The Hardest Cut by Jamie Bennett (book club recommendations .TXT) 📕

and slid over him.  I touched him and kissed him everywhere I could, every rib, his bellybutton, the tops of his feet, behind his knees.  And then I moved to kiss him there again, and when he stopped being able to speak and was just moaning, that was when I helped him put on the condom.  I glided back up his body, trailing my breasts across his chest, and I felt like I had on the beach.  It was like my skin was barely holding me together.

“Ben?”

“Yes, honey?”  His face looked all stern again.  Maybe he was running through the routes in his mind.

“I need you—I feel like there’s an itch—”

He turned on his side, toppling me off, and put my leg over his hip.  Slowly, very slowly and carefully, he eased inside me.  “Oh, Gaby.  Oh, Jesus.”  I moved my hips restlessly, wanting something.  “Tell me,” he said.

“I need more.”

Before I knew what was happening, I was on my back, and Ben drove deep.  I arched up and he took my hands, holding them above my head.  Again, and again, and again.

“Like this?”

“Yes, please, yes!” I told him.  “More just like that!  Yes, please!”

And as I came again, and his body shook too, I thought I heard him laughing.

“Mmmm.”

Ben picked up his head from where it was burrowed into the pillow next to mine.  “Did you say something?”

No, I was just making happy noises, like a cat.  I smiled and played with the short hair above his ear.  “No.  Did you like it?”

He carefully picked up his body and I made another noise, this one not as happy, without him inside me.  “I liked it.  A lot.”  He put his arm under my neck and drew my closer, to cuddle.  “What did you think?”

“Mmmm.”  I turned my face into his chest and smiled.  I thought I’d never felt anything like that, and I hoped it was true for him, too.  I remembered, suddenly, that now was my time to tell him.  I would tell him about Shep, and tell him what I wanted for the future.  And it would all be ok, because now, we were so close!  My heart was overflowing with—I stopped and thought, and yes.  It was overflowing with love for him, and what we had just done, how wonderful it had been, was the physical proof of it.

I moved so I could see his face and tried to steel myself.  Now was the time.  “Ben?”

He smiled and kissed me.  “Hi.  Yeah, you’re right.”

“What?  I’m right?”

He rolled away and picked up my bra from the floor, and then the rest of my clothes, and put them next to me on the bed.  “Were you thinking about Tessa waking up?”

I sat up and held the sheet over my chest.  “I—well, I guess she could.  I wanted to talk to you about something else.”  Both of us turned our heads when there was a noise outside the big picture window.

“She’s a light sleeper and she wouldn’t understand if she found you here,” he reminded me, and I nodded.  “We’ll see each other on Monday,” he mentioned, and pulled on his boxers.  “Right?”

“Right,” I said slowly.  And when I didn’t move to pick up my clothes, he handed me my panties.  I got dressed then, putting them on under the sheet, and pulling everything else on in the same way.

“Gaby?  You ok?”  Ben leaned over the bed to kiss me briefly.  “Do you need help walking or something?”

No, I didn’t need his help to push me out the door.  I looked at him and saw Shep’s face.  It felt just the same as having to sneak out of some terrible motel.  “I’m fine,” I said, and I was.  I practically ran to the front door, but of course, Ben beat me there.  He walked me down to my car, too, probably to make sure that I was going to get into it and go.  I remembered, then, how he had spent all those weeks ignoring me when I’d thought that we were going to be friends.  I remembered how easily he could run hot and cold.  Well, now he was going cold again.

“Gaby, I just don’t want Tess to think—” he started to tell me, but I understood.  He didn’t want his daughter to think there was anything between him and the babysitter, because that would be confusing for her.  It could hurt her, when she learned that it wasn’t true.

“It’s ok.  I get it,” I interrupted him, and I closed the car door before he could say anything else, or kiss me again, or remind me in any other way that I had made yet another huge, huge mistake, and now I would have to deal with these consequences, too.  I saw very clearly that no, the extra year I’d gained on my birthday today hadn’t made me any smarter about men at all.

Chapter 14

Marley picked up my phone.  “You’re seriously not going to answer him?”

“What?”  I busied myself with typing on my laptop.  My résumé looked just terrible and needed a big update if I was going to find a good job.  Maybe something in dance.  Or fashion.  Or magazine publishing!  I imagined myself in very high heels and directing a photo shoot.  There probably weren’t a lot of opportunities for that in northern Michigan, but I could look.  What I wouldn’t do was look at my phone.

“Ben has texted you, like, a million times.  You’re not at all interested?” she asked, now dangling the phone between her index finger and thumb, waving in front of my eyes like she was a snake charmer.

“No.  I’m not interested.  I’m busy, looking for a job.”  I flipped to examining the employment website instead of my sad-looking résumé.  “Look, here’s something in the law office of Quentin Avery.  He needs a legal assistant.”

“I know him,” Hallie called.  “He was my grandpa’s friend.  They used to play poker together.”  She walked to stand behind me