Heaven's Ballroom

by Aiden Bates

  It didn’t matter. As far as I was concerned, neither Duncan Rourke nor his asshole friend needed to know. Fuck the coffee, and fuck rehearsal—I was going home. Immediately.

  Before anything else when wrong.

  “You forgot your macchiato!” the barista called after me as I shouldered my way through the crowd and out the door.

  13

  Nathan

  I stepped into the office that morning looking like a million bucks and feeling like two million.

  Unfortunately, the first thing I learned upon sitting down at my desk was that overnight, I’d somehow managed to lose three.

  “Mornington account,” Don Sterling said grimly, slapping their file down on my desk. “Just heard this morning that they’re switching over to Hayward Financial.”

  “Those dumb fucks?” My brow twisted as I flipped open their latest reports. I’d done right by the Morningtons—which, knowing the Morningtons, didn’t mean shit. They’d lost everything in the Great Depression and again in the housing market collapse of ‘08. It had been my first case when I’d signed on to Sterling Enterprises—convince the Morningtons to let me handle investments on fortune number three they’d managed to build themselves back up from nothing again. Sterling hadn’t thought it was possible. I’d earned my stripes when I proved him wrong. They were resilient folks, the Morningtons, but for understandable reasons, flighty as they came. “Why the hell are they jumping ship?”

  “Hayward made an appearance out in Los Angeles himself, from the sounds of things. Took the time to sit them down to some nice Japanese fusion cuisine and fed them sake until they warmed up to him.”

  “The last thing that warmed up to Malcolm Hayward was his own asshole after too many jalapeno poppers at Chili’s,” I swore. “Must’ve been some sake.”

  “Must’ve been.” Sterling’s dark brow was set in its perpetual don’t fuck this up line. “I’m sending you out there. Fix this.”

  “Can’t Griffin handle this? He knows Hayward’s pitch style better than I do.”

  “With a baby on the way? Not happening. Besides, they’re your client. Shouldn’t have to remind you, Garnet.”

  Christ, Sterling was a hard-ass. It had made the company what it was today, but still. An annoying trait to deal with when the chips were down.

  “When?” I glanced at the calendar on my computer—I had shit going on all week, not even mentioning finding time to take Damon out again. “I should be free next Thursday or so…”

  “Not next Thursday. You’re leaving today. Cassandra will send you the details.” He rapped his knuckles on the wooden top of my desk—always the superstitious type. “Good luck, Garnet.”

  I waited until he was out of my office with the door closed behind him to slam my own fist down onto my desk.

  “Fuck.” I had to say it aloud, or else it was going to rattle around behind my teeth for the rest of the day. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”

  Months of nothing but success—win after win after win—and now, of all times, my biggest client was deciding that they had issues. I’d tripled their portfolio in their first month with us, for fuck’s sake. But of course, now that I’d met someone worth actually sticking around in New York for, it was California, here I come.

  I texted Damon immediately. Didn’t even have to think about it. We hadn’t made plans yet, but I knew how sketchy it sounded on paper. Hey, I know I just fucked you last night, but I’m disappearing to California for the next week. Bye!

  God, he was going to hate me.

  But then I remembered that intimate little moment we’d shared last night—the one where I was sure he was about to say I love you before he fell asleep in my arms. The second moment this morning when he’d left and I’d nearly said it as well. We were falling for each other faster than oil prices in the winter. It’d never happened to me before, but there it was. And surely if it was real—if it wasn’t just something I’d pulled out of my imagination and spun into existence—then a week in California wouldn’t hurt it. If the self-help books my Omega father had always been reading were to be believed, it would only make us stronger.

  Business in California. Leaving tonight. I saw how grim the words looked even as I typed them. They even felt grim—like a knife slipped in between the ribs in the dark. Want me to get any celebrity autographs for you?

  I placed my phone back on my desk and stared at it for longer than I should have, hoping for an answer. A have fun in Cali! maybe, or a fly safe, Mr. Garnet.

