Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
Whit
I t was an ugly thing to admit, but I could do it: I’d thought about Ben Holder more in the last few days than I’d thought about anyone else in my life.
Usually, my thoughts centered on me.
We all do this. We like to pretend we’re concerned for others, but ultimately, we’re mostly worried about how what other people are going through might influence us. And if we meet someone who’s not that way—who is genuinely outwardly focused, it’s a shock. It’s confusing and convicting, and most of all, alluring.
Maybe thinking that way was a symptom of being in the industry I’m in.
This wasn’t me—I wasn’t alluring in that way. If anything, in the last few years, I’d allowed myself to sink further into self-centeredness as a way to block out some of those pesky things like my ugly non-relationship with my parents or the perpetual longing for something more that I couldn’t seem to grasp no matter how many albums I sold.
I know. Again. How cliché.
But what was true was that Ben Holder had taken root in my brain and wouldn’t leave. I’d thought about him often after that first conversation when writing the song, and sometimes while singing it, but really, this was a far more dangerous Ben.
No longer was he the nameless, sympathetic wounded soldier grappling with death and grief. No.
Now, he was Benjamin Michael Holder, brother of two. Now, he was an actual man with real depth, with a will to live his life without drowning in what had come before. He was a generous and easygoing person while still being real and not without problems.
All of it posed a danger to that idea I’d had of him—the untouchable, sweet, honorable man who was, if I was being honest, more than a little beautiful.
The fact that I’d see him again in a few hours didn’t help things. Ben had been hanging around the edges of my consciousness from sun up until sundown all week. The meetings about the upcoming mini-tour had been shaded with him. The time I carved out to write—there he was.
We’d messaged only once during the week—both of us had busy days, and we’d made a plan to get together today. He would come to the house, and then we’d go out for cocktail hour—one last date before the holiday weekend.
I wasn’t going to make it easy for anyone to notice we weren’t together for Thanksgiving. In fact, I planned to lay low and make it impossible to find me. Reese had invited me up to his place near Fort Campbell and had promised Erin could make me some diet-friendly food. I’d told him I was still considering it .
But after the last week, I definitely needed something to distract me. Because the whole time Ben would be gone—to somewhere in Alabama, though it now dawned on me I wasn’t entirely sure where his family hailed from—I would be thinking about him. And it would be annoying.
“Focus, Whit. You know you need a good burn right now. When you get on the road, you’re going?—”
“I know. I don’t need a lecture.”
Kendra was my trainer, a total beast, and she treated me like I was an adult who could make her own decisions about her health and who was capable of maintaining a healthy weight without being micromanaged within an inch of her life.
Oh, wait, no.
That was Kendra in my dreams. Kendra in real life was a warlord over my body—and I could admit it yielded amazing results, but not without a price.
I didn’t eat freely. Every bite to grace my mouth was choreographed for months before a tour. Often frustrating and irritating, but it also created the image, let me wear the costumes, and created that celebrity look that didn’t just happen by stumbling into it.
The dumbest thing about it? I paid her to do it.
Off-seasons—times when I wasn’t about to go on tour—were gentler. But it proved hard switching out of it—I got nervous about how to handle eating or organizing my day without the rules. It was something I was working on, and Kendra had glared me into submitting to relaxing my eating a bit after this mini-tour over the holidays.
It would be good to do—for my body, my mind, everything. But I also knew myself. I was all or nothing, and I wouldn’t be happy with nothing, hence the marked tendency to stay at all . And the burnout factor on that setting was high.
But for now, I could focus on getting my burn as Kendra liked to say. I followed her as she moved through our warm up yoga, then into a full Pilates workout. After that, she had me knocking out push-ups, a brutal ab routine, and finally a cool down walk on the treadmill.
“Whit? Ben’s here,” Nikki said, peeking into the workout room from the hallway.
“Oh, good. Send him in?” I hadn’t planned to see him until after showering, but Kendra had pushed me for a longer workout since the holiday and then the tour were coming up, and I hated to refuse her.
I saw him before he saw me and wiped my face with a towel while Kendra made some notes. “Ben! In here!”
He entered the home gym where I’d just burned off a billion calories, and his gaze swept over me, then jumped to my face.
“Hey.” His voice sounded a bit rough.
“Sorry—I’m a mess. This is Kendra, my trainer.”
Kendra waved, and he greeted her with a nod and tight smile. I took the minute to appreciate him in front of me. He wore stylish, slim but not skinny jeans, and a nicely fitted button-down shirt. We were keeping it casual tonight, and he’d done well.
“How was your week?” I asked, running the towel down my neck. His gaze followed the movement, then snapped back to meet my eyes.
He cleared his throat, his brow furrowed. “Uh, good. Yeah. Week was good.”
Ben
The thing about Whit Grantham? She knows she’s gorgeous. That’s as it should be—why should a beautiful woman have to not realize it? She might as well be confident.
I suspected she was fully aware of the effect she had on men. On me .
And seeing her there, cheeks flushed, hair a little wild, body bright from exertion…
That body .
Sorry. Call me a jerk, but was I not supposed to notice? I’d done my best to avoid really looking at her in person… at least, I hadn’t done it how I’d wanted to. She wasn’t mine in that way, even if we were pretending she was. But I was supposed to walk into her home gym and find her in yoga pants and a strappy sports bra and nothing else and not notice?
