Heaven's Ballroom

by Aiden Bates

  “Suppose I did.” I heard him shift in place—not entirely going, but not staying either. “Month was nearly up anyway.”

  “Suppose it was.” If there’d been a chance to ask him to stay, it would’ve been then. But no matter how bad I wanted to, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. After having what we’d had, I didn’t think I could handle watching it fizzle out into just a few more nights together before we both got sick of each other and I never saw him again. “Get home safe, Duncan.”

  He breathed in a deep breath and released it in a sigh. “Yeah. I always do. Enjoy yoga, Kieran. You’ve got my number.”

  I was still drying the dishes as he closed the door.

  14

  Duncan

  The temperature shift happened so suddenly, like going from Fourth of July fireworks to a white Christmas in the blink of an eye. One moment, there I’d been, enjoying the way I could stare at him and knowing how bad we needed each other without needing to say so much as a word. The next, it had felt like he couldn’t get me out of his life fast enough.

  I knew how to take a hint when I saw one, but, Christ. After all the time we spent together, I didn’t know how I’d managed to miss all the little signs leading up to the big one. Kieran might as well have spelled it out with big red letters on his wall: LEAVE. As I walked out the door, I still couldn’t decide whether I’d done something wrong that morning, or if I’d been doing something wrong all along.

  The next few weeks dragged on in a haze. From my penthouse to the office to the streets, I felt like I was moving through a fog everywhere I went. My coworker, Nathan, came back from paternity leave with pictures of his new baby, and all I could think of was how Nathan’s Omega had once worked at the same place that Kieran did. When Max Griffin brought his twin daughters into the office, I should’ve been cooing over how cute they were, but instead I couldn’t help but feel like any chance of having that kind of life for myself had been left on Kieran’s bed with his stupid fucking sheets.

  All logic said that the longer I was away from Kieran, the easier it should have gotten, but it didn’t. If anything, it only got worse. A call from his mother out of the blue, wondering if I could give her the name of my antique dealer friend, made my voice catch in my throat as I passed along the business number. A yoga ad on a bus stop bench only reminded me of the way his hips had felt beneath my hands, downward dog as he pressed his body against mine. A thousand little things suddenly had whole new meanings—the taste of kale, the smell of steak, hearing a blues rift playing in an elevator or seeing a pretentiously infused bottle of vodka at a bar.

  When my phone buzzed two weeks later at my favorite coffee shop, I had to finish dumping three packets of sugar into my latte before I could answer it. Kieran Drake had even ruined my fucking coffee habits—so imagine my surprise when it turned out that the text I’d received was from him.

  Need to talk, it read. It was a loaded thing to say; reading it should have pulled up my anxiety and struck me clear through with it. But instead, it made my pulse race in a completely different way. I was excited, I realized. Fucking thrilled, in fact, with just the prospect of seeing him again.

  Sure, I shot back. What works for you?

  That Italian place you took me to? 7 p.m. tonight?

  I sent back an affirmative and plugged it into my calendar, setting a little notification to go off just in case I forgot.

  It was overkill, sure, but I did it anyway.

  Like there was actually ever a single possibility that I could forget.

  As soon as I walked into the restaurant, I could sense that something was wrong. Kieran wasn’t even there yet, according to the maître d', but it didn’t matter. I could feel it in the air, the same way you could taste the ozone just before a storm. A storm of what, though? I had no way of knowing.

  I’d spent a month chasing Kieran. Spent two weeks certain that I’d lost him. And every few nights since I first met him, I’d managed to have the exact same dream: rowing a rugged little rowboat across a rough, ragged sea. I’d shown up in my best shirt and a pair of jeans with an easy zipper, one that he could undo with his teeth if he wanted me, one that I’d probably break when I got home if he dumped me as I tore them off to stroke myself to what we could have been one last time.

  When Kieran finally arrived, the feeling of wrongness only got worse.

  He picked his way across the restaurant, moving with a strange delicateness that I hadn’t seen in his step before as he followed the waiter to our table. Like he was suddenly worried about knocking something over, which was silly. He’d always moved with such elegance in his stride, imagining him as clumsy was damn near impossible.

