Not in Love

ELI

THE PREVIOUS NIGHTPublished by Nôv'elD/rama.Org.

She looked even more beautiful than in her picture.

And she’d looked pretty fucking stunning in that, too, standing in front of a painfully familiar UT Austin sign. Not a selfie—a regular old-school photo, cropped to cut out her companion. All that was left was a slender, dark-skinned arm slung lazily around a shoulder. And, of course, her. Smiling, but only faintly. There, but remote.

Beautiful.

Not that it mattered much. Eli had hooked up with enough people to know that a person’s looks had a little less impact on the quality of casual sex than what that person was looking for. Still, when he arrived at the hotel lobby and spotted her at the bar, sitting straight on the tall stool, he stopped in his tracks. Hesitated, even though his meeting with Hark and the others had run behind, and dropping home to check on Tiny had put him a few minutes late.

She was drinking Sanpellegrino—a relief, since given their plans for the night, anything else would have given him pause. Her jeans and sweater were simple, and her posture was a thing of beauty. Relaxed, yet regal. Spine unbent, but not on edge. She didn’t look nervous, and had the easy air of someone who did this often enough to know exactly what to expect.

Eli remembered her pertinent questions and straight-to-the-point answers. She’d messaged him the day before, and when he’d asked, Where would you like to meet? her response had been,

Not my apartment.

My place doesn’t work either. I can book a hotel and cover the cost.

I’m okay with splitting.

No need.

Works for me, then. FYI, I’ll share my location with a friend who has my login info to the app.

Please do. Would you like my phone number?

We can keep messaging here.

Sounds good. Whatever made her feel safest. The dating app game could be dangerous. Then again, the app they were using wasn’t for dating, not by any correct meaning of the word.

Eli glanced at the woman one last time, and something resembling the anticipation he used to be capable of rose inside him. Good, he told himself. This is going to be good. He started walking again but stopped a few feet away.

When another man approached.

Some poor asshole hitting on her, Eli originally figured, but it quickly became apparent that she already knew him. Her eyes widened, then narrowed in a one-two punch. Her spine locked. She shifted back, seeking more distance.

An ex of some kind, Eli thought as the man spoke urgently. A hushed conversation began, and while the elevator music was too loud for Eli to pick up the words, the tension in her shoulder blades wasn’t a good sign. She shook her head, then ran a hand through her dark, glossy curls, and when they swept to the side, he caught the line of her nape: stiff. Stiffer as the man started talking faster. Inching closer. Gesticulating harder.

Then his hand closed around her upper arm, and Eli intervened.

He was at the bar in seconds, but the woman was already trying to pry herself free. He stopped behind her stool and ordered, “Let her go.”

The man glanced up, glassy-eyed. Drunk, maybe. “This is none of your business, bro.”

Eli stepped closer, bicep brushing against the woman’s back. “Let. Her. Go.”

The man looked, really looked. Had a brief moment of common sense, in which he estimated, correctly, that he had no chance against Eli. Reluctantly, slowly, he unhanded the woman and raised his arms in a peacekeeping gesture, knocking over her glass in the process. “There’s a misunderstanding—”

“Is there?” He glanced at the woman, who was rescuing her phone from a puddle of Sanpellegrino. Her silence was answer enough. “Nope. Get out,” he ordered, at once amiable and menacing. Eli’s entire professional life relied on his ability to find something that would motivate people to successfully do their jobs, and in his expert opinion, this shithead needed to be scared a little.

It worked: shithead glared, ground his jaw, glanced around as though searching for witnesses to join him in denouncing the injustice he was being subjected to. When no one stepped forward, he scuttled angrily toward the entrance of the hotel, and Eli turned toward the woman.

Electricity jolted through him. Her eyes were large and liquid, a dark blue he wasn’t sure he’d encountered before. Eli stared into them and briefly lost track of his question.

Ah. Right. It was something very complex, something along the lines of “Are you okay?”

Instead of replying, she asked, “Do you often engage in vigilante bullshit to compensate for whatever your issues are?” Her voice was tame, but her glare blazed. Eli noticed that her upper lip was slightly fuller than the lower. Both were dark pink. “Because maybe you could just buy an infantry tank.”

His eyebrow rose. “And maybe you could choose better men to spend your time with.”

“That’s for sure, since I came here to spend time with you.”

Ah. She’d recognized him, then. And she wasn’t a fan.

Eli didn’t blame her for thinking him a brash, hotheaded jerk, but the last thing he wanted was to make her uncomfortable. She clearly didn’t want him around, and that had him feeling a small tinge of disappointment. It swelled larger as he looked at her lips one last time, but he shrugged it off.

Too bad, but not that bad. He gave her one last nod, turned around, and—

A hand closed around his wrist.

He looked at her over his shoulder.