  Nothing. Another five minutes, and nothing still.

  I sighed, putting my phone back into my pocket and gathering up my things. He was probably in rehearsal already, dancing his sexy ass off up there on the Ballroom’s stage. I just hoped he’d get the message before I had to leave. When I glanced at the email with my flight plans on it, I realized I wouldn’t even have time to swing by to steal a kiss if I didn’t want to miss my flight.

  It sucked, but that was business. I’d known when I followed in my Alpha father’s footsteps that I’d spend a lot of time away from the people I cared about. The only difference between dear old dad and I was that he hadn’t really cared about the family he was leaving behind, and I’d never expected to meet anyone I really cared about in the first place.

  Funny how this kind of shit found ways to work itself out just in time to go straight to hell.

  “Cassandra,” I said sweetly as I came up to the front desk. “Do me a favor and forward my calls to my cell?”

  “Sure thing, Nate.” She adjusted her horn-rimmed glasses and made a note of it. “Excited for your big trip?”

  “Not in the slightest.” I moved to leave, then paused. I wanted a failsafe. I didn’t want to fuck this up. “Especially if a Damon Bishop calls, okay? I know I’ll be on a time difference, but don’t be afraid of waking me up.”

  Her dark red lips curled into a smile. “Surely the unconquerable Nathan Garnet hasn’t finally fallen for someone.”

  “He might have.” I grinned back at her. “But just so we’re clear, I’m the one who does the conquering.”

  I slipped on my coat as I powered out to the elevator. It’d be a pain in the ass, getting around in time for my flight, but if I got in the right cab I’d probably make it—if only just. I checked my phone again on the way back to my apartment, hoping that Damon had responded. Maybe he’d be able to take Lady—she didn’t particularly like flying, and she had a bad habit of chasing the housekeeper into the bathroom if I left her there while I was away.

  Unfortunately, there was still no answer. Looked like I’d be buying an extra first class seat for my aging, disgruntled corgi, then.

  Where the fuck are you, Damon? I found myself thinking over and over again as my dress shoes beat a rhythm out onto the sidewalk back to my place. Answer, dammit! Why won’t you answer me?

  Finally, I quit checking. Winning the Morningtons over would be stressful enough without worrying about what my not-even-a-boyfriend-yet might say about my absence. I’d call him in the cab to the airport if I was lucky. If not…

  Well, I’d deal with that in Los Angeles, I guessed. Typical fucking Hayward, really. Didn’t even work for the asshole and he was still finding ways to muck up my life.

  14

  Damon

  I turned my key in the lock of my apartment door and shouldered through it, feeling particularly victimized by Murphy’s Law. If it can go wrong, it will felt like the story of my entire life.

  How was I supposed to have known that the redheaded Alpha getting handsy with me at the Ballroom last week was on my own university’s scholarship board? How could I have planned for my—not boyfriend, maybe, but romantic interest’s—insane decision to split the man’s eyebrow open with his fist?

  You’re going to lose your scholarship. The thought came to me like—well, like a punch to the face. The redhead—Jim, Duncan had called him—couldn’t boot me from my scholarship just because he didn’t like me, but he could boot me thanks to the scholarship�
��s morality clause. It wasn’t my fault that stripping was the only way I could afford New York City rent when school already took up so much of my time, but the board wouldn’t see it that way. Not with Jim, the redheaded stepchild, leading the charge.

  I tossed my coat onto the rack and managed to drop my phone in the process. It landed on the floor with a resounding CRACK!—Murphy’s Law strikes again. This time, it was in the form of a spiderweb of broken glass across the phone’s screen. When I bent down to pick it up, I found that I couldn’t even scroll across it to unlock the damn thing. My thumb became another victim of good old Murphy as soon as I tried—the pad of it ran across the glass at a bad angle, leaving me hissing as blood welled up and smeared across the shattered screen.

  Zero for three. This wasn’t my day.

  I was still looking down at it, bemoaning my general situation, as I came into the living room. As soon as I rounded the corner, though, a fiendish shriek cut through the air.

