Chapter 9 – Ben
Chapter
Nine
BEN
I could still taste her when the lock clicked into place.
Her lip gloss. Her breath. The little broken sound she made when I kissed her harder instead of pulling away.
“Remember,” I’d told her, voice ragged, “you can’t tell anyone this happened. If Henry finds out, you’re gone. And Mr. Stonewood…”
I hadn’t finished the sentence. I didn't need to.
She’d promised, hand over her mouth, eyes wide and wrecked and shining like I’d just given her something sacred instead of one more sin to carry.
Now the door to Room Eighteen was shut and locked with her inside, and my arm still felt phantom-warm where she’d grabbed it and begged for one thing that was hers. One kiss, one moment before she sold her life away to a man who might as well be the devil and called it love.
I forced my feet to move.
Down the hallway, away from her door. Past the numbered rooms where the other women were changing into dresses they’d paid obscene amounts of money for, casting themselves as contenders in a game that was never built for them.
Chrissy had passed the first test. She hadn’t flinched on the road when she saw my face, hadn’t flinched in the truck when I reminded her what kind of contract she’d signed.
She also hadn’t flinched in her room when I put my hands on her and kissed her like I’d been dreaming about it since the hardware store.
That alone should’ve been enough to make me call the whole damn Game off, drag her downstairs, into the foyer, rip the mask off this place and tell her the truth.
My name is actually Ben Stonewood, Jacob is my middle name, and I never forgot you. I built all of this around you.
But I wouldn’t do that, at least not yet. I needed to be sure it was really me she wanted, not just forbidden passion with anyone who might be willing and able to provide it.
Instead, I pushed through the discreet hidden door at the end of the guest corridor and stepped into my private wing of the lodge. The air shifted the second it shut behind me.
The West Wing was older, darker, and more honest than the rest of the hunting lodge.
Less polished veneer, more original bones.
This part of the Old Stonewood Hunting Lodge was where I’d hidden away from the world after I woke up from the coma, where Henry had cleared out the old trophies and bourbon cabinets and built me a command center instead.
Ashgrove House, the house I’d been raised in until the accident, was the family mausoleum now, full of ghosts and furniture and a history I wasn’t ready to face yet.
I hadn’t set foot in that place since I woke up in a hospital bed four years ago and realized that my father was dead and buried, my stepmother was potentially responsible for his death and out of the country, and my face wasn’t my own anymore.
So I took the lodge.
The house the Stonewoods had built in the woods, when the old money was newer, and the blood was fresher. Men in my family had come here to hunt for generations upon generations.
I’d just changed the game.
I limped into the West Wing control room, favoring my bad knee, and hit the panel to bring the monitors to full brightness. Camera feeds from the drive, the foyer, the dining room, the hallways. Thermal, night vision, standard.
And on the top right screen? That little gem showed the interior of room eighteen from a discreet 360-degree camera in the room’s overhead light.
Chrissy was still inside, back against the wall where I’d left her, fingers pressed to her mouth like she could hold the kiss there if she just tried hard enough.
Her suitcase sat abandoned in the middle of the floor.
The wardrobe hung open, dresses in reds, and greens, and blacks, waiting like bait.
She looked stunned, flushed, and alive in a way I hadn’t seen in her these past four years.
Mine.
A slow, traitorous warmth spilled down my spine.
Half of me wanted to scrap all of it — masks, actors, challenges, ceremony — and go upstairs as myself. I could knock on her door, tell her everything, and beg her to put me out of my misery and marry me.
She’d hate me at first. She should. I’d earned every ounce of the fury she’d likely unleash on me when she found out.
But maybe… eventually…
The door behind me opened with a quiet click.
“Tell me you didn’t just do what I think you did,” Henry said.
I didn’t turn around.
“Depends on what you think I did,” I said.
He stepped inside, shut the door, and crossed to stand beside me, hands behind his back, eyes on the screens.
His gaze instantly found Room Eighteen.
He took in Chrissy’s rumpled hair. The way she was breathing. The way her fingers trembled when she finally pushed off the wall and sat on the edge of the bed like her knees weren’t entirely reliable.
Henry sighed.
“Christ, kid.”
“I’m not a kid, Henry. I haven’t been one since I woke up after the accident,” I muttered.
“You know that’s not what I meant.” His eyes didn’t leave the monitor. “You kissed her.”
“She asked me to,” I said.
“This creates a problem for the part of you that’s running this game, Ben.” His tone was pure Henry: practical, patient, and furious in that quiet way that meant I’d driven his blood pressure through the roof again.
“She told me she’s been thinking about me for four years,” I said. “The hardware store. My eyes. Me. She said when she needs something that doesn’t hurt, her brain pulls up that day.”
Henry’s jaw flexed.
“And you thought, ‘You know what this delicate psychological experiment needs? Physical contact’,” he said. “Beautiful.”
“She passed the first test,” I snapped. “She didn’t flinch on the road.
Not at the scar, not at the contract talk.
She grabbed my arm in the room and asked for something of her own before she walked into a house designed to strip her down.
She’s here willing to marry a wealthy stranger for her grandmother’s sake, Henry. I’m not made of stone.”
“You’re a Stonewood,” he corrected mildly. “And you don’t have the luxury of pretending this is just a love story. You need a wife, a legal one, in the immediate future, preferably with her eyes open, spine intact, and enough grit to survive the shitstorm that comes along with your last name.”
He finally turned his head and pinned me with that look that had been terrifying me since I was eight years old.
“Testing her isn’t cruelty,” he said. “It’s triage.”
“I know what it is.”
“Then stop trying to blow it up because she wrecks your self-control just by existing.”
I let out a breath through my teeth and dragged a hand down my face.
“You weren’t out there,” I said. “On the road.”
“I watched the feed,” he said. “I saw her. Nervous but steady. Respectful of you as staff. No entitlement. No screaming. She was worried about being late because she didn’t want to waste anyone’s time. Then in the foyer, she backed you when I called you a ‘lowly groundskeeper’.”
He nodded at the monitor, where she was now standing in front of the open wardrobe, running her fingers over the dresses like she was afraid she’d damage the fabric just by breathing near it.
“She cleared the bar by a mile,” he said. “Which is exactly why you can’t treat her like the only thing that matters is whether or not she wants to kiss you.”
“She told me my scars don’t bother her,” I said quietly. “That they make me who I am, and that I’m still the most devastatingly handsome man she’s ever seen.”
Henry stared at me for a long beat, then looked up at the ceiling like he was asking some higher power for strength.
“Of course she did,” he muttered. “Of course, you found the one woman in Baldwin County who looks at your face and thinks ‘upgrade’.”
I almost laughed, but didn’t quite get there.
“She’s attracted to you,” he said. “We established that four years ago when she grabbed the first aid kit before anyone else and didn’t so much as blink. The road test today just confirmed it. So now we proceed as planned.”
“Planned.”
The word tasted thin.
“Yