Page 34 of Beautiful Enemy

The house is quiet except for Barney’s soft whining from the floor below. As if he feels the tension from his spot on the rug by the door.

“You tell me.”

When we get to the top, I pause and turn.

He’s right there. Beautiful and messed up and filling my senses.

When I lift my chin to meet Harrison’s gaze, we’re breathing the same air. His mouth is inches away, his bare chest too. All that power carefully restrained.

“As a boy, I wondered if the people who are softest on the inside are hardest on the outside.”

“Why is that?” I manage.

His eyes are deep as the ocean, guarded emotions swirling beneath the surface like rogue currents.

“Because they have to be.”

* * *

I never claimed to be in exceptional shape, but as I pull up at the end of my run on Friday, I’m breathing heavily while Barney barely pants.

“I’m sending you some money,” I tell Callie as I ruffle the fur on the dog’s head.

I’ve played three shows in Ibiza and been paid for the first two. True to his word, Harrison cut me in—though the door was nowhere near enough to make a dent in the twenty thousand, which means I need to haul ass to fill the place the rest of the time I’m here.

“I would never have asked you if it wasn’t—”

“I know,” I say. “It’s important to both of us. How is work?”

Her voice is instantly more enthusiastic as she talks about the young women she’s met during the past week at an event she ran.

The past few days, I’ve been feeling better too. Working on social media, on my sets, and even meeting up with Leni to get ideas for how to draw more people to Debajo.

I’m more comfortable now that I have my belongings back.

Minus the pills. I still find myself looking over to the nightstand for them at least once a day.

“So, how are the guys?” Callie’s voice drags me back. “Any hot locals or all tourists?”

I can’t tell if it’s the steep hill leading up to the villa or the memory of swimming with Harrison King that has my heart hammering.

The man who kept my mind whirring long after I crawled into bed Monday night, body still tingling from the sea and his presence and driving his car, isn’t a tourist or a local. He’s a globe-trotting billionaire who hides himself behind his thirst for conquering.

Are you generous when you fuck?

Under the half moon, far from the lights of Ibiza Town, the question floored me.

Not because of his hard body or physical intensity, but because he showed me a piece of his soul, then leaned in.

What he told me about his parents’ deaths, how everything he does is devoted to building what they could’ve had…

I can’t help looking at him through a new lens.

Which hardly matters because since that night, he’s been avoiding me.

I’m sure if I pinned him down, he’d say he’s been occupied with work and dinners out.

But Thursday morning, I was up earlier than usual and tripped into the hallway in my pajamas to use the bathroom only to run into him emerging in his towel, clean and unshaven.

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