Yeah. Right.
But I was trying to be a good guy here. Hence my averting my eyes, only to find myself staring at her spectacular rear view in the mirror behind her. Or the intricate and not-all-that-substantial straps crisscrossing over her shoulder blades. Or the open expanse of her back and the smooth line of her spine running in the middle.
I was essentially surrounded, and she seemed oblivious to the fact that she was assaulting my senses in an undeniable way.
“I’m just finishing up here. Want to wait for me in the kitchen? I can be ready in… half hour?” She tossed the towel into a basket by the door. “See ya Monday, Kendra.”
“Yep!” Kendra shouted from behind us. The trainer looked like she’d been carved out of ebony stone—just absolutely what I imagined a celebrity trainer to look like.
“No problem. I’m sorry I’m in your space early,” I said, though I was certain she’d said five.
She turned to me at the intersection of hallways—her room was to the right, the kitchen back to the left. “No, that’s all my fault. I was running late all day. I’m sorry to say that, other than showtimes and hard deadlines, I’m often on the late side.”
She bit her lip and gave me a look that was supposed to be apologetic—it probably did, except my focus still rested on absorbing her words and keeping my eyes on her face.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m habitually punctual, but I grew up with a sister whose on time was fifteen minutes late.”
Bridgette was a later person by nature. I used to get so mad at her, as did Bea, who was punctual to the point of being militant, but the fact that Bridgette was the oldest and the only one with a car for much of Bea’s high school years forced her to cooperate with Bridgette’s bad habit of running late.
See? There. Thoughts of sisters, and I’d re-entered a world with the laws of gravity.
Whit put a warm hand on my arm and squeezed. “Well, make yourself at home in the kitchen. I’ll be fast getting ready—no hair or makeup, so lower your expectations, but it means I’ll be fast.”
She flashed me a bright smile, then hustled down the hall, which I definitely did not watch.
A smile touched my lips, because I had absolutely no response to the comment about expectations. All my expectations for her had been blown out of the water when she’d hugged me last week, and I’d been reeling ever since .
Something about her compassion in those moments shook me. It was far more… feeling than I thought she was. I was attracted to her physically, sure—I had a heartbeat, didn’t I? But the main reason I’d agreed to help her was because she was Reese’s cousin and I wasn’t dating anyone else anyway. I couldn’t deny that spending time in her world sounded intriguing, but she struck me as sort of self-absorbed and simple. Not simple simple, but just kind of… basic. The kind of person who was nice, but not going to invest in other people because their head was down, working toward their own goals.
Exhibit A: asking me to fake-date her so her reputation would improve and she could manipulate John Smith Johnson into working with her.
My impressions weren’t based on anything real prior to meeting her, but I could admit I’d judged her and not allowed the other evidence to match up with what I’d seen. Her songs were alternately happy and effortless, but also deep and affecting. It’d been easy enough to see her as an artist who was brilliant, but only looking out for herself.
Her concern for me, for my reaction and frustratingly visible upset after the press’ questions last weekend, and then her gentleness with me… it got to me. It snuck up on me. And now, I stood on shaky ground, not sure how to take her.
I liked it better when I knew what to expect, and the fact that now I wasn’t so sure what I’d get from her—maybe self-interest, but maybe genuine interest in me , well… It made me more nervous about tonight than I’d been for any of our other dates.
Sure enough, half an hour later—twenty-eight minutes, if someone had counted, which I most definitely had not—Whit breezed into the kitchen looking clean, relaxed, and beautiful in a way that hit me between my ribs.
Nikki walked in behind her, startling me from the daze I must have fallen into watching Whit as she moved around the kitchen putting things from her drying rack away, tucking an empty glass into the dishwasher.
“Where are you two going?” Nikki asked, addressing me, which was nice.
I often felt like an accessory in the room, which I basically was, but it didn’t make me like Nikki very much.
“I was thinking Robbie’s Kitchen. Is that okay?” Whit asked, turning to face me.
“Robbie’s is great. That sounds good.” My stomach rumbled, though it was mercifully quiet, so hopefully, they hadn’t noticed. Robbie’s was so good, and I hadn’t been in a while.
“Great. Ready?” Whit grabbed a large purse and slung it over her shoulder. “You good to drive? I gave Ru the day off.”
“Oh, sure. Yeah.” I pulled my keys out of my pocket and gestured for her to lead the way.
“Ben. A word?”
Nikki’s voice stopped me and Whit.
“What’s up, Nikki?” Whit asked.
“We need more here. You two are adorable, but you might as well be cousins.” She pursed her lips and fluttered a pen between her fingers.
“It’s fine,” Whit said.
When I glanced at her, her cheeks were pink.
Was she embarrassed by Nikki’s suggestion, or embarrassed by the fact that we apparently had no outward chemistry? That wasn’t a shock since we weren’t very physical, but the chemistry between us felt like it was developing pretty rapidly to me.
“That’s easy enough to fix,” I said, not sure exactly what I had in mind even as I said it. “As long as you don’t mind…”
Whit’s eyes fluttered, and then she smiled brightly—maybe a little too bright. “Of course not.”