“Fuck you,” I reply, which is far less eloquent than I intended, but gets the job done. I turn and push through the crowd to get to Keeley’s room on the second floor, but by the time I reach her door he’s behind me again.
And it just makes me sad.
I hate that he’s still being the Ben I’d begun to believe he might be, someone honest and invested, when I’ve already got proof he’s not. “Go back to your date,” I tell him, marching inside the room, looking for my stuff.
He follows me in, standing in the frame of the door with his hands shoved in his pockets and his eyes narrowed. “What the fuck is this about?” he demands. “I wasn’t with anyone. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. And what was that downstairs? I leave you alone for one fucking day and find you getting massaged by two guys at once?”
“I saw you, asshole,” I reply, and my throat tightens. Fuck. I refuse to cry in front of him. “You and Juliet Cantrell. Having ‘way too much fun’. I’m not here to help you cheat on another girl.”
He frowns. “Juliet? I’m not with Juliet.”
I pull the towel tighter around me, suddenly freezing. I want him to get the fuck out so I can change. “Really?” I ask with an angry laugh. “Well, then you should tell your friend Drew, because she’s saying something very different online.”
He stares at me in shock. “You looked her up on Instagram,” he says quietly. “You looked her up to see what I was doing this weekend.” He sounds incredulous rather than angry, but it’s an accusation nonetheless.
I point my finger at him. “Don’t you dare make this about me and what I did. I’m not the problem here.”
There’s a quiet, pleased gleam in his eye. “Nor am I. Has it occurred to you yet that if I was with Juliet, I couldn’t have left and driven two hours to come get you?”
He might have a point. But that doesn’t explain everything, and I’m no longer willing to be someone who accepts half-answers and hopes for the best.
“Then what was that about Juliet having ‘way too much fun’?” I demand. I’m showing all my cards, but it’s not like I can backtrack at this point…he already knows what I did.
“I have no idea!” He pushes his hands through his hair, making it even more deliciously fucked up than it was. “We’re just friends. We’ve always just been friends. Her boyfriend no-showed this weekend, so I imagine Drew was hoping to piss him off.”
I pull the towel tighter. I suppose…that’s exactly the kind of thing Keeley and I would do for each other if one of us was in Juliet’s shoes. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if Keeley already did something like that today.
“Now do you want to tell me why the hell I arrived to find you being manhandled in a hot tub, wearing next to nothing?”
“A bikini is actually standard attire for a—”
“You are intentionally missing the goddamn point.”
“I don’t know,” I reply, too tired to be defensive, too tired to say, “you have an excuse for everything, but you don’t want me to meet your friends and it hurts.” “It was Keeley’s idea. And now you sound jealous.”
“Yeah,” he replies, jaw grinding. “No shit.”
We stare at each other for a moment, and then his shoulders drop and he closes the distance between us, pulling me to him. I go reluctantly. “Next time,” he says, “just ask me.”
“I’m asking you now,” I reply, turning my face up to look at him and then dropping my gaze when it feels like I might cry. “I’ve seen the girls you take to these weekends away. They’re all over your friend’s feed. Yet you didn’t bring me.”
“And you wanted to go?” he asks.
“No.” It’s such a fucking lie. “I just want to know why.”
“Did it ever occur to you that if pictures of the people I bring are all over Drew’s feed, then you’d then be all over Drew’s feed?” he demands, irritated anew. “Even if I asked her not to post, she can’t go anywhere without getting photographed, and the rest of us get photographed too. And that would be a problem because you don’t want to go to HR.”
Oh. Right. Shit.
“Get your clothes,” he says. “We’re going home.”
I want to agree. Even if I’m hurt, and he’s the cause, he’s still the only place I want to be. “You don’t have to do that,” I tell him instead. “I can Uber. Go back to your friends.”
“Gemma,” he whispers, pressing his lips to my temple and forehead in turn. “Do you really think for a second I wouldn’t rather be with you?”
I let my eyes fall closed for a minute and rest my head against his chest.
I want to believe him. I want to stop being like this.
But I don’t know how…and I’m still not certain I should.
33
Something shifts after the Palm Springs weekend. Even if we don’t say it, even if we still haven’t gone to HR, I can no longer deny we’re a couple. I guess the truth is…I don’t want to deny it. He’s at my place every night and it’s hard to imagine not having him there.
He appears in my office early in the evening, the way he always does. His eyes drift over my face in that way of his—languid and possessive at once—and I’m immediately picturing his head between my legs. Alas, it’s not to be.
“You can’t come over,” I tell him. “I have to do some shopping.”
There’s been no time to get gifts for Victoria’s kids because Ben’s always around, and I’ve put it off for as long as I can.
His full mouth tips into a filthy smile. “I don’t mind shopping.”
“It’s not sexy shopping,” I say with a roll of my eyes. “I think you’re picturing sitting in the dressing room of La Perla while I try on lingerie.”
“I wasn’t, but now I am.” He glances toward the door, then leans down to let his lips brush my neck. “I’ll come anyway.”
I make him drive me to the Target over on Beverly Boulevard. “Are we here to finally make your apartment look less creepy?” he asks.
“I like my creepy apartment.” I push a cart toward him and get one of my own.
“Liar.”
I laugh. Fine, I don’t like my creepy apartment. “I’m not decorating my place because it’s temporary. I’ll be a whole new me in a year or two.”
“Right,” he says. “Widowed veteran or whatever.”
“Veterinarian.”
“Do you even like animals?”
I pull the kids’ letters from my purse. “Stay on task. We’re toy shopping.” I hand him Phillip’s list.
A single brow arches as he looks it over. “I wasn’t expecting your shopping lists to contain quite so many Nerf guns.”
I smile. “It’s this kid I know. Just…pick some stuff. Not twenty Nerf guns, but maybe two of them, and then some other things.”
“This is an odd way to tell me you’ve got kids, Gemma,” he says.