Chapter 2 Bennett
Bennett
Damn, it felt good to be back in Oregon. The land of rain, fog, and a craft brewery on every corner.
It was a far cry from my hometown of Flag, Indiana, a place so small that the liquor store doubled as a post office—with a tanning bed in the back—and where it was nearly impossible to miss out on Sunday service without somebody ratting you out to your mother.
I’d spent eighteen years there dreaming about getting out, and most days, I still couldn’t believe I had.
I loved my family, I really did. But two weeks crammed into my parents’ two-bedroom bungalow had been a special kind of endurance test.
Between my mom blasting holiday music on a twenty-four-hour loop, the Marvel movie marathon with my nephews—more than 124 hours of film and television—and my dad’s constant complaining about whatever inflatable eyesore our neighbor, Janette, had added to her collection of holiday lawn decor, it was safe to say that I’d been about one Christmas carol away from using Janette’s inflatable Santa to make my escape down the Ohio River and hope for the best.
By the end of day six, I’d started volunteering for grocery runs just to stand alone in the snack aisle and remember what quiet sounded like, the irony of which wasn’t lost on me.
I’d spent the first sixteen years of my life in total silence before getting my cochlear implants.
Those early years were like a different world, one where sound didn’t exist, only vibration and shape and movement.
Back then, quiet wasn’t something I’d escaped to; it had been everything.
And yet somehow, even though I’d gotten older and the world had become louder—voices, machines, and even those pesky inner thoughts—I still craved stillness.
Not the kind that came from turning things off, though I did turn my speech processors off every now and then, but rather the kind that lived in the spaces between noise.
Needless to say, coming back to Oregon felt like breathing again. Now it was just me, the empty road, and the low hum of my truck’s heater.
Diaz, my teammate turned roommate turned best friend, wouldn’t be back from visiting his family for another couple of days, which meant the house would be dark and quiet when I got home.
Just the way I liked it.
The city lights came into view as I headed west toward our house in North Portland, the rain coming down gently, tapping a rhythm against the windshield. I rolled my shoulders, the leftover tension from travel still stuck between them, and turned the radio down to nothing.
The next few weeks would be crucial, time to reset and get my head straight before spring training swallowed me whole again.
That meant early workouts with the guys who had stuck around during the holidays, getting back to my regular sleep pattern, and eating food that wasn’t covered in frosting and sprinkles.
Getting my meals back on track would be easy enough; it was the sleep that would be the real battle. I’d never been good at that part.
The soft percussion of rain was almost enough to settle me. Almost. That was until a pair of hazard lights flickered up ahead, cutting through the mist like a distress call.
That was when I saw her—Arabella Pink—bent over the hood of her electric-blue hatchback on the shoulder of the two-lane highway.
Her auburn curls were tucked up into a messy bun that reminded me of my favorite kind of pastry. Maybe I should rethink cutting back on sugar. The curve of her hips was outlined by a red dress much too short for car trouble in forty-degree rain. And that ass . . .
Hell, I’d know that ass anywhere. I’d spent two weeks trying—and failing—not to think about that mouthwatering mound of flesh.
Break me off a piece of that . . . Bella Pink.
Fate had one hell of a sick sense of humor, and fuck if I didn’t love it.
Before I could second-guess myself, I flipped the truck around and pulled off on the shoulder a few yards behind her car.
She didn’t notice me—not right away, at least. She didn’t even look up from beneath the hood until I was halfway around her car, and damn if that didn’t make me tense for an entirely different reason.
Bella was a vibrant, young woman, alone after dark on the side of a highway. It didn’t take much imagination to picture just how sideways that situation could go, especially when coupled with the fact that most men were absolute dog shit.
It wasn’t fair that Bella, or any woman for that matter, had to worry about their safety at every waking moment, about entitled losers and what they might do if a woman dared so much as smiled in their direction, but it was also a disturbing reality of the world we lived in.
And so long as that was the case, I would find any fucker who so much as breathed in Bella Pink’s direction without her say so, bury him beneath home plate, and squat on his grave.
Her attention bounced between me and the steam curling upward from beneath the hood. I resisted the urge to wipe away the grease streaked across her freckled cheek.
“Need a hand?” I asked.
