My mind drifts to the pleasure she could bring with her mouth and her tongue… purely out of male fascination.
“Then I guess you should steer clear of me and neither of us will have to worry about me being an asshole.” I grunt out the words, unsure why I’m pushing her away so hard when she’s done nothing wrong.
“So you’re the one, huh?”
Her comment stops me with my drink midway to my mouth, and my thought process falters as I slowly look over to her, trying to figure out what she means. “The one?”
“Yep, the one that every reporter in this room hates and wants to be all at the same time.”
I take in the glossy black hair pulled back so that little pieces fall down to frame her face and soften her strong cheekbones as I mull over her comment. When our eyes meet, there’s defiance laced with amusement in hers, and as much as I want to face her challenge head-on, I won’t. Not here, not now – and definitely not with a room packed with other journalists who are watching my every move to see if I’m going to fall apart in some way or another.
I motion to the bottle of Fireball sitting across from me and look at the bartender as I slide my money across the counter. He picks up the bottle and sets it in front of me at the same time as I scoot my chair back. When I grab the neck of the bottle, I look back and give her a half-cocked smile. “Yep, I’m the one.”
And without so much as another word, I head out of the bar. The guys give me shit as I walk past about being a pansy-ass until I hold up the whiskey bottle to show them I’m not really turning in early. Pauly catches my eye and nods, knowing where I’m headed and that I need the solitude I can find there.
The fucking problem, though, is even as I ascend the stairs up the dank stairwell, the only thing I can think about is her.
Chapter 2
T
he door is stuck.
A part of me likes that fact because it means that possibly no one has been up here, and another part of me appreciates the physicality it takes to get it open when I put my shoulder into it.
The metal door slams back and clanks against the concrete wall behind it. The sound cuts into the silence of the night as I stand there, momentarily cautious for some reason, even though in this place I’ve found more peace than anywhere else in the strife-torn country.
I was worried how I’d feel coming up here – wasn’t sure I’d be able to face this the first night back – but standing here, I know it’s for the best to face the memories head-on. To fight the ghost of her that’s been haunting my dreams with reliving the memory of her in “our” place.
The noise from the city streets below is faint and comforting, but I don’t notice much beyond the dust particles floating in the stream of light from the open door. I have to talk myself into stepping over the threshold. After making sure the door is secured so I don’t get locked out, I make my way across the rooftop to a little section on the far end. I walk around the stem walls erected in the shape of a plus sign that protects some air-conditioning units on three of the four sections to see if it’s still here after almost five months.
When I turn the corner to see the tarp folded beside the covered mattress and the sign – a piece of paper taped to the wall bordering it that says WELCOME BACK, TANNER, I laugh aloud. At first the sound is one of amusement, and then it slowly fades off in relief when it hits me that the guys downstairs still drinking kept this up here for me. They preserved my little place of solitude in this crazy-ass world because they knew how much I needed it. And how much it meant to me.
Dropping to my knees on the mattress, I sit with my back against the wall so that the sign is beside my head. Once I’ve gotten comfortable, I look out at the lights of the city beyond that calls to me like a curse and a blessing. A necessity to make my blood hum with that adrenaline I thrive on and a damnation for the dreams it suppresses for so many others. Lights twinkle in the distance, beacons of life in a minefield of hopelessness and destitution.
When I bring the bottle of Fireball up to my lips, the burn feels good, reminds me that I’m still here, still alive. And that Stella isn’t.
“Oh, Stell,” I say into the night with a shake of my head. “This feels so weird sitting up here without you.”
The bittersweet memory of the last time I sat here comes back with a vengeance, and it blazes ten times stronger than the sting of the whiskey.
“Do you ever wonder if you’ve missed that once-in-a-lifetime, Tan?” Stella looks over to me, the smear of dirt from the day riding with the embed like a badge of honor across her cheek. She has that look in her eye, the one that makes every guy in existence roll his eyes because it means his woman is going to talk about shit he doesn’t want to address. But first off, she’s not my girl, and second, I kind of want to know what she’s talking about.
“You’re not going to get all sappy on me now, are you?” I pass the Styrofoam cup filled with Kahlua and coffee her way. She rolls her eyes and takes a sip, hissing when it scalds her tongue.
“Zip it, Thomas. You’re stuck with me.”
“Explain, then.” I shake my head when she tries to pass back the coffee to me. It’s been a rough day; I need something stronger than a keoke coffee, but I’ll meet up with Pauly later for that. Right now I just need our routine, our wind down after a fucked-up day out beyond the city’s walls of misconceived protection.
Stella’s sigh pulls me from the images of blood-soaked camouflage and the sound of gunfire. I know she hates when I get all lawyer-ish on her, as she calls it, and so that’s why I phrased my comment that way, needing to get us back to what has been our norm over the past decade.