16. Arnaz
ARNAZ
“Derivative”
They abandon themselves to be like people who hate themselves.
“ C hampagne?” a violet-haired server with rolled-up sleeves and neck and arm tats offers.
“Whiskey neat?” I ask.
“You got it.” He brushes my hand while taking my empty glass.
Straightening my shirt sleeves, I scan the room and zero in on a man clad in a tux who has Salem’s complexion and build. My shoes tear across the ballroom floor, only to slow before coming to a stop when I’m an arm’s length away.
What would I even say?
It’s been three weeks.
Not that long, I guess.
He didn’t text or call either.
Though I’m the one who got off and then ran like a coward.
A man with salt-and-pepper hair steps into my path.
Looking past his shoulder, my stomach plunges as not-him turns in my direction.
I turn and sweep the rest of the crowd. A part of me, the cringe-fest side, was counting on him being here.
“Arnaz?”
I turn around.
“Rocco,” the man says, like it’s been said before, and I missed it.
I shake his hand.
“You smoke?” He offers me a cigar.
“No.”
“You enjoy the ocean?”
The fuck?
“It would be my pleasure to have you aboard my yacht.”
Ugh, a yacht guy.
A husky laugh has my head whipping around and tracking the voice to another not-him .
Damn.
I turn back.
“…your career with keen interest, and given your exceptional talent and the new opportunities available to you following your recent… revelation , I believe there are uncharted territories that I’d like to help you?—”
“Rocco, I’ll stab you in the eye with my heel if you try to poach my favorite client,” Catharine warns as she floats over in a black ball gown with one of those mermaid-tail hems.
“But you steal my top point guard at my anniversary party, and I’m supposed to exercise decorum?” he claps back.
“Babe. He came running to me. I tried to get him to stay with you. What was I supposed to do?”
She grins as I dip down and plant a kiss on her cheek. “Happy Birthday, Cat. You look gorgeous.”
“You too. Love the dark blue. Look”—she nods to my cravat and then points to her red diamond solitaire necklace—“we’re matching.” Leaning up, she loudly whispers, “Watch yourself around this one—he likes ’em young.”
“Oh, fuck off,” Rocco scoffs.
She blows him a kiss.
“Don’t leave without spending time with me,” she orders.
I nod.
The server returns with my whiskey neat just as Rocco hands me his card and says, “Call me.”
“Thanks,” I reply to the server, stuffing the card in my pocket. “Restroom?”
“Follow me,” he says, leading the way.
Once we pass through the doors of the event room, he points toward a staircase leading to a lower level.
“There’s one through there. But you should check out the secret one that way.
” He gestures in the opposite direction toward a long corridor.
“It’s in an old ballroom with a sublime fresco that, I kid you not, looks like something stolen from the Vatican. ”
I look down the long hallway.
“Go all the way to the end, ignore the red ropes, and hang left. Past the double doors.”
“Thanks.”
“Hey,” he says, stepping closer. “You’re too hot for that oily cat with the fake tan.” He slips a piece of paper into my palm, his rings clinking together.
I quirk an eyebrow as he saunters away.
I’ll never be that smooth.
I end up making a wrong turn before reaching the cordoned-off ballroom. Weaving through the stacks of covered furniture, I pause and stare out at the dense trees drenched in rain. I think about my plan for when I retire—cop a cabin in a deep forest and live there until I die.
I’ll be silent when I need to be silent, which is a lot of the time these days.
When the voices in my head get loud, the one in my throat skips town, only coming back when things get quiet.
And then there’s the space problem. I need space when I get home.
I need space when my brain craps out. I need space in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep.
I need too much space for someone else to feel at home with me.
I polish off the whiskey, then find the bathroom.
After taking a piss and then washing and drying my hands, I slide my phone out of my pocket and pull up my texts with Salem.
I begin typing.
Me: Hey …
And the thing that’s happened all week happens. A maelstrom of conflicting thoughts paralyzes me.
Why text now?
What’s changed?
You know what he wants, and you know you’re not cut out for it.