  “You look good,” I told him, because despite the dark circles beneath his eyes and the greenish tinge to his skin, he still did.

  “Yeah,” he said, laughing like he didn’t believe me. “Yeah, you do too.”

  I should’ve made more small talk then. I’d been on enough shitty dates, gone to enough uncomfortable business meetings where everyone would have rather been somewhere else, that I knew how things should’ve played out. I’d ask him how he’d been. He’d say something inconsequential in reply. We’d talk about the weather, or about the Yankees, or about the ridiculous prices on the wine list. Talk ourselves silly and feign enjoying our dinner until one of us finally got up the guts to say what actually needed to be said.

  I should’ve made the small talk, but I didn’t. Maybe because I couldn’t bear the way he was looking at me, like he was sitting down to have dinner with a ghost. Maybe because, for the whole time I’d known him, Kieran had been anything but fake—and watching him try to feign politeness now would’ve nearly killed me.

  “You want to break up.” The words sounded too rough, completely foreign in my throat, but they needed to be said.

  He blinked at me, surprised by my frankness. “It’s hard to break up when you were never in a relationship in the first place, isn’t it?”

  “That’s debatable.” The waiter came by with a basket of bread, but Kieran seemed to blanch at the sight of it, and I was suddenly the furthest thing from hungry. I waved it away with the back of my hand. “Do you really not think that what we had was a relationship?”

  “You never called me your boyfriend. It was a bet, Duncan. Not anything more than that.”

  “I don’t spend a month of my life with someone over a bet.” The idea was so ridiculous, I nearly laughed. “Would a label really have changed what we had?”

  “It might have,” he said, his gaze dropped to a plate that I suddenly felt that he had no intention of eating off of.

  “Then I’ll give it to you.” I’d thought I’d be able to face whatever it was he had to tell me with complacency, but I’d been dead wrong. The hollowness I’d felt when I first sat down was quickly turning to anger. Frustration. An eagerness to make him see exactly what our time together had meant to me. “You want the label? You’ve got it. You’re my boyfriend, Kieran. I’m yours. You want dinner and a movie? To be wined and dined like the fucking catch you are? Walks in the moonlight in Central Park before I take you home and make you moan my name all night? Fine.” I placed my hands down on the table with finality, hoping that maybe, just maybe, he might reach for them. “You’ve got it. I’ll give it to you. I’ll give you everything.”

  Atop the table, his fingers twitched. For a moment, my heart swelled with something akin to hope—that maybe, he’d move them across the table to brush against mine.

  Instead, he moved both hands to his lap.

  “That’s not what this ever was, Duncan,” he said softly. “Maybe if this had played out differently—if we were the kind of people that did movies and moonlit walks…”

  “But we’re not, are we.” It wasn’t a question. I leaned back in my chair, surveying the emptiness of his expression and feeling that same emptiness in my core, eating away at any other hope I’d had for us like a black fucking hole. “We’re the kind of men who make bets and play w
ith each other’s hearts.”

  “It was fun while it lasted.” He forced a smile, a sad kind of thing that died a few seconds after it first graced his lips.

  “But it has to end.” I didn’t even believe the words as I said them—I was saying them for his benefit, not mine.

  “All of this…it’s changed me, Duncan. You know? I knew who I was before. And now…”

  “I get it.” I gritted my teeth, fighting back the urge to roar at him. You idiot, I wanted to say. If you’ve changed, so have I. We changed together! You were so fearless when I met you—how dare you chicken out on me now? But whatever anger I felt, I couldn’t quite pull it to the surface. I could tell it was hurting him to do this—and dammit, it might’ve been the first time an Omega ever broke things off with me, but I was determined to take it with poise. “The bet went too far, huh?”

  “Guess it did. At first, I thought I was enjoying that…”

  I raised an eyebrow, feeling that flicker of hope again. “I know I did.”

