by Lily Zante
My heart slams to a stop and splinters into a million pieces.
He turns his back on me again, as if I wasn't even there, as if he'd forgotten about me in an instant. Instead, he faces his partner and dances around the ring. Even though I can't read his expression, I can tell he's completely blocked off. He's got nothing further to say.
I don't understand his anger. I don't understand what happened between last week and now. I'd made myself believe that he wanted me to come here, but it couldn't be further from the truth.
“Don't worry about him,” Lou says, throwing a glance at me. Then he turns to watch Eli again. I forget to swallow. I forget to talk. I forget my defense because I'm ripped into pieces.
Eli dances around the ring, and cuts me another dirty look. He’s wearing his headgear, but everything about his posture tells me he’s not pleased. And then he lands the mother of all punches at Jake.
SMACK!
The blow is so hard, I hear it and feel it in my bones.
His opponent crashes to the floor.
“That's my boy!” Lou cries. “Do that a couple of times on the night and we’ll have one of the biggest upsets in boxing history.”
I had something to do with the rage in that blow, I just know it.
But I don't understand it.
I thought we were friends. We hardly got to talk at Waquito’s that night and he has no idea how I felt when I left. If there’s anyone who should be mad, it should be me.
The level of his rage surprises me.
I turn around and start to walk back out because I don’t want to be here. I should have listened to my instinct and made an excuse about coming here. I’d rather deal with Merv’s sarcasm than Eli’s wrath.
Lou rushes up to me as I leave, and it’s a silly move because I don’t know my way around this place. “Don’t mind him,” Lou says.
“I don’t. I know what Eli’s like.”
“He’s pumped up because of the fight,” Lou says. “He's going to have moments when he blows up; he can't hide his emotions like a normal person can.”
Because he's not normal, I think to myself. I feel out of place again, and I’m convinced that it was a mistake coming here.
“I'll get Margrit to show you to your room,” he says, because clearly he's busy. I'm the nuisance from the paper. “Margrit!” he shouts. A few seconds later, I meet Lou’s wife. She’s short, and plump, and cuddly. There's a twinkle in her eye, and I lean towards the warmth I feel from her.
“Margrit?” I say, holding out my hand. She takes it between both of hers.
“Harper?”
I nod.
“Will you show Harper to her room?” Lou asks her. She replies with a smile.
“If I can remember the way there. The room next to ours?”
“That’s the one.” To me he says, “You don’t want to stand here and watch this all day long, do you?”
“No.” I most definitely don't want to be here. I need the distraction of my new room; something to make me forget what Eli just did, so that I don't dwell on why he's so angry.
Margrit jokes about how big the house is and how it’s a maze of corridors and doors. I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks this. She makes small talk and wants to know about my car trip here and I answer all her questions.
She shows me around. There’s a movie theater room, and a spa room with a huge hot tub right in the middle, and to the side, I see a door marked ‘Sauna’.
There’s also a swimming pool and a media room as well as so many rooms that I soon lose count of them all.
Finally we reach my room and she leaves me. I am grateful to be alone again.
A few hours later, I go down and offer to help her in the kitchen but she won’t have any of it.
So I set the table in the dining room. It’s a huge, long table that could easily seat twenty people. I put placemats down so that we only occupy the middle part and we face each other.
Eli and I haven't spoken at all since I got here.
We all eat together, and it's a jovial, relaxed atmosphere. Jake and Santos lighten the mood, and Margrit is sweet. Lou looks as if he has a lot on his mind and he eats quickly and quietly. I wish Ernesto had come along. That would have made all the difference.
But, I'm a grown-up and I can deal with the situation.
I don't join in the conversation much, because all they talk about is boxing. The guys are having a laugh, and I'm content to listen.
I can't bring myself to even look in Eli's direction. There's a reason we are sitting at opposite ends of the rectangular dining table. I'm at the end with Margrit to my left and then Lou next to her. Opposite us sit Eli, Jake and Santos. Eli is opposite Lou, so I'm the furthest distance away from him. It means I won't have to look at him.
It’s all so different to how things have been during the week. I don’t know what changed.
Chapter Twenty-Three
ELI
* * *
True to form, Harper’s avoiding me all through dinner. I'm surprised she didn't go sit at the head of the table; at least that way she’d be even further away from me.
We eat together and she talks to Margrit, and joins in the conversation, but mostly she's quiet. We're talking about the training and my routine tomorrow, so it’s only natural that she doesn’t join in.
A couple of times I steal a look at her, and I can tell that she’s not comfortable. Not like how she was in that swanky hotel bar the night she puked all over me.
I know what it's like to not belong. Not only that night at the hotel bar, but every time Nina and I turned up at a new foster place we'd been allocated to, it felt like that for a while. The foster parents would look at as, and I used to wonder if they really wanted us, or if they were only after the money they got for having us.
Seeing Harper wearing that same unsure expression makes me feel sorry for her, but she's never been in the situations Nina and I have been in.
I can't figure out now if I hate her or pity her; my feelings where she's concerned seem to change like the wind. When I saw her earlier, I wanted to know if she’d ended up in Callum’s bed.
