Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 90098 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 450(@200wpm)___ 360(@250wpm)___ 300(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90098 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 450(@200wpm)___ 360(@250wpm)___ 300(@300wpm)
Once the coffee was brewing, I grabbed two bananas. He was putting bread in the toaster, so I knew what he was in the mood for.
“When I came out to my folks, Ma cried and apologized for struggling to understand,” Ben said out of nowhere. “She said she loved me and supported me, no matter what, but it was difficult for her.”
I side-eyed him and chewed on the inside of my cheek.
Made sense. His parents were of that generation. You had to give them time—if they didn’t kick you to the curb outright. My mother had struggled too, but mostly because she didn’t want me to get bullied and shit like that. Dad had been weirdly understanding. He was usually more old-school and set in his ways, but he had his moments.
“My old man, on the other hand,” Ben continued wryly. “He stopped speaking to me. He turned the whole family against me—except for Ma and Angie.”
I frowned to myself and grabbed a knife and a cutting board.
“What else,” he sighed. “Oh, first time I spent a night outside, I bawled my eyes out. I felt like the biggest failure on the planet.”
Okay, ouch. And he had to have an agenda with these confessions, right?
“Why are you telling me this?” I had to ask.
“Because we know everything and nothing about each other, Trace,” he murmured. “I know you talk shit about your old man but have a very special relationship with him, and you act like a married, bickering couple on the phone when you discuss the bar. I know you’re generous. I know you look out for your staff. I know the first thing you do on Wednesday morning is go through the For U deals on the Jewels app.”
“’Cause without coupons, they’re fuckin’ expensive,” I defended.
He chuckled quietly, and the toast popped up. It was our cue. I sliced the bananas, he spread the butter, I spread the Nutella, and then he put the banana slices on top.
“What I don’t know is why you’re having nightmares about someone you called Eric,” he went on. I winced. “I also don’t know why you don’t date. I think there’s more to the story of how you learned self-defense and eventually taught it to women and at-risk teenagers.”
So now he wanted to get real?
Fuck.
I poured us coffee and grabbed the milk while he plated our toast, and then we went back to the front room.
It’d become an automatic thing; one of us turned on the TV and muted the sound. We both liked to have something running in the background.
It was especially helpful if I was going to rehash anything from the two years of my life I’d rather forget. Except…maybe the part about Eric wasn’t that rough. Where Ben was concerned, I mostly dreaded him figuring out that my past was coming back to haunt me because of him. And I knew how quickly he rushed to blame himself for shit. It wasn’t like he’d intended to hurt me, and I was the one who’d told him we didn’t have to discuss the letter. He’d asked me a few days after his return if there was something we should resolve because he didn’t want anything to go unsaid.
Ben was right. We knew everything and nothing about each other. And we both sucked at talking about what mattered.
I poured some milk into my coffee and braced myself. “Eric and I went to high school together, and we…I don’t know, hooked up from time to time. I can’t say we ran in the same circles, but we ended up at parties together on the weekends.” I took a sip to test the temperature. Ah, cheap and milky, my favorite. “After graduation, we started hanging out more, which I know today is because I was a fucking mess. I didn’t know what to do with my life, college held zero appeal, and it wasn’t like we had the money to send me to a good school.” Even if we’d had the money, I wouldn’t have gone. I’d been so tired of school. “I took a few classes to appease my folks, but the more Dad pushed me toward business and economics, the harder I fought back. It was so clear that he wanted me to take over the Clover one day, and it wasn’t on my radar at the time.”
Ben hummed around a mouthful of toast. “No surprise. You’d just gotten free from school.”
Exactly. He got it.
“Right. So I went the opposite direction because I’m a dumbass,” I said. “I started going out more. Eric and I were suddenly a couple, and I got hooked on his way of constantly turning us into the life of every party.”
Even though I kept my stare fixed on the TV or my food, I sensed his gaze on me.