I rub my throat.
He touched my scar, and I couldn’t catch air. Every inhale tightened a drawstring that bound my throat closed.
I dump my phone back in my pocket.
Nothing’s changed.
I weave back through the stack of covered furniture and am a foot away from the doors when a throat clears.
“Fuck!” I gasp.
“Blue.”
Always the prey with him.
Rubbing the heel of my hand against my pounding chest, I step back. Salem’s back is to me as he stares out the window.
I open my mouth to speak, but when he turns around and looks me square in the eyes, I choke.
“You ran,” he says.
Goddamn his tailor. He’s smoking in a mustard-colored suit. The smooth swell of his chest peeks through his partially open, pale blue button-down. I can make out a portion of his tat—black spider legs. I open my mouth again, and I’m reminded of part of the reason I’m choked up. I’m a coward.
“I-I…”
The doors burst open. “Did you find the fresco? Isn’t it a marvel?”
Salem clears his throat, and the server jumps out of his skin.
“Holy balls!” He lets out a nervous chuckle. “I didn’t see you there.”
“I’m not here,” Salem replies, making for the door.
“W-wait.” I dart in front of him before throwing, “We’re in the middle of something,” over my shoulder to the server.
“Find me later?” the server asks.
“He’s free now,” Salem answers, sidestepping me.
“Stop.” I match his steps. “Can we talk?”
“Why?” he demands as the doors thud closed, leaving us alone.
I hang my head and release a strangled breath.
“Enjoy your night, Arnaz.”
Fuck.
The fading sound of his footsteps is like a cold hand in the small of my back.
I bolt for him, blood rushing in my ears until it’s washed out by my panicked, “Wait!”
My foot kicks out, catching him mid-step, and the world tilts as my knee buckles, and we crash to the floor.
“Seriously?” His palms flatten next to his sides.
“Just wait. I shouldn’t have left like that. I’m sorry.” I squeeze my thighs around him, and he goes still before he drags in a breath and pushes up. Suddenly, I’m riding him like a horse.
A horse with no reins.
Oh shit.
He lurches back, twisting left, but instead of bucking me off, he uses the momentum to reach back and yank me to the floor.
As soon as I land with a thud, his arms bracket my head.
His stare doesn’t hold the anger of a glare, but it’s steel-cold and sharp, like he’s assessing…
me, my bullshit, if I’m worth the effort.
“Why’d you run?” His voice is dark and low. “Your scar?”
His lips are so close that the tightness in my chest makes each breath a miracle.
I can’t admit it.
I can’t think.
His scent sends my pulse into a frenetic spin.
Drawstring…throat.
“Hey.” His eyebrows crease. “What’s wrong?”
“Please.” I want to melt into the floor as soon as the word slips past my lips.
I don’t beg.
“What?” he murmurs, lifting my chin.
God, those eyes. Beyond their warmth, ferocity, and intelligence, something terrifying stares back at me.
Not something . An offer.
It’s a mystery, the easy recognition of what I’ve never known. I was raised under the exacting hand of cruelty, so it’s no surprise that I recoil from it.
Devotion.
A suffocating promise with its risen chest, iron back, and pledge of quiet sacrifice.
“Those wheels are spinning too fast,” he says.
And on loosely screwed axles.
What am I doing? “I need to g?—”
“No.” His lips lower to mine, a gentle brush before he pulls back. “Stop running from me.”
I don’t know how.
I mean to push him away, but my legs spread, and my mouth takes over, hungry for another taste. I fight with his belt, faintly aware that I’m being undone too.
“Wait,” he breathes, pulling back. He stares down at me and drags his thumb across his lips.
I reach for him, but instead of covering me again, he lies next to me.
He doesn’t answer or react to my stare.
I follow his gaze to the overhead fresco.
Meh.
Mythical men immortalized in stone and ivory are no match for his sun-dipped, sinewy expanse and sculpted proportions.
I flinch when his hand reaches into my pocket and fishes out Rocco’s card and the server’s phone number and then rips them up.
