Page 28 of Phantom
Tess didn’t respond verbally, but she walked over to the cabinets and used yet another key on the ring of keys she had. She opened the drawers one by one, and I kept a safe distance so as not to seem like I was trying to see anything as Tess thumbed through the files and felt her hands under them to make sure there was nothing unusual.
When she finally shut the final drawer, she turned and looked at me. Sweat drenched the edge of her hairline, but her eyes still had a calm stillness to them. “Looks like we might be okay.”
“Yeah.” We walked back out of the office and then did a careful sweep of the main room, but I didn’t see anything that seemed like it would lead upward. “Didn’t you say there was a loft?”
Tess’ eyes widened, and a smile shot across her face. “Yeah.” She passed by me and walked out the front door. I followed her out, and she walked around to the back of the building, where there was another door. She used the last of the keys on her ring to unlock it and opened it, revealing a white ladder leading up. “After you.”
I stepped up to the ladder and started to climb. Some dust floated off the wood after not having been disturbed for a year, but I continued on until my head poked out of an opening at the top. My hands itched as I placed them in the hay at the top to hoist myself up, but I was too distracted by the vision to pay attention to it. There wasn’t a ton of space at the top, enough for two or three people max, and if I stood up all the way, I’d probably hit my head. It looked as if it still had most of the barn’s original framework and coloring. Hay covered the ground, and on the wall opposite the one the ladder led up to, there was a window with a makeshift bed in front of it. Next to the bed was a smaller round bed with a dog bone in it. Strings of lights hung across the banisters that must have been illuminated along with the rest of the building’s lights when Tess turned off the alarm. No wonder she loved it. It was amazing.
Tess crawled past me and over to the bed and threw herself down onto it. She stretched out, and even though I fully expected some sort of pass, she turned away from me and looked out the window. The sun was setting and was perfectly framed in the window like a work of art, rivaled only by Tess haloed in its glow.
“Pretty cool, huh?” She didn’t look back when she asked.
I did my best to commit her visage to memory. “It’s beautiful.”
She kicked the wall that separated the loft from the rest of the clubhouse. “I wanted the whole upper level, but my dad said we needed the space. I was still a teenager when he remodeled it, so he didn’t consider that I’d grow eventually, but I kind of like how cramped it is. Makes it cozy.” She pointed out the window. “It faces the festival, so after I’ve done my rounds, I get some food and crawl up here and stay here for the rest of the night. I watch the music and partying and…” She sighed. “It’s my favorite.”
Shit.
The kid that had been trying to claw his way out of me and go after his childhood love was getting dangerously close to the surface. Being alone with Tess was getting harder and harder with each passing day. The resolve I had when I told myself it was best to keep my distance was thinning, and it was just a matter of time before I decided that being with her was worth any risk. I could say I was in love, but in truth, I never really fell out of love. They say that you’d eventually realize that the people you thought you were in love with as kids were just crushes—puppy love.
Not Tess.
The way I felt about Tess was freeing, enlightening, calming. Emotions I rarely ever felt. It was as if she carried a part of me with her, and the fractured piece that was still inside me was pulling toward her peace like a high-grade magnet. I didn’t want to deny it anymore.
My heart started to beat a little faster. “Um.”
“We should go.” The bed rustled as Tess climbed off of it and crawled past me again.
She tossed me a quick smile before kicking her legs into the opening and bracing herself on the ladder before starting her descent. Disappointed wasn’t a good enough word to describe how I felt, but I followed her. I climbed down the ladder and backed out of the door, and Tess shut it again and locked it. Then we walked around to the front of the building again so that she could arm the alarm and lock those doors.
We made our way back to the front gates and out to our bikes, where Tess finally stopped and turned to face me again. “Thanks for coming. I think my dad will feel good knowing we did such a thorough job.”
“Of course.” For whatever reason, I reached up and lightly punched Tess’ arm. “Anytime.”
She snickered. “Oh, are you gonna call me Sport next?”
Yeah. I couldn’t blame her for that response. “No. I don’t know why I did that.” The desert venue was vast, but I could only imagine how chaotic and congested things would become in the coming weeks as the event approached. “You know, I was thinking. If I was really trying to pull one over, I’d be more likely to come when all the stalls and stuff were getting set up. The risk of someone bugging the place will probably go up as the event gets closer.”
“That’s a good point,” Tess replied. “I’ll talk to Nick about it. See what he wants to do.”
She turned and was getting ready to get on her bike when I suddenly said, “I’d be willing to come back every day and do a sweep.”
Tess stopped short and looked over her shoulder at me. “What?”
“Yeah.” My hands went into the pockets of my jeans, a nervous tick of mine. “It’s not a long drive, and I love being on my bike. I could come by every day and make sure things were good.”
“Are you…” Tess started, but then stopped. She opened and closed her mouth a few times and then just smiled. “Okay. I think my dad would like that. I would, too.”
I smiled back at her. “Let’s plan on that, then.”
“Yes.” Tess’ smile got even bigger. “Let’s plan on that.”
Chapter Ten
Tess
It was probably a good thing that motorcycles were best ridden with helmets and at high speeds because it meant that Colin couldn’t see me smiling like an idiot as we rode back into Hoppa. I wasn’t sure what had done it, but something changed. After a week of talking about how he couldn’t stay in one place for too long and how he had to get out of Hoppa as soon as he could, he was suddenly committing himself to stay at least through MiD. For all of my considering that it might be best to pull back and stay professional with Colin, he’d sucked me back in again in just a few words. Call it love or stupidity, but I wanted to be with Colin, and if he was going to be staying in Hoppa and if my dad liked him so much, why couldn’t I be?
