Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Ben
D amn. Damn. Damn.
I had been so close to kissing her. Soclose.
I wouldn’t pretend to understand the pressure of her level of fame. It was insane. Everyone was always looking. I bet someone had been taking her picture every five minutes through dinner. For all I knew, someone had been recording the whole dinner, hoping they could sell it to TMZ or some other celebrity-mad show.
But watching everyone watch her, knowing she wanted us to be seen in situations that were clearly romantic, I’d gone for it.
But right as I would have kissed her, I had stopped myself. Because part of me did want that first kiss—badly—but I didn’t want it to fall under the auspices of duping her adoring public and convincing Johnson she wasn’t a problem .
I wanted it to be because she wanted me to do it, and I wanted it to be where no one else could see.
Dangerous thinking, obviously enough.
I pulled up in front of her house—we’d hardly talked on the fifteen-minute ride back.
“So I’ll see you the first week of December, right?” she asked, unbuckling.
“Yes. I’ll be around, just working, except when I head home Wednesday through Sunday this week. Are you doing anything with family?”
It was dark, so I could only see the shape of her next to me.
“I’ll probably drive up for dinner with Reese and Erin.”
The mild dread in her voice made me chuckle. “Hopefully, they won’t be too over the top. They’re nearly insufferable now, aren’t they?”
“I haven’t seen them since the concert, and even then, it was tough. I’m sure you’ve gathered I’m not huge on PDA…”
“Unless it benefits your image.” Then I realized how that sounded. “I don’t mean?—”
“No, you’re right. I’m a pretty private person, so it doesn’t come naturally to me. And I guess I should say thank you—I’m sure they got some good shots. It probably even looked like we were actually kissing if they shot from behind you.”
“That was the idea.” My pulse picked up at even the mention of the near-kiss. Well, it had been a kiss, but on the cheek.
“Thanks. You should brace yourself—that’ll likely hit tabloids, so your friends and family may hear about it. Since you’ve been at a few events, they’ll have your name and splash it around. Hopefully nothing too personal about the Army.”
Her voice thrummed low and smooth. It made me want to get closer to her.
“It’ll be fine. My sisters both tend to be in their own worlds, and my mom isn’t tuned into celebrity stuff.”
“Well, I hope you have a good Thanksgiving. I feel like we’re about to go into a real intense time in our arrangement in terms of the tour. We have some time booked out on that Saturday before to talk about what you can expect, right?”
She pulled her purse over her shoulder, and I could see the shadow of her hand reach for the handle on the door and rest there.
“Yep, we’re good. It’s low key for me until the new year, so if anything else comes up, let me know. And don’t be shy—if you need anything, let me know.”
Okay, okay, man. She gets it.
“Thanks, Ben. See you soon.”
She climbed out of the truck, and it was only then it occurred to me I should have gotten the door for her, escorted her in, but I was parked just feet from her front door. She had a cobblestone circular driveway, and even though my job was boyfriend, my reality was friend. Walking her to the door would create unnecessary awkwardness.
The days before Thanksgiving were busy. And frustrating. For some reason, there was a constant need to scramble and look busy. To “get after it,” as they often said. The new battalion commander who’d replaced LTC Wilson was LTC Baker. Because he was just starting out and the battalion wasn’t slated to deploy again until next summer, his restlessness was palpable.
Since LTC Wilson had been a great commander—yes, in my limited opinion, but also according to many people who’d been around to know the difference—so when Baker arrived, there wasn’t a huge need to change things. People knew their jobs, knew their roles, and the companies were functioning well. The battalion had been through a rough couple of years between the difficult deployment with multiple casualties, and then the loss of Specialist Smith last spring.
Through it all, LTC Wilson had kept it together, and even for me, who’d fallen apart, he’d been a stalwart supporter of my seeking help and recovering. One thing he did well was make people go home—make them stop working needlessly and take their long weekend when it was given.
As I drove away from Nashville heading South, I wondered just how much of LTC Wilson’s ability to do that was thanks to Major Flint’s overnights and weekends working on his behalf the last year before Flint decided to have a life. I couldn’t be sure. But it was good Flint had figured out how to create some boundaries before his new boss showed up. And lucky for him, he would be moving on after he promoted to LTC in the spring, most likely.
Me? I was stuck there in the musty old building I alternately hated and tried not to hate. I liked many of the people, but had grown tired of stressing out about filling in information on tracking spreadsheets, aka my life. I was tired, after only two weeks of Baker in charge, of being made to feel like leaving at five was ducking out early and shirking my duties.
The Army would take. It would take, take, take, and take some more. And the longer I stayed there, the more I felt like I didn’t have any more to give it. I wondered if I’d given it everything I had when I lost Jones. When I lost myself. Now that I’d effectively found myself again, I wasn’t ready to give any more.
But the thought of stepping away from this life—the one I’d planned for during high school, then college, and the only adult life I’d known—that was a tasking that felt too big. I kept pushing it out of my mind, knowing that the time for me to decide whether I was going to get out, or promote and move on to the next job, at which point I’d then owe the Army time, was coming.