“I’m sorry.” She screwed her eyes shut tight. Then took a deep breath and smiled the faintest smile he’d ever seen, which sent a new, heated wave of interest vibrating through him.

Eli was no aesthete. He had no idea whether this woman was objectively, scientifically beautiful, or whether her face simply came together in a way that seemed to work perfectly for him. Either way, the result was the same.

A big fucking turn-on.

“Eli, right?” she asked.

He nodded. Fully turned to her.

“I’m sorry. I was still in fight-or-flight mode. I’m usually way less defensive about…” She gestured vaguely. Her nails were red. Her hands graceful, but trembling. “Being helped. Thank you for what you did.” Her hand dropped from his wrist to curl into her lap, and he followed every inch of that journey, mesmerized.

“You didn’t mention your name,” he said, instead of you’re welcome. On the app, she’d just used one initial: R.

“No, I didn’t.” She didn’t elaborate, and her uncompromising tone was a thrill all by itself.

Rachel? Rose. Ruby turned to watch the entrance, where the man still loitered, giving them resentful glances. When her throat bobbed, Eli offered casually, “I could go scare him off.” His brawling days were over—had been since high school, when his life had been hockey practices and detentions and lots of rage. Still, he knew how to deal with assholes.

“It’s okay.” She shook her head.

“Or call the police.”

Another shake. Then, after a moment of reluctance, she added, “But maybe you could…”

“I’ll stay,” he said, and her posture softened in relief. With the way the shithead was acting, Eli had planned to keep an eye on her anyway—which was probably a whole other degree of creepy, but here he was. Making this random girl whose name he didn’t even know his business. He leaned back against the counter, arms crossed on his chest. A large group approached the bar and took a seat next to them, forcing him to shift a little closer to her.

R.

Rebecca.

Rowan.

“I know we’re supposed to…” She gestured vaguely upward, and a million things flashed in his brain at the flick of her index finger.

The pragmatic tone of her first message to him: Are you still in the Austin area? Interested in meeting up?

The only casual—no relationships or repeat meetings in her bio.

Her answer to the Kinks? question on the open survey.

The list of what she was not willing to do. Of what she was.

At this point he doubted anything would happen between them tonight, but he was still going to mull over the latter. A lot.

“I don’t want to anymore,” she continued, voice steady. He liked that she didn’t say can’t, but don’t want. The lack of apology in her tone. Her serious, quiet expression.

“You mean, you don’t want to go upstairs and fuck a man you don’t know minutes after a man you do know assaulted you?” He gave her a look of mock surprise, and she nodded thoughtfully.

“That’s a good recap. I bet it’s too late to get a refund on the hotel room, so if you need to make plans with someone else for tonight, feel free.”

He felt the corner of his mouth quirk up. “I’ll survive,” he said dryly.

“As you prefer,” she told him, indifferent. She clearly couldn’t care less whether he took his phone out and booty-called half the city or swore his undying loyalty to her, and Eli bit back a smile. Her head cocked. “Do you do this a lot?” she asked.

“Do what? Fuck?”

“Save damsels in distress.”

“No.”

“Because you don’t encounter many, or because you leave them in distress?” Her voice was soft, and on anyone else’s lips the words would have sounded like flirting. Not hers, though. “Either way, I’m flattered,” she added.

“You should be.” He glanced at the man, who was still outside, glaring. “Do you live alone?”

Her eyebrows rose, and he noticed a faint scar bisecting the right. His index finger tapped once against the counter, itching to trace it. “Are you trying to find out if I’m single?”

“I’m trying to figure out what the chances are that the dipshit will be waiting for you where you live, who could help you if he is, or whether your pet could protect you.”

“Ah.” She didn’t look flustered to have misunderstood him. Fascinating. “I do live alone. And he shouldn’t know where.”

“Shouldn’t?”

“I’m not sure how he tracked me here. I can only imagine that he found out where I lived, wasn’t allowed inside by my doorman, and followed my Uber when it picked me up.” She’d been shaken until a minute earlier, but now she sounded disarmingly utilitarian. Just like in her texts, Eli thought. She’d messaged him with no emojis. No LOL or LMAO. Correctly placed punctuation and proper capitalization. He’d guessed it was a localized quirk, but her demeanor seemed like the embodiment of her writing.

Serious. A little impenetrable. Complicated.

And Eli had never been a fan of easy.

“How are you getting home?” he asked.

“Uber. Or Lyft. Whatever’s quicker.” She picked up her phone, but when she tapped on it, it refused to light up. Eli remembered the spilled water. “Well, this is a new development.” She sighed. “I’ll hail a cab.”

No fucking way, he almost said, but stopped with his mouth half-open. This woman was not his friend, sister, colleague. She was someone with whom he’d been planning to have a sexual relationship that would last part of the night, then never see again. He had no right to tell her what to do.

