Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Keannen
I KNOW THIS IS wrong, but a face splitting smile winds across my lips the moment Tim’s eyes go wide as he spots me in that lobby. He slouches up beside me, the elevator bank affording us very little space to avoid each other, though he stands as far away as he can manage.
I’m not so gracious.
I watch him unabashedly, the grin never leaving my mouth. It’s been a long drive down the coast and then east to Austin. Messing with Tim will certainly take the edge off all those boring days spent scrolling through my phone on the bus.
The elevator bings. We both go for it, but Tim hesitates when I stride inside. I set a hand against the door and leer at him .
“Planning to walk?” I say.
“No.” He grumbles the word at his feet.
“Then come on in, Freckles. The water’s fine.”
The elevator beeps irritably at me, but I stand there holding it open until Tim finally slouches inside, eyes downcast. He places himself in a far corner of the elevator, like he hopes to meld with the walls and disappear, and I stand right beside him. I simply can’t help it. I’ve waited eight, almost nine, years for this, and he’s making it trivially easy.
Tim’s gaze slides toward me as the elevator doors close. He watches me like he’d watch a snake in the grass, something he’s trying not to notice too much lest he attract its attention. Unfortunately for him, I’ve got eight years of pent up feelings about him, and I’m going to take them out on him in this tiny metal box.
I shove myself away from the wall and swing around to face him. Tim flinches, pressing himself harder into the corner he’s chosen for himself, but I don’t get close, just hang there staring him down before taking a step back and hitting a button on the elevator panel. I’m pretty sure it’s the right one. Tim, apparently relieved I gave him that one step of space, doesn’t bother asking for me to hit his floor.
“Forgot to hit the button,” I say as though this is a remotely normal elevator ride. Then I slide right back up beside him.
We both have a duffel bag, just enough clothes and toiletries for our one rest night. Tim clutches the strap of his like it’s a buoy in the middle of storm-churned seas. I let mine drop to the floor with a thud that’s way too loud in this confined space.
The elevator shudders even harder than Tim when it starts clambering up toward the fourteenth floor. Tim is seriously going to regret not hitting his floor and having to ride the elevator back down and up, but apparently his head is too scrambled for that thought to squeeze through.
I should take the win and leave it at this. I know I should. It’s just that… When I see Tim pressing himself into that corner, staring at his feet, I don’t see a grown man I haven’t interacted with in eight years. I don’t see a guy who might have grown and changed since he hurt me so long ago. I see that shy virgin under the bleachers, grimacing at the taste of cigarette smoke when I lure him into a kiss. I see the kid who kept coming back to me for more, terrified and unsure, but too hungry to stop himself.
Instead of leaving him alone like I should, I swing around again. This time, I brace my hands on the wall on either side of Tim (this corner he’s chosen for himself makes that especially convenient).
The moment I box him in, Tim’s eyes snap up, wide, the whites overtaking them like he’s a spooked horse. I bare my teeth in a grin.
“No need to be so nervous,” I say. “We’re old friends, aren’t we?”
“Keannen,” Tim says, the word part plea, part exasperated cry for mercy, part … something else entirely.
Interesting. Maybe my sweet, freckled virgin isn’t as pure as he seems. He certainly reacted to that moment in the hallway in Portland, but I’ve left him to simmer ever since. The tour has kept us all plenty busy and stressed and exhausted. Tonight, however, I have nowhere to be and nothing to do but poke at the very obvious opening Tim is giving me.
“It’s okay, you know,” I say, leaning closer. “We dated. It’s not out of the question that you’d still be attracted to me.”
Tim flushes, his lips pressing into a hard line despite the color lighting his cheeks. “I’m not.”
I smile indulgently. “Mhm. I can see that.”
I let my eyes flicker downward deliberately, though I can’t actually tell if Tim is tenting his pants yet or not. It doesn’t matter. If he isn’t now, he will be by the time he leaves this elevator. I’ll make sure of that.
“Keannen,” he says again, “it doesn’t have to be this way.”
“What way?” I say, all feigned innocence.
“I get it,” Tim says, his voice shaky and low. “Okay? I get it. I fucked up. We were kids, Keannen.”
“Yeah, we were.”
He’s right, technically. We were kids. Seventeen. Some idiots under the bleachers. So what if he was the first guy who ever kissed me and didn’t just shove me down onto my knees? So what if no one in my life had treated me with such kindness and awe before Tim? So what if I let myself believe he actually liked me? So what if when he left it tore away anything good that was left in me, creating a void that bitterness rushed to fill?
We were only kids, after all.