  “Hi-ya!” Anders cried out, baseball bat clutched fiercely in his fists.

  He swung it, stopping only when he was about half an inch from cracking it against my nose.

  “Okay, what the fuck?” I said—half to Anders, half to the universe in general. Asshole redhead, broken phone, bleeding thumb, and now my roommate was trying to kill me. I might’ve gotten lucky the night before, but as of this morning, luck was not on my side in the least.

  “Oh, thank god!” Anders moaned, lowering the bat as his shoulders relaxed in relief. “I thought you were him.”

  “Him who?” I eyed his weapon of choice as it clunked to the floor. “Is that my baseball bat?”

  “It is, and I appreciate the fact that your paranoid ass keeps it by your bedside.” Anders vaulted the couch and slumped onto it, eyes bloodshot and hair awry.

  “Are you on a bender?” was my third question. And, since Anders was apparently only answering every other one: “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Anders sighed. “Just didn’t sleep at all last night.” He glared over my shoulder at the door. “Seems that my stalker has reared his ugly head again.”

  “He came here?” I blinked, surprised. “How does he know where you live?”

  “Because he’s a stalker, Damon. Duh.” Anders buried his face in his hands. “He was at the door all night, banging on it and commanding me to come out. I finally called the police, but by the time they showed up, he was gone.”

  “Benefits of living in the Bronx, I guess.”

  “Yeah. No shit.” He rubbed his eyes, then looked up at me. “You’re bleeding, you know.”

  I glanced down at my thumb, which was dripping red onto our secondhand rug. “Shit—sorry. Broke my phone. Cut myself hoping that it was still usable.”

  “Band-Aids in the cabinet over the sink.” Anders nodded at the bathroom door and I plodded in, shifting aside his birth control and just-in-case pregnancy tests until I found what I was looking for.

  “Scooby-Doo?” I held the box up to him as I came back out. “Really?”

  Anders shrugged. “I like the Mystery Machine ones. They’re groovy. Can we please stop judging my Band-Aid choices and discuss the fact that this creep actually showed up at our apartment last night?”

  “Sorry,” I said lamely, wrapping up my thumb beneath the Band-Aid’s gauze. “I should have been here. Can’t believe you went through that alone.”

  “Actually—yeah, I’d rather talk about that. Where were you last night?”

  If the morning hadn’t been such a shitshow so far, I might have smiled. “Date with Nathan, remember? I, uh. I stayed the night.”

  “Well, at least one of us had a good night.” Normally, Anders would have been popping champagne over the fact that I was finally dating and banging again after my last ex absconded with my house cat—but he was shaken still, and I didn’t exactly feel like celebrating either.

  “Shitty morning, though,” I said, slumping into the couch myself. “Remember my creep at the club last week?”

  That, at least, earned me one of Anders’ grins. “How could I forget? Your darling Nathan cracked his skull open. Very heroic of him.”

  “Yeah, well, turns out the poor slob Nathan beat up for me is on my scholarship board.”

  Anders’ mouth fell open into a soft little O. “No. No fucking way.”

  “Hate to say it, but…yeah.”

  “You think he’s going to come after you for it?”

  The look in Jim’s eyes as he’d caught sight of me bubbled up in my memory, spiteful and full of venom. “Actually, I know he is. I can feel it.”

  “Well, fuck.”

  “That sums it all up pretty well, yeah.”

  “Welp. This calls for a beer.”

  I watched him rise from the couch and thought about following him, but my heart just wasn’t into it. Beer wasn’t going to solve my problems—not this time. In fact, I didn’t think anything was going to solve this. Some things were just too far gone to save.

  “Actually, I’m going to pass.” I glanced down at my phone again, seeing messages on my notifications bar that I had no way to check. “Can you text Foster? Let him know we’ll be missing rehearsal?”

  “Already done,” Anders assured me, cracking open a bottle on the kitchen counter. “I was hoping you’d come down to the police station with me. Help me file a proper report with the day crew, since the nighttime guys were so unhelpful.”