I grin. He saw all that?
“I blame your face.” He groans. “Way too many complementary features. Or the tats and the sexy lilt that screams ‘I’m badder than death.’
I snort. “I wasn’t planning to call either of them.”
After a moment of silence, he asks, “What about me? Were you planning to call me?”
I return to staring at the ceiling. “I tried. A few times a day. I didn’t know what to say.”
“Why did you run?” He asks.
I suck in a breath and hold it as my thoughts race with different versions of the answer. I sigh out, “My scars…I don’t like to be reminded of them.”
I expect him to lean in for more information, but he doesn’t.
We lie in silence until a rumble from his stomach breaks it.
“Hungry?” I ask.
“Guess so.”
He starts to move.
“Wait.” I take hold of his arm.
He pauses.
“I’ll be back.”
I get to my feet and dust off my suit.
“This room reminds me of the sheet forts my brother and I used to make,” he says.
“Sheet forts?” I ask.
His eyes gleam. “Yeah, you know, when you take all the comforters and sheets and hang them from the walls and ceilings to make a fort?”
I squint. “That’s a thing?”
He scoffs. “Yeah, it’s a thing.”
I shrug.
He frowns. “Hold on.”
“What are you doing?” I ask when he climbs to his feet, takes off his blazer, and rolls up his sleeves.
“Come.” He starts rearranging the furniture. “Help me move this.”
I help him push a table back.
“We’re gonna form a circle with this stuff,” he says, pointing to the chairs stacked on top of each other.
“Why?”
“You’ll see in a second.”
After forming a small circle with the furniture, he dusts off a cover and lays it down on the floor, then layers another one on top. Then he takes two more and, after dusting them off, strings them across the top of the chairs to create a tarp.
He kicks off his shoes and crawls underneath. My head peeks in, and I watch him sit cross-legged, assessing the height. “Not bad. It’s kinda perfect, actually, with the rain.”
“This is a sheet fort?”
“A makeshift version. Take your shoes off. Come here.”
“Your parents let you do this?” I ask.
“Yeah. Dad would handle mounting the sheets to the walls since he didn’t want us to fall using the ladder. This one time, we had a water gun fight. I don’t know how it started, but Mom was a better shot than all of us. Man, we drenched everything.”
I tuck my knees in as I scoot next to him. “Sounds…fun.”
“You do anything similar with your family?”
I stare at the ceiling of sheets. It’s cozy, like the closet in my room that I used to chill in.
I usually crank up my thoughts until they’re buzzing behind my ears and drowning out the person sharing their warm and fuzzy childhood memories.
Not this time. And I don’t think the tightness starting to fade in my chest is from envy.
“Blue?”
“Huh?”
“You and your family do anything similar?”
“Water fights in the house?” I scoff. “And ruin my mom’s expensive art? Nah.”
“Hm. She was strict?”
His stomach growls again.
“Let’s take care of that.”
“I can come,” he offers.
“Enjoy the fort.” I crawl out. “I’ll be right back.”
“It’s me,” I say a few minutes later when I enter and find him lying on his back with his arm under his head.
I hold out a platter of hors d’oeuvres.
His eyes widen. “Whoa.”
“Under my arms,” I say.
He folds up to catch the two bottles of water.
I spread out the mac and cheese balls, crab puffs, skewers…and a mushroom-looking thing.
“Sheesh. You raided the kitchen.”
“Chef’s sampler the caterer called it. These are the vegan ones.” I point to the mac and cheese balls separated from the other food.
There’s a knock at the door.
I roll back to a stand and pluck my wallet out. “Be right back.”
“Thanks, man,” I say to the server, trading the cash for a tray of desserts and champagne.
“Seriously?” Salem asks when I return with the tray.
I shrug. “You were hungry.”
As I lean down, he reaches over and kisses me in a way that I feel in my toes.
I groan. “You can’t look like that, bake me a Wolf cake, annihilate men on the court, be packing a big, pierced dick, and kiss me like that.”
He grins. “Why not?”