I lean closer, and Tim turns his head away, like he’s trying to avoid me. Just like last time, however, when my breath ghosts against the side of his neck, he shivers, goosebumps breaking out on his skin.
“I’m not trying to hurt you, Tim,” I say. “I’m just having a bit of fun. Don’t you want to enjoy yourself while we’re on tour? There’s no reason we can’t.”
I watch his throat work from close range, the muscles shifting, the Adam’s apple bobbing. He can’t hide that nervous swallow from me, not with my lips a breath away from his skin.
“You don’t want to have fun,” Tim says. “You just want to fuck with me.”
“Who says that isn’t fun?”
“I—”
He tries to retort, but the elevator shudders to a stop — and not because it reached floor fourteen. The whole thing just stops , and a second later the lights go out, throwing us into pitch-black darkness lit only by the emergency light on the control panel .
Tim squeaks, and suddenly his hands are fisting in my shirt. Without me doing a thing, he jerks closer, clinging to me in the dark.
For a second, we stand that way, so close our breaths dust each other’s throats, Tim’s hands knotted in my shirt. I thought I was the one in control here, the one doing the pushing, but when he grabs me like that, my body reacts in a startled burst of heat I have to shove back down into my gut. All of my teasing melts away, leaving behind desire — very sincere, very unwanted desire.
What the hell? I’m not supposed to be into him. I’m supposed to toy with him in a vain attempt to heal what he broke. I’ve been with dozens of guys. I don’t need this one in particular.
Yet when Tim realizes what he did and releases my shirt with a jerk, a beat of horrifying disappointment throbs through my chest.
No way. No freaking way am I going to pathetically pine over a dude who dumped me during high school. That’s Tim’s role in all this. I’m supposed to be the savvy, experienced, worldly one, the one who’s gotten his dick sucked enough times at enough clubs that a chance run-in with some random ex doesn’t faze me.
But I don’t back away. Trapped with him in the dark, I cage him in with my arms and lean close, stopping a finger’s breadth from his parted lips.
“Afraid of the dark, little rabbit?” I say. “You should be afraid of me instead.”
“I am,” Tim says, but there’s a whole lot more than fear going on in that breathy whisper.
I let my body tilt toward him, the dark emboldening me further. Tim presses himself back, but there’s nowhere to run. When I get so close to his lips that each breath flutters against my mouth, I stop. Tim doesn’t turn away, doesn’t close his lips, doesn’t move at all. He stands there stiff and terrified and panting.
I could take him right now, I realize. I could kiss him right here like this. He wants it. It trembles in every breath. It heats the darkened elevator. It leaves him heedless of his fear. Who knows how long we might be trapped here? Who knows how much I might take before the lights come back on and plunge us into the reality where eight years of bitterness stands between us?
“Do you want me to kiss you?” I say.
Tim swallows again. “Yes.”
“So honest. You always were a good boy.”
“And you always were a bad one.”
“Is that why you left? Because I was too naughty for you? Because I might corrupt you?”
“No,” he says immediately.
I can’t help but scoff. “You don’t need to lie. It’s been a long time.”
“That wasn’t the reason, Keannen,” he says. “I—”
The elevator shudders. It nearly throws me against his mouth. Some instinct makes me brace harder against the wall and save myself, an instinct I kind of want to punch in the face. The lights flicker back on, and a grainy announcement apologizes for the delay and attributes it to a thunderstorm.
Tim takes a shaky breath. The elevator pings as it rises, announcing we’ve nearly reached floor fourteen. The lights, the noises, the reminder of the wider world — it convinces me to back off. I grab my bag where I left it on the floor and sling it onto my shoulder. Then I do my best impression of a guy who didn’t kind of want to kiss his shitty ex-boyfriend two seconds ago.
The elevator reaches my floor, but when the doors slide open, Tim follows me out.
“What are you doing?” I snap, sending a glare over my shoulder.
He holds up a keycard. “My room’s on this floor.”
Great. Fine. Whatever. It figures the bands would get a bunch of rooms on the same floor. Bands and crews take up a lot of space. They probably want to contain us in case we’re the types to host wild rockstar parties.
But when I turn out of the elevator bank and down the hall, Tim is still following. He’s at my heels all the way to room 1403, where we both stop.
His eyes are doing that spooked horse thing again.
“What?” I snap. “What is it?”
He holds up his keycard. A keycard inconveniently labeled “1403.”
“Cameron is with his boyfriend,” Tim says.
And Levi is out with some old acquaintance, and Shawn and Dan and Jacob agreed to share a room for the tour. Fuck. We’re the two strays in our respective bands, and they tossed us into a room together and thought nothing of it.
This night just got a lot more interesting than it has any right to be.