Page 5 of Cherry Beats

“I love you like I love getting my smear tests done.”

Presley stared into my eyes for a beat too long. For just a fraction of a second, it felt intimate, and all the jokes and smart comebacks I’d ever had faded away until I was left with was… nothing.

Then he quickly looked away and burst out laughing before he thumbed over his shoulder in my direction.

“She’s fucking hilarious. Always the free entertainment in this place. This is why I drink here.” Laughter tainted his voice, but Gertrude was not amused as she stared back at me.

Studying me. Reading me like a damn book.

Maybe she wasn’t as thick as she looked.

“Funny, because I suddenly hate it here. I don’t like being made a fool of, Presley. Not even by you. I’m leaving. Feel free to join me.”

“What?”

“I said, I’m leaving.”

“Now? Wait.”

“Bye, Presley.” Gerty stood abruptly, pushing her chair under the table before she side-eyed me all the way to the door.

The only thing I could do was stare at the back of her head as she left.

I didn’t dare look at Presley.

Chapter Two

Presley’s gaze lingered on the door, his body still for far too long.

Eventually, his shoulders sagged, and he looked down at the table, shaking his head.

I opened my mouth to speak and then quickly thought better of it. My mouth = trouble. I had a feeling he’d already thrown me in the basement of his mind so he could torture me later with a sharp spoon.

Presley spun in his seat and slowly began to rise. The creak of his leather jacket was loud enough for me to hear and fear since I’d turned the music off after last orders. I wasn’t sure why fear registered. It shouldn’t have because Presley was a nice guy, but I’d unintentionally run his girl out of his favourite small-town bar, so I figured that gave him a good enough reason to be pissed with me.

When he began to stalk forward in that slow, confident, yet calm way of his, rolling his shoulders in his jacket, I couldn’t look away.

Sex god, sex god, sex god, sex god,rang out like a song from behind my rib cage, tapping to the beat of my own heart.

Presley wasn’t like the other boys, men, or arseholes around these parts—at least that’s what I guessed. What did I know, truly? I was ill-travelled and uncultured, low on life experiences that weren’t a part of Hollings Hill, the town I’d grown up in. But surely most people thought the same as me—that Presley—with his chin-length, rock star haircut flicked to one side, and his piercing blue eyes, plump yet manly lips, and his strong, square jaw—belonged on a runway. He belonged on the front cover of every magazine, where people could imagine a man like him had to be airbrushed to look that way. He deserved to be topless with nothing more than a loincloth hanging over his misters, a crown on his head, and a trident in his hand, sitting with the other treasured mythical gods in the clouds.

Yet there he was.

Getting closer.

Closer.

Closer.

So close that a cloud of his aftershave somehow broke through the stale alcohol smell of the bar and swam under my nose. I parted my lips and sucked in a shaky breath to stop myself from, you know… fainting.

“You have a way with words, Cherry,” he said smoothly, dropping his forearms to the surface of the bar and leaning forward. Presley looked up at me through his long lashes, his eyes wide and expectant, lips parted with a small grin tickling the edges.

“It’s Tess, Presley.”

He jerked his chin up to my hair. “Nah. Not anymore. You’re Cherry, baby.” He said it like he loved it, and all I could do was stand there blinking like the love-struck idiot I’d always been around this man. Even when he’d been nothing but a boy.

“A nickname of my very own. Colour me flattered. Is this how you woo all the women?”

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