  “Yeah, of course. Just…” I glanced down at my clothes. “Gimme a sec to change? I’m still in the stuff I wore last night.”

  “Walks of shame are such a bitch.” Anders raised his beer to me as I rose from the couch. “Here’s to better luck tomorrow, I guess.”

  “Yeah,” I said glumly. “Cheers.”

  My room was a mess when I stepped inside it. Part-time stripper, full-time student—it was a recipe for disaster in the truest sense of the word. Textbooks and notes were scattered across my bed, costumes and dirty gym clothes across my floor. Suddenly, I was glad that Nathan and I had been spending our time at his place instead of mine. His apartment was so pristine and untouched-looking compared to the warzone of my room. If he’d wanted to fuck me in my bed, he would’ve had to shove two years of late-night study sessions off of the mattress first.

  I picked up my anatomy textbook before I looked for a change of clothes, gazing wistfully at the highlighted sections on its pages. I’d worked so hard to keep my head above water on this degree over the last two years. Sleepless nights, early mornings, finals week stress—I’d done it all.

  It didn’t feel fair that one asshole and a bad turn of happenstance was about to pull the rug out from under me on it. Getting my degree hadn’t just been the promise of a better life for me—it would’ve meant having enough money that I could send some back home for once. A life for myself beyond the winding and grinding at the Ballroom, which I’d always known I’d only be able to keep up until my thirties at best. A life for my parents and sisters beyond the occupational desert of the little West Virginia town I’d grown up in. Something better. Something more.

  And now, just as I finally felt like my love life was coming together, the rest of my life was falling apart.

  Nathan. I grabbed for my phone, feeling the urge to text him, only to remember that I wouldn’t be texting anyone at all until I got my screen fixed. I couldn’t even grab his number out of my contact list, thanks to my screen’s shattered state.

  “Hey, Anders?” I came out of the room in a fresh change of clothes with one final hope. “Any idea what I did with that little slip of paper that had Nathan’s number on it?”

  “Don’t you have it in your—” Anders stopped as he remembered my phone’s current state. “Don’t worry. Let’s have a look for it and you can text him from mine. Maybe he’ll be able to help with your scholarship thing. He travels in all kinds of fancy circles, I bet. Little piece of paper can’t have gone far, right?”

  We turned the apartment upside down searching for Nathan’s
number, but not to any results. I found a roll of quarters beneath the couch and Anders’ favorite thong on top of the fridge—but as far as little slips of paper went, we came up short.

  “Head by his place after he’s off work,” Anders suggested. “He’s probably freaking out, thinking that now that you’ve fucked him, he’s never going to see you again.”

  I laughed. “I don’t think Nathan is really the type to hang around his phone waiting for some love-struck Omega to call.”

  Anders raised an eyebrow. “Love-struck, huh?”

  I groaned. “I’ll tell you on the way to the station. For now, let’s go file your report.”

  I cast a final glance inside my apartment before I shut the door, locking it up tight. Somehow, now even the place where Anders and I lived felt like it was working against us. Now that Anders’ stalker had found its location and one of the kitchen cabinets had apparently eaten Nathan’s number, I felt about as good about it as I did about the rest of my day.

  Which was to say, not good at all.

  15

  Nathan

  “Bruff!” Lady yipped as the flight touched down at LAX.

  I slipped her a doggie treat from my pocket and turned my phone off airplane mode. “Behave, Lady.”

  “…Bruff,” she replied, tentatively sniffing the treat before digging in.

  As my phone regained signal, a dozen emails and messages from work poured in, one after another.

  Nothing from Damon, though.

  It was a bad start to a trip I didn’t even want to be on.

  A cab from their airport took us to the company apartment I’d be staying in for the week. I’d touched base with the Morningtons’ assistant before my flight had taken off and gotten a go-ahead for dinner with the couple later that night. But by the time I’d gotten my suit unfurled and ironed, my phone buzzed with more bad news.