Yeah, why the fuck am I thinking about that?
The fact that I am tells me Harper’s already in my head even though I’ve been trying to build up my resistance to her in the days between Waquito’s and now.
Clearly it hasn’t worked because the moment I see her, I’m pissed off again.
And now I’m pissed off about being pissed off and not being able to keep my cool as I had intended. I'm supposed to be mentally bracing myself for Garrison, not feeling sorry for Harper just because she looks subdued, even if I might have had something to do with that.
But I can't help myself. I try to get a reaction.
“Can you pass the salt?” I ask, tilting my head forward and in her direction. She looks at me, her gaze defiant. She's so easy to read, and she is truly pissed off and holding onto that grudge again. I prod her some more. “The salt?” I ask again. The shaker is by her right hand, and I'm praying that Margrit or Santos aren’t going to hand it to me instead.
“What's the magic word?” Harper asks, a thin line forming between her brows.
“Just give him the salt, Harper.” Lou digs into his food and seems weary.
“I'm waiting for the magic word.”
Jake and Santos snigger, as if this is petty or amusing, I don't know which, but I agree that this is childish behavior on both our parts.
She's staring at me with her steely eyes, and I can tell she'd just as easily throw that shaker at me than she would hand it over.
We're locked in a checkmate. I refuse to say 'please', and she refuses to give it to me.
Then Lou nudges Margrit—he’d grab it himself if he could reach it. Margrit passes the salt over to me, and them mumbles something to Harper that I can't catch.
I know, I just know that if Margrit hadn't taken the salt from Harper's hands, Harper would never have given it to me until I
said the magic word.
“I want an early night for you,” Lou tells me.
“I always have an early night,” I mutter.
“But first we’re going to watch some of Garrison’s old fights.”
“Tonight?” Santos asks.
“Yes, tonight.”
Jake looks as peeved as Santos. Those two probably wanted to head into town and see what’s going on, but Lou has ruined their plans.
* * *
HARPER
* * *
I’m wide awake. I expected to be knocked out by now, especially after the long drive here, but I’m wide awake. I’m finishing off a few work emails. Merv is on my back again. I gave him a copy of the piece I’ve done on Eli so far but he says it’s weak, it has no depth, it lacks interest. He wants a meeting as soon as I return.
I plan to leave here on Friday morning but can’t see myself reaching Chicago until late afternoon. Merv is adamant I do, so I punch in the meeting details into the calendar on my phone as a reminder. I get an email from Gerry asking me if I got here okay.
I smile, touched that he was concerned enough to ask. I reply quickly, and tell him a bit about this place. Then I put away my phone and laptop because all that blue light is only going to make it harder for me to sleep.
After dinner, the guys retired to the movie theater room. Margrit and I followed but there was only so much footage of old fights that we could sit through. We didn’t stay for long and returned to our rooms.
Margrit showed me the leisure suite briefly earlier, and this is where I return to. There’s a swimming pool here somewhere. I open the door, and see the light floating on the water. It’s empty, and clinical, and scary, like a scene out of a horror movie. I close the door quickly and step away, walking back towards the way I came. I see the door on the left, the one labeled ‘Spa’, and it has the hot tub and the sauna room in it. I push it open and jump back. Eli’s sitting in the hot tub, his arms spread out on either side of the rim. My heart flips in my chest. He doesn’t see me because his eyes are closed and his head is laid back so that his face is upturned towards the ceiling. The water’s up to his shoulders, covering all of his tattoos and he’s low down, as if he’s got his knees on the bottom.
I am frozen, and I don’t know what to do.
I need to shuffle back slowly, and leave, but I can’t move. I’m rooted to the spot. Eli looks so peaceful. It’s one of the rare times that I’ve seen him look like that. I find myself staring at him, taking my fill. His strong sinewy arms are a temptation. I want to run my hands all over them. I want to run my fingers over his muscles, over his biceps and triceps and deltoids, and I want to trace every ridge, every dip and every curve.
I don’t want to leave, and I must, for my own sake, but at the very moment I step back, his eyes snap open, and he turns his head and stares right at me.
I’m having a cardiac arrest.
He pulls something out of his ear. A wireless earphone.
“You been watching me?” he asks.
“I..I haven’t…” It’s no use lying about it because what else was I doing standing here salivating at the sight of him? “I was looking around…” I point behind me, as if this will convince him. “I saw the pool and I got curious.” I shuffle back another step. “I’ll leave you to it.”
“Don’t go,” he says. “We need to talk.” My defenses sink. They’d been compromised the moment I saw him. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have listened, I would’ve turned defiantly on my heel, my chin high, my moral code intact, but I have no barriers to protect me right now, and it will take a few moments, possibly hours, before I find my willpower again.
So I step towards the hot tub. There’s an odd look in Eli’s eyes. They’re dark; darker than usual. For a moment I wonder if he’s high, if he’s taken something because he looks laidback and relaxed, a rarity for him. But I’ve been around him long enough, and I’ve seen how dedicated he is, so I know he wouldn’t touch anything like that.