  “But I don’t know what I’m doing here, Duncan. I don’t think you do either. Maybe in a year, two…”

  Finally, I really did laugh. “Are you asking me to wait for you?”

  “No,” he said abruptly, eyes widening with seriousness. “No, God. I’d never ask that of you. Just, I’m not ready for this yet. I need…time, I guess. Figure out who I am. What I want. Before you, I didn’t even think I was capable of feeling the things you’ve made me feel, and now, after you…”

  “I don’t want there to be an after me.” There. I’d said it. The thing that I’d been trying to swallow back for the last two weeks—the one thing that I was certain, mid-breakup, was the last thing I was meant to say.

  “Just…thank you, Duncan.” The pale streaks in his seafoam eyes made them look like shattered glass—but there was a sincerity in them that I was still a little too hurt to appreciate. “Thank you for our time together. I’m grateful for it. Really.”

  “Jesus, Kieran.” I shook my head, rapping my knuckles against the table and clenching my jaw even tighter. “Don’t thank me. It wasn’t fucking charity—and even if it was, you’re not the kind of person who’d accept it.”

  “Sorry,” he mumbled, running a hand through his hair anxiously. “I don’t really do breakups, you know. Never had a need to before.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re botching this one.” My heart felt like someone had just taken a boot to it, but for some reason, at my core I still wanted to make him laugh for real one last time. “I was expecting the full Jerry Springer. You throw a chair, I put my fist through the table, a couple of big burly bodyguards in black t-shirts have to come and pull us apart…”

  A tense, choked sound came from the waiter as he reappeared to take our order. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Rourke, but please don’t put your fist through the table…”

  “Joking,” I explained apologetically, casting a wry glance back to Kieran. “Unless…you’d like me to?”

  The laugh that bubbled up from Kieran’s lips was so pure and sweet and good, it broke my heart all over again. He pressed his hand to his lips like he was embarrassed by it—but it had already escaped out into the world, the only real victory I’d have for the night.

  I made him laugh until the end. At least I’d always have that.

  “No,” Kieran finally said, to the waiter’s relief. “No, I think we’d better leave the table unaccosted.”

  “With the table’s well-being squared away…Are you two ready to order?”

  Kieran’s brows narrowed, suddenly uncomfortable. “I…I should be going, really…”

  “No,” I said, reaching across the table toward him. There was no hand there for me to hold, but dammit, it didn’t matter. Kieran wasn’t a one-night stand for me, any more than I was for him. If he was going to leave, it was going to be on a good note—not with him rushing out the door. “Stay. One last dinner. Jesus got one—don’t see why I shouldn’t.”

  He smirked. “You’re putting yourself on par with Jesus now, Duncan?”

  I shrugged, affecting that old arrogance I knew he found so irresistibly charming. “You called it first. I still remember you that night—Oh, God, you called me. Oh my God, oh my God…”

  He leaned forward, grinning, and swatted at me. “You’re intolerable, you know that?”

  “But you’re staying,” I countered.

  He drew in a breath, then nodded. “A last supper. Can’t hurt, right?”

  15

  Kieran

  It was a night I knew I’d be playing on repeat in the cinema of my memories for a long, long time. Duncan had joked about doing the full Jerry Springer thing, and when I showed up at the restaurant, part of me had been expecting it. Maybe I’d even wanted that—the shouting, the stomping, saying the cruelest things we could to each other. Spitting the insults out, each one more scathing than the next, because we’d actually gotten to know one another well enough that we could guess at what the most hurtful things might be.

  It would have been easier, leaving him in the wreckage of overturned tables, wine-stained napkins and broken glass. I could’ve lived with myself if we’d only been able to leave things on a sour note—but Duncan wasn’t like that. Instead, he was the perfect gentleman, making me laugh and sipping ice water with me when I realized I couldn’t stomach the idea of wine. When it came time to part ways, he put me in a cab home, resting his palm atop the yellow roof and resisting a visible urge to dip down and kiss me goodbye.