Though he could try to convince her.

“He’s still out there,” Eli said evenly, pointing at the man with his chin. He paced outside the revolving door, skin glistening with sweat. “Waiting for you to step out of the bar.”

“Right.” She scratched her long neck. Eli stared far longer than he should have. “Could you walk outside with me?”

“I will. But what if he does know where you live, and waits for you there? What if he follows you?” He watched her ponder the situation. “Do you have a neighbor you trust? A friend? A brother?”

She laughed once, silently, in a wistful way that Eli didn’t understand. “Not quite.”

“Okay.” He nodded, experiencing the opposite of annoyance at the thought of what would have to happen. “I’ll drive you home, then.”

Her look was long and even. Eli wondered why her wide, limpid eyes felt like a punch to the stomach. “You’re suggesting I get in the car of a man I do not know to avoid being harassed by a man I do know?”

He shrugged. “Pretty much.”

She bit her lower lip. Suddenly, Eli was more physically aware of another human being than he remembered being in a long, long while. “Thank you, but I’ll have to pass. The potential for situational irony is a bit too high, even for me.”

“I don’t think this qualifies as situational irony.”

“It would if you turned out to be a serial killer.”

Smiling wasn’t going to win him any points, but he couldn’t help himself. “You were going to go upstairs to a hotel room booked under my name and spend hours alone with me.”

“Hours?”

The way he was feeling at the moment, more than that. “Hours,” he repeated. She held his gaze for every letter. “Seems late in the game to worry about whether I’ll murder you.”

“A friend knew where I’d be and how to check on me,” she countered. “A second location is a whole different beast.”

“Is it?” He had no business being this pleased by her self-preservation.

“Vincent’s a dick. But for all I know, you’re the Unabomber.”

Vincent. She knew the dickhead’s name—and Eli still didn’t know hers. Fucking irritating. “Unabomber’s dead.”

“That’s what the Unabomber would say to throw me off,” she deadpanned, unknowable. He couldn’t tell whether she was flirting, making fun of him, or dead serious.

It was exhilarating.

“He made bombs and solved math theorems. He didn’t kidnap young women.”

“You know a lot about the Unabomber for someone who supposedly isn’t him.”

Eli looked up at the ceiling to hide his amusement, exhaling slowly. Then he straightened. Took his wallet out of the back pocket of his jeans and the driver’s license out of his wallet. Dropped it on the counter, right by her hand.

“What’s this?”

He leaned back against the counter without replying, and she nimbly picked it up. Her eyes shifted between him and the picture on the card, as though solving a Find the Difference puzzle. “Eli Killgore,” she read. “This is not a reassuring name, Eli.”

He frowned. “It’s Scottish.”

“It sounds like the name of someone who trims girls’ pubes and sews them into dolls. You look younger than thirty-four. And are you really that tall?” He sighed heavily, and she returned his license, straight faced. “So we’ve established that your last name is closely related to the term ‘blood splatter.’ But I still don’t know that this isn’t a fake ID you made to lure women into your moth-decorated lair.”

“I bet you think you’re so funny.”

“Actually, I know I’m not. I was born without a sense of humor.”

He huffed out his amusement. She was fucking with him, had to be. And Eli was apparently very willing to let her continue, because he pushed his entire wallet toward her. “Knock yourself out.” He watched eagerly as her slim fingers opened it, wondering why her elegant movements seemed to be unlocking some kind of long-hidden fetish part of his brain. She brought it to her nose to smell the leather (an odd, inexplicably appealing move), pulled out a random credit card, then another.

“Eli Massmurderer,” she said.

“Not my name.”

“You have a library card.” She sounded bemused, and he clucked his tongue.

“Here I am, trying to help you out in a difficult situation, and you repay me by being surprised that I can read.”

She smiled, something small and mysterious that shouldn’t have sent a thrill up his spine. “I thought you’d be more of a Planet Fitness cardholder.”

“Not at all condescending.” He tried not to grin and failed. But it was okay, because she kept methodically rifling through his life via the wallet, stopping to peruse the more interesting pieces, once humming audibly. Eli felt it like a physical thing, a thrum through air and flesh. Like her slender fingers were peeling out the layers of him, slowly, inexorably.

“Well, you do have health insurance, which hopefully covers the necessary amount of murder-prevention therapy,” she said dispassionately before folding the wallet and handing it back to him with a solemn nod. She gave one last look at the doors, where Vincent was nervously smoking a cigarette. Still in wait.

“This is one consistent wallet. Despite the fact that your name is literally Carnagemonger.”

“Not literally. Not figuratively, either.”

“Regardless.” Her lips curved in the shadow of a smile. Eli felt it in his marrow, wrapped around his balls. “Mr. Killgore, you may drive me home.”