“What?” I ask. At least, I think that’s what I said, but I didn’t hear my voice out loud. He looks up at me, his brown eyes, the color of rich chocolate. His gaze is softer than I’ve seen it in days.
It turns my legs to jelly. They were pretty boneless from the moment he asked me to stay, and I have no idea how I managed to walk over to him just now.
“We got off to a bad start,” he says. I think I know what he’s talking about, but he’s being vague, and I want to play devil’s advocate.
“You mean about the salt shaker, or you mean generally, from the first moment I met you?”
He frowns. “Today, when you first showed up.”
“You didn’t look too happy. You don’t like me being here. I get the message.”
“I’m sorry.”
His quick and unexpected apology surprises me. It’s almost as if the Eli I was beginning to know, before the night at Waquito’s changed things again, is back.
“You’re so changeable,” I say, voicing my thoughts out loud.
“Can’t help it. It’s in my genes.”
“I understand,” I say, throwing him a carrot. I want him to open up to me without me prodding too much, because I know from before that the more I pry, the harder it is to extract information from him. It’s better when he volunteers information willingly. “I never know where I stand with you.”
Being around Eli means being on edge. That’s why I savored looking at him without him knowing that I was. And now that I’m talking to him, now that he’s being nice again, and different—he’s so soft and gentle right now—I want to stay here all night and talk to him like this.
It’s in this moment that I am reminded I like him so much that it hurts.
“Don’t just stand there, get in.”
I swallow. My body wants to be in that hot tub with him, but my head tells me to back off.
Stay away.
Eli is wild and unpredictable, and I can’t get involved. I’m in two pieces, and as a result, I do nothing but stare back at him vacantly.
“You know you want to.” His voice is raspy, tempting too. I’m beginning to feel hot and sticky. I pinch and pull my T-shirt so as to get some air between the fabric and my skin. “No,” I state, but with less conviction than I intended.
I can’t do this.
I want to, but I can’t.
I shouldn’t.
Yet my gaze still shifts to his chest. He’s straightened up and the water comes up to his nipples. I can see more of his beautiful body now.
“No?”
“I don’t … I didn’t bring any clothes.”
“You don’t need any clothes.”
He’s playing with me. His tongue glides over his lower lip, wetting it. I’m riveted by the sight, and decide that I want my mouth on his. I want to feel his lips with mine.
I pinch my T-shirt again because the temperature’s suddenly shooting upwards.
“Feeling hot?” he asks, splaying his arms out on either side of him again, putting his football-shaped biceps on parade.
“A little,” I say, running my hand over my neck.
“Take a dip with me, Harper. Cool down.”
“Uh… ” The invite is loaded like a gun. I’m aware that I need to say something but words fail me. “Cool down?” I manage to say.
“It’s a warm night. Actually, it’s a hot night. I couldn’t sleep so here I am.”
I have so much to lose if I accept. This man can keep his cool, but I can’t. I lose my wits around him. Sense flies out of the window.
This verbal foreplay will be my undoing and if I stay here any longer talking to him, I’ll get into that hot tub, and then I’ll want all of him. He could use me like a plaything, and I would happily let him.
But the reasoning side of my brain reminds me that Eli does nothing even when surrounded by a harem of women. I know this from watching him at Waquito’s.
It’s only a dip in the tub.
And then my heart tells me he’s not the prob
lem. I am.
I want him to touch me. I want him to kiss me. I want him to do so many unspeakable things to me, and I can’t believe I’m having this conversation in my head when all he’s asked me to do is to take a dip with him.
“I didn’t bring my bikini.”
“I didn’t bring my swim shorts either.”
Now I lick my lower lip.
“Strip to your underwear,” he tells me. It’s the most suggestive and sexiest thing he’s ever said to me. This is a different Eli, and I don’t know what brought this on. Before I can formulate a reply, an objection, a denial, he says, “I’m not wearing anything either.”
My mouth goes dry, as if his words sucked all the moisture out of it. I’m a boneless, vibrating, throbbing mass of blood and tissue, and what I do next will either define me, or ruin me.
He watches me with amusement, then starts to slowly rise. I stumble back a few steps, bracing myself. Even though I have seen him naked before—and I revisit that scene every night in my bed—seeing him stand up punches the breath clean out of my chest.
Shock and anticipation mix together like an aphrodisiac cocktail. Palpitations go off in my heart like firecrackers. “See,” he says, splaying out his hands as if he’s shown me a magic trick. “I was kidding.” Turns out he lied, and he’s wearing his swim shorts.
He’s also wearing what looks like a humungous boner. Breath escapes from my lips, part admiration, part desire. I can’t decide if I want my mouth around him, or if I want him inside me.
Or both.
“Ooops,” he says, looking down and seeing his tented shorts. He sits down slowly, as if it’s painful to. “I must have been thinking about you.”
I jolt and gulp in air at this, then I examine his face for signs of amusement, but I see none. He looks serious. Or he’s pretending to be. Any moment now he’ll tell me he’s kidding again.
He hated me a few hours ago, and now he’s telling me something else. I want to believe this notion that he finds me attractive. It makes me want to yell for joy, and cry with relief.