  I’d nearly caved then. Grabbed him by his collar, pulled him into the back seat along with me, and made him feel how much it broke my heart to know I had to go on without him. But of course, I couldn’t—we’d already given each other the perfect send-off. I couldn’t have asked for an easier breakup—no matter whether we’d actually ever been dating, or if the month that had passed between us was just an extended bout of foreplay. I knew I couldn’t ruin it by complicating things all over again. Duncan had given me closure. One last fond memory of him. The perfect goodbye.

  Which didn’t explain why, as Noah and I passed through the crowd of hot, sweaty, shirtless Alphas at the Backdoor the next weekend, behind every set of broad, muscled shoulders, I was still catching myself looking for Duncan’s face.

  “God, this place is weird,” Noah yelled over the heavy, thumping house music. “I’ve touched like seven dicks already and I’ve had my hands in my pockets the whole fucking time.”

  He wasn’t wrong—the Backdoor had a reputation, and not the kind that you wrote home to your parents about. Where the Ballroom was known for being a place of class, elegance and a bit of naughty fun on the side, the Backdoor took naughty to whole new extremes. They kept half their dancers imprisoned in cages like the lovechild of a ’60s’ go-go club and Alcatraz, which horny Alphas could feed tokens into until the cell doors popped open, releasing the dancer of their choice. The other half of the dancers were wearing so little, they made the golden thongs Noah and I wore on our own shifts look prudish by comparison.

  I grimaced as a smirking Alpha with glazed-over eyes shuffled against me, gyrating his crotch like it was something special when I could clearly see he couldn’t have been packing anything longer or thicker than my thumb. He had the same coloring as Duncan, the dark waves and lightly tanned skin, but there was something completely unintelligent about his expression. Nothing compared to Duncan’s perpetually sharp, sparkling eyes.

  “God,” I breathed, pushing the Alpha off me and pulling Noah back as he sought to delve deeper into the fray. “Do you want to just go home, man? I’m honestly not feeling great, and this place is just…so, so skeevy.”

  “You sick or something? Want me to grab us some drinks?” Noah offered.

  I considered it, but whatever part of me that normally itched to let loose on Grey Goose and Redbull was currently lying dormant. In reality, I hadn’t really felt right in weeks—not sick or anything, but suddenly a little more fragile. Like, for no real reason, I needed to move every
where more carefully now. Maybe to avoid bumping into someone like Duncan Rourke again—or maybe because the tension in my gut was constantly leaving me hoping that if I was careful enough, I might actually bump into Duncan Rourke himself.

  “Nah,” I said, trying to shake the weird vibes of the club off my shoulders. “Best keep a level head tonight. Don’t want to go back to Foster without any precious information.”

  “It’d be his own damn fault,” Noah said with a laugh. “Who sends dancers out on a reconnaissance mission?”

  I chuckled back at him. He was right—if Foster had wanted real information on what the Backdoor was doing to pack their house every night despite having worse dancers and worse music, he should have come around himself. “Some spies we are.”

  “I’m gonna go grab a whiskey ginger. You want anything?”

  “A water would be nice,” I answered, watching Noah disappear toward the bar.

  Despite the creepy crowd, the discomfort on the faces of the Backdoor’s dancers, and the general feeling like I was one cocktail away from being roofied in a place like this, I had to admit it had at least one thing going for it: it wasn’t the Ballroom. As much as I loved the atmosphere, the ambiance, the dancers and the patrons of my own stomping grounds, I had to admit that it had been harder to go to work there after Duncan and I parted ways.

  The Ballroom was the place where I’d first laid eyes on him. The place where we’d made the stupid, ill-conceived bet that very well might have ruined the only genuinely good relationship that either of us would ever have. I thought about it every night in bed, how differently things might have ended up if I’d just asked him on a date instead of gambling with my fucking heart. And even though I knew that there was no way of changing things—I wasn’t even sure that I would if I could—every time I took the stage at the Ballroom these days, I found myself scanning the crowd, hoping to spot an impeccable suit cut for a man the size of a linebacker. For his dark waves and his smug, lopsided smile.