The elevator finally dinged, and the door slid open like a heaven-sent escape route.
Or, as Bowen filed in behind me, a hell-sent metal box of sexual purgatory.
Ya know. For an elevator that had taken roughly a hundred years to reach the bottom floor, it was suspiciously empty. But even if I’d wanted to, there was no way I was trudging up the stairs in wet shoes.
I wedged myself into the far corner and did my best to look uninterested. Tired. Unbothered. But my heaving chest and sweaty hands were telltale signs that I was none of those things.
“What floor?” he asked.
“Four, please.”
He chuckled and hit the number.
“What’s so funny?”
He shook his head. “Oh, nothing.”
Leaning to the side, I tried to peer around him to see what floor he was on. Not that I cared or anything. I was there for work. Nothing else. Bowen’s being there too didn’t factor into the rest of my week at all. Nope. Not one bit.
Let’s be real, the hotel was huge. The likelihood of us running into each other again wasn’t impossible, but if I timed it right, I could make it unlikely. I’d just have to keep my eyes peeled for the man who had a penchant for crunching numbers and my resolve.
Predictably, the door slid open on the fourth floor, and ever the gentleman, Bowen pressed his hand against the jamb, keeping it from closing as I stepped off. I stole one last glance. My stomach was in knots. My mind swirled as I tried to find the perfect words to tell him goodnight, goodbye, I miss you, I love you, I hate you, and everything in between.
My brain came up with nothing appropriate, but I didn’t end up needing words at all.
With a cocky grin, he stepped off the elevator too.
“Wh-what are you doing?” I stammered, hoping like hell his answer was turning my brain and better judgment off before physically ravaging me.
As if he could read my mind, that damn grin stretched. “Going to my room.”
My mouth fell open. Of course he was. Of fucking course he was on the fourth floor. This did not help the emotional gauntlet I was parading through where I couldn’t quite decide if I wanted to launch into his arms or move to a different continent.
The side of his sexy mouth danced, both taunting me and pissing me off. “You still want to tell me this isn’t fate?” he inquired, pleased as a peach.
Pissed off won that battle. “Currently, I just want to tell you to fuck off.”
He barked a loud, proud chuckle. “All right, then. Goodnight, Remi. My room is at the end of the hall, in the very desirable location across from the ice machine—should you need me.”
I scoffed. “Well, if this was predestined, your precious fate sucks. Because I’m on that end of the hall.” I pointed in the opposite direction, next to the fire escape, which I would be using for the duration of my trip.
“Okay,” he said curtly. Gloating. The bastard was all but a one-man conga line as he strutted away.
I sat on the edge of my bed.
Happy. Sad. Scared. Excited. Annoyed. Relieved. Frustrated.
So many conflicting emotions fired off inside me, one after another. If it was fate, then that bitch was cruel, and I cursed her out loud until I finally fell into a fitful night’s sleep.
Bowen
When I was fourteen, my buddy and I stole a cigarette from his dad’s pack. We huddled behind his parents’ shed, lit it, and then took turns pretending it wasn’t the nastiest shit we’d ever tasted. But as not to become the laughingstock of ninth grade, I managed to sprint all the way home before I puked. And puked. And fucking puked. That was my first and last experience with smoking.
However, as I waited outside the hotel for over three hours, the only benches being in the smoking section, I was reasonably sure I was still going to die of lung cancer or small talk about the weather.
I’d gotten little sleep the night before. Tossing and turning, knowing she was right down the hall, so close yet completely out of my reach. The only thing that had kept me from going crazy were the memories of her sliding through a spectrum of panic, joy, anger, desire, and back again during our all-too-brief interaction the night before.
That wasn’t the Remi I’d known. My Remi was a go-getter, often making up her mind in a split second and refusing to back down, no matter the cost. She didn’t waffle, flip-flop, or yo-yo.
The woman at the bar had lingered close even as she tried to run away.
She’d stared at my mouth as she told me to fuck off.
Her fingertips had dug into my chest, desperately trying to hold on even as she pushed me away.