By the time I pulled into my mom’s house in Alabama after the five hours it took to get there by car, I was exhausted. I should have known that expecting peace and quiet was a fool’s errand.
“You have some explaining to do, Benjamin Michael.”
This was Bridgette the minute the screen door swung shut and I walked into the living room. She loved talking to me like she was in charge of me. I suspected it was because her toddler was still too young to control.
“About?” I asked, wandering down the hallway, still carpeted with the same copper brown medium shag it had been all my life.
“ About you dating Whit Grantham! ” she shrieked.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh, that.”
I tossed my bag on my bed, the same single bed I’d grown out of my sophomore year of high school when my growth spurt had hit.
“Yeah, that. ”
I looked over at her with her hands on her hips, her loose dress bowing out over her belly. Wait.
“I’m evidently not the only one with some explaining to do, Bridgette Michelle,” I said, and stood, placing my hands on my hips and swiveling my neck in an exaggerated move.
Her face reddened. “Don’t you dare suggest that me being pregnant is the same as you dating an A-list celebrity.”
Her blue eyes were wide, lashes darkened with mascara to make them even more noticeable, her blond hair typically wavy and beautiful. Both she and Bea could have been beauty queens if they’d ever wanted to be.
“Right. Because a new life is far less interesting than my dating life,” I said, shaking my head in mock scorn.
“Oh, come on. You know I want like six kids, and Bat said he’s along for the ride.”
Yes. My sister called her husband Bat as in Batman because she said he looked exactly like Christian Bale playing Bruce Wayne.
He doesn’t.
But Bat, or Walt Miriam as his parents had named him, was happy enough with whatever Bridgette called him because he was completely gone on my oldest sister. He’d literally said as much to me the day of their wedding three years ago. He’d said, “Ben, how’m I going to survive a lifetime with her? She bends me out of shape so bad, I’ll be twisted in knots the rest of my life.”
I’d had no response, not sure whether that was a good thing or not, but when I saw his face as she appeared at the end of the aisle and heard him whisper “oh, thank God,” I’d known he thought the knots were a good thing.
“Well, good for you and Walt, Bridge.”
I sat on the edge of the small bed and pulled off my shoes, then slid my feet into the house shoes I always wore when at home. My mother was laid back—just like my dad—but one thing she had no tolerance for was dirty shoes tromping around her floors . It was the only time I ever heard anyone use the word tromping .
“Tell me.”
She crossed her arms over her belly, not yet big enough to act as a shelf like it had at the end of her first pregnancy, and she pursed her lips. She gave me the look I knew too well—the exasperated, my little brother is annoying me, but I’m going to get my way, look.
“Yes, I am dating Whit Grantham.”
Her nostrils flared slightly, her lips flattened as her eyes fluttered, and then, it started.
“What! How? When? Where? How did this happen? Why ? What is she like? Is she as pretty in person? Is she stuck up? Are you sleeping with her? ”
Just then Bea poked her head in, her equally long blond hair pulled back into a ponytail, the same way she’d worn it since I could remember. She quirked an eyebrow in question.
“I just told Bridge?—”
“He’s dating Whit Grantham! Can you believe this?”
Bea gave me a puzzled, amused look, and shook her head. “What?”
I stood and pulled Bea in for a hug. My sisters were sturdy girls, medium height, nothing you’d call waifish, but Bea had always seemed slight in some way. I hugged her to me. And she squeezed me back, then released.
“Good to see you,” I said, genuinely feeling it, followed by the chaser of relief that I really did mean it.
It wasn’t so long ago I’d hardly meant anything I said, especially to those closest to me.
“I am going to pull your leg hair out one by one if you do not sit your narrow butt down and tell me what is going on.” Bridgette was fast reaching her breaking point .
I ducked my head, remembering her slew of questions. “I met her a couple months ago—she did a concert at the base, and I gave her a tour. She also happens to be related to a friend of mine. We went to a charity event a few weeks later, then another one, and since then, we see each other regularly. She is prettier in person, she isn’t stuck up, and that’s none of your business.”
“I can’t believe my brother is dating Whit Grantham. Do we get to meet her? Also, why did Bea get a hug and I didn’t?”
I laughed at her, enjoying the familiar barrage that was being in a room with Bridgette Holder-Miriam. I pulled her to me and squeezed, then released.
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it was due to the interrogation the minute I stepped into the house?”
“What did you expect?” she said, pushing me away from her.
“Maybe something like, ‘oh, hi, Ben. Great to see you. How was your drive?’” I said in the mocking voice I always used when making fun of her.
She pulled her phone from somewhere (did her dress have pockets?) and shoved it toward me. “I’m supposed to see that and not demand the full story?”
I looked down at the screen and read the headline that accompanied a photo of Whit looking dazed past the camera, our bodies pressed together, my head ducked down—probably from when I had been whispering in her ear. My hand was on her shoulder. Her expression… whoa .
Country’s Queen Whit Grantham hits the streets with new man, Lieutenant Ben Holder, US Army. More on this ‘Stolen Moment’ below.