She straightened and gave me a half-smile. “Thanks, but I can handle it. Just . . . being stubborn.”
“You or the car?”
Bella blinked before diving back under the hood.
“Seriously, Bennett, I took a car maintenance class last spring. At the very least, I can identify a problem without panicking.”
The sound of her saying my name, that small, almost imperceptible dip in her tone, was enough to make me swallow hard.
Emphasis on hard.
She glanced up again, suddenly curious. “Where are you coming from?”
I stepped closer, close enough to catch the scent of motor oil and green apple wafting off her skin.
“Just flew back in,” I told her. “Spent the holidays with my family.”
“That explains the sweater.”
I grimaced, glancing down at my chest. “Yeah, that would be my brother’s husband’s handiwork. Ian took up knitting last year, so everyone got a custom sweater for Christmas.”
Just thinking about this year’s family photo—which knowing my luck, would be next year’s holiday card—made me huff a disgruntled laugh.
Here we were, a week into the new year, and Dad was probably still searching for the words to describe how much he loved the massive bass fish stitched across the front of his.
Mom’s face had lit up when she’d put on her striped knit covered in blinking LED snowflakes that played “Jingle Bell Rock” when she moved.
Even my nephews hadn’t been spared—Sammy’s sweater featured a dinosaur in a Santa hat, and Dieter’s had a reindeer so wildly disproportionate, it violated several laws of nature.
None of them compared to mine, though.
A green monstrosity with Sleigh All Day was stitched across the front in glitter yarn, complete with dangling white pom-poms that jingled when I moved. It wasn’t so much a sweater as it was a cry for help wrapped in tinsel.
“It was supposed to be cute,” I said, tugging at the hem. “And it was, right up until I spilled my drink on the plane and had to wear it in public.”
Her laugh was instant, bright, and surprised, like she hadn’t expected it to escape.
“That’s . . . tragic,” she said.
“That’s one word for it. Humbling is another.”
“I don’t know.” She tilted her head to one side, giving the sweater a quick once-over. “I think you pull it off okay. It’s very . . . festive lumberjack core.”
“Festive lumberjack core,” I repeated, shaking my head. “I should add that to my dating profile.”
A faint smile tugged at her mouth.
Little did she know, I didn’t do dating apps—not anymore, at least. And trust me, I’d tried them all.
The one that promised deep, meaningful connections, another that paired you based on your coffee order, and even one geared toward people who supposedly enjoyed the outdoors—which apparently was just code for fucking in the woods.
Too many splinters, not enough lube.
I watched her disappear beneath the open hood again, the movement causing the short hem of her dress to ride up a fraction. The color of the fabric was a startling, vibrant contrast to the dreary highway shoulder, like a flame in the rain. And it was doing spectacular things for her body.
My eyes traced the curve of her hips. Her legs, thick and powerful, were the kind that looked like they could run a marathon or spend a glorious amount of time wrapped around a man’s waist.
Or head.
The raw image of her thighs squeezing me tight while I lapped at her pussy washed over me. Damn, what a way to go. Buried between Bella’s thighs, drowning in pussy juices.
“The belt is completely shredded,” she said, straightening and wiping her hands on a rag. “And that is where my maintenance class expertise hits a cold, rainy wall. Unless you have a spare, Lumber-Santa?”
My lips quirked. “Must be in my other sleigh.”
“I guess I’ll take that ride then.” She sighed, blowing a puff of white air into the rain. “I’ll come back for this hunk of junk tomorrow, but it’s been one hell of a night, so right now I just want to change my clothes and get out of here.”
She swung the back door open with the kind of pragmatism that made me like her more and also made me want to reach over and make sure she didn’t do something reckless.
“You can look away if you want,” she added with a half-grin, already fishing through the back seat.
For a second, I thought she was joking. There was no way she was about to get naked on the side of the highway.
“You’re not serious,” I said.
“I’m not sitting in a wet dress and tights for another thirty minutes,” she fired back, holding up some sweatpants and a hoodie.
“Bella, it’s forty degrees out. We’re on the side of the road.”
“Exactly,” she confirmed, unbothered. “And nobody’s around.”
Technically, she was right. I hadn’t seen another car for miles, but that didn’t mean I liked the idea any better.