is my life,” I rasp with what little voice I can get past the giant lump in my throat. “It was a good thing, and now it’s ruined.”
“It’s not ruined,” he states, so blasé. So fucking…unflinching and unfeeling.
What. An. Honest. To. Goodness. Monster.
Clinging to my anger will help me not to break down. For once, I don’t care about being the better person and the bigger person. I’m going to lose my famed cool. “Okay, Mr. Damnation and Kids and Kidnappers and All The Scary Stuff, I Can Handle It, I’m on Top Of The World, Nothing Can Go Wrong or Get Worse, I Promise.”
He holds out a hand. “I understand you’re mad—”
“Dear lord, no, not the mansplaining! You have no idea what it’s like to lose everything. This is what I was clinging to. This is what gets me up in the morning.”
My nose feels like I just jumped into a pool without plugging it first. I have to stop, or things are just going to snowball into hiccups and sobs from here.
That gives him a chance to open his mouth and tell me what I need. “I know you’ve had a hard run. You don’t just need a social media vacation. You need a vacation from your life.”
I really wish he’d been sacked harder yesterday.
“I’ll pay for it. Anywhere you want. I’ll pay for your bus to be parked somewhere for the month and—”
Oh . This is how he thinks it’s going to go. This uber-rich jerk thinks he can just buy me off, send me to some far corners of the globe, and—
“I’ll make sure Peach Lips has first-class accommodations on the plane. You can use one of our private jets if need be. I’ll take care of all the paperwork.”
My brain is now in vile and violent, not so harsh, not near-death punishment mode. The one thing I keep cycling back to is that Thorn is in a big hurry to shut me up and have me be less visible. He’s not just trying to make me feel better or make this up to me. He’s trying to be shut off from me. If he’d never met me, his merger would have gone through. If I’d never met him, then I would still be going to the shows, and no one would be shutting me down and writing mean things all over my socials, which are solely just there TO HELP ANIMALS IN NEED.
Seriously. People can be so mean. Is it any wonder that I prefer cats? God, I’d prefer a honey badger at the moment over Thorn and any single one of those internet trolls.
There’s no way I’m going quietly on that good vacation.
“No.”
Thorn finally reacts, his lips wavering just a smidge, pressing out and then flattening. Displeasure. He wears it well, I have to admit.
My eyes drop down to his chest and flick quickly to the carpet. One makes my skin crawl. The other doesn’t. I’ll leave you to figure out which it is. By the way, my cheese comment still stands.
“No,” I repeat. “You messed this up for me. You dropped into my life, and now you’re like a moldy dishcloth that just won’t come clean no matter how much you soak it, and all the dishes you wash with it smell like it. And now you have so many problems because they won’t come clean either, and all you smell is that disgusting, wretched, horrid smell of rot.”
He crosses his arms, the muscles flexing in his shoulders, biceps, triceps, traps, lats, abs, deltoids, hamstrings—wait. I don’t think half of those are in the upper body. It’s four in the morning, I’m exhausted, and even if I was up on my anatomy, my brain feels scrambled.
“That’s an uncalled-for comparison.”
I do what I did on the bus and angle my hand to the side of the bed so my middle finger sticks out more than the others. I have never, not even while driven, given in to such childish impulses. I have to stop. I bring my hand up and switch out my fingers, pointing my index finger in his face. “Your house. That’s where I want to go on vacation. For the month. I want to drop into your life.”
“That’s a flat-out no.”
“You can’t just throw money at this. I won’t let you. Fair is fair.”
“Fair?” he barks. “Never mind fair. That’s not even logical.”
Now that I’ve gone there , I can’t not go there . It’s his house or nothing. He needs a spoonful of his medicine. I mean, he double fucked himself, but now he’s fucked me too.
For the love of cat anus, use better verbiage.
Screwed.
Messed.
Plowed.
Derailed.
Wrecked.
Ruined?
Enough. Move on already. My brain is tired of trying to brain at this hour.
“It’s your house, or I don’t cooperate. I’ll get back on my socials and fight this. And I don’t think you’ll like how I’m going to do it.”
“Fine!” he splutters. Now, his left eye twitches. I don’t think this man is used to people telling him no. He’s not used to not getting his way.
He’s definitely not used to money not being able to solve all his problems.
“Is this going to turn into a weird sex thing where you won’t let me sleep in any bedroom except yours, and you won’t let me wear my own clothes, and I’ll have to wear yours because you like seeing me in them, and then suddenly I’m your prisoner?”
Admittedly, those horrid thoughts should be more in the horrid department and less of a punch in the reproductive organ department. In all his muscly glory, he’s too muscly. Certainly, no one’s fantasy is to procreate with a granite block. Some women like muscles on muscles, snapping dark eyes, a hint of mystery, and a few scars. You know what my jam is? For the past while, it’s been nothing. Life problems and stress affecting the libido and all that, but in the very distant past? My jam is kindness. Courtesy. A gentleman. Cat guys—not furries, goodness. I mean, guys who like cats more than dogs.
This guy is blocky and broody. He doesn’t like cats or kids. He doesn’t like me, and he’s grumpy. All he cares about is work, which means he probably only gives a rat’s behind about the money at the end of the day. While I’m alone by circumstance, he’s alone by choice.
He was shocked into flabbergasted silence for about ten point two nine seconds, long enough for my brain to bounce those thoughts off my ovaries. What’s going on, babymakers? What’s the malfunction? And my ovaries were all, brain, we’re okay. Just a momentary blip of irrational craziness. Those happen sometimes, you know. You’re the one producing the hormones and sending the signals. We’re just along for the ride.
His face morphs into a fearsome, thunderous scowl with a hint of mystified whatthefuckness. “What the hell? No! You were the one who just told me how the retribution was going to play out.”
“Right. Well, you were the one who ruined my life.”
“I haven’t done anything to ruin your life. Let’s get that straight.”
I scoff. “We’ll have to agree to disagree.”
“You can agree to disagree about where you’re going to end up, but it’s not going to be at my house.”
“You just said it would be at your house.”
Double eye twitches. “I’ve changed my mind.” More muscle flexing.
Bro, get a shirt already. “Why? Do you have some heinous secret? Bodies in the freezer?”
“What is it with you and the bodies? I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer. The only bodies in my freezer are frozen corn and steaks.”
He did dignify it. “Cow bodies then.”
“I suppose so. Go ahead, judge me.”
I stroke my cat’s head, scratching lightly behind her ears. She gives a light purr and keeps it up but doesn’t open her eyes. “Peach Lips and I both eat meat. There’s no judgment here. If you do, you do. If you don’t, you don’t. That’s where I stand on pretty much all the hot-button issues.”
“What are you going to do if you won’t go on vacation while I get this sorted?”
He’s already given in. Putting on this show of protest isn’t fooling either of us. “Oh, I am. At your penthouse.”
“I don’t have a penthouse.”
I roll my eyes and snort. My nose is suddenly clear enough that the snort sounds good and not nasally. “All rich people have penthouses. I looked up your net worth. Well, technically, I looked you and your company up, and I just happened to read the rest.”
“Hmph. In that case, let me offer you three million dollars as compensation for your troubles, let me fix said troubles, and give you a free vacation on top of it all to a destination of your choosing, which is not my house.”
“Here’s the deal. Your house. One week.” Yeah, I know I’m compromising here, but if that’s what it takes to tunnel into Thorn’s life, bad graces, and utter annoyance as much as he’s tunneled under my skin, it’s worth it. “Then, I come back to my bus and go back to my sort of home and wait for you to fix this or for people to just forget and hopefully resume the circuit. If that doesn’t pan out, then well… I hope, in that time, I can think of something else I can do to help the world. Animals, people, nature. All of it. I thought this was my calling.” Plenty of times, I’ve thought my life would turn out differently. “The only thing to be done is to pick your gyat up and keep on going.”
At last, he loses it and gapes at me. “Did you just use the word ‘gyat’?”
“It rhymes with cat. Cat gyat. Maybe suggest to your team that they can use that in their new marketing for my new rebranding or whatever it is they’re doing.”
“Not rebranding.”
“I thought it was rebranding.” I did not think it was rebranding. My lack of sleep makes annoying this man more entertaining than it should be. Harmless annoyance, for the record. I would never want to truly hurt him.
“Hmph. They’re not using little kid slang. Just no. Do not.”
“Bro.”
“Stop.”
“Your house, or I call you three times a day and call you bro.”
He stomps to his backpack, which looks more like a backpack a hiker would carry, and yanks out a T-shirt. He yanks it on, but the black cotton with the word SECURITY written across the chest does wonders for him.
I’m painfully easy. And I have a small thing for uniforms.
Even T-shirts.
Whatever.
“I won’t answer,” he flings back. He’s starting to pace. I’ve annoyed him so much that he can’t stand still any longer. All that movement should stir up the nasty carpet, but all I can smell is the scent of him. Warm, backed into a corner, spicy manliness.
“I’ll leave bro messages.”
He whirls around, raking a hand over his short, dark hair. “You’re right. A week is all it’ll take for you to completely ruin my life and sanity.” I nearly laugh at his over-dramatic, wide eyes. “One week, then we’re even. We don’t hear from each other or see each other again. My team will fix things and be in touch.”
Ugh, thank god. I got what I wanted, but for some reason, I just can’t stop. This might actually be…fun. Sparring with him. It feels…playful. Quite possibly, I need more real human interaction in my life than just what’s directed at Peach Lips at the shows. Friends would be a good start. “Okay. Do we need rules?”
“About?”
“Not falling in love?”
“Get real.” He’s shocked, but then he bursts out laughing. Whoa . Looks like he does have a sense of humor, after all. “I’m married to my work, and you’re in love with your cat.”
“Don’t say it that way! That’s just wrong.”
His eyes drop to my lap. I know he’s looking at Peach Lips, but my stomach still flips funny. “Alright, you’re also in love with your charity work, which is based around your cat and cats in general. Everything about cats, cats.”
“That’s better. Also, I see you’ve read the memes.”
“They’ve been popping up more often,” he grumbles. “Your phone listens, you know.”
“Ahh!” I have it on the bed next to me. I grab it and throw it, and quick as freaking lightning, Thorn’s hand snakes out and catches it. He tucks it into his pocket, and before I can even splutter, he gives me a look that shuts me up fast as it’s so stern.
“I have one rule only for this week. No phone. No socials. You’re completely unplugged from all this. When you come back, it’ll be a fresh start, but you need to give it that chance. So, for the time being, I’m pocketing this.”
He doesn’t ask if I have anyone who would be frantically calling me if I just dropped off the face of the earth. He knows I don’t have family and friends. He background-checked my ass… So. Damn. Hard. He knows everything .
“Fine,” I huff. “You want to throw down that challenge?” To be fair, I don’t think he wants any of this, and that certainly is not anything other than advice I need to hear and some tough love. “One week until my life is fixed, and your sanity is ruined by correlation? Challenge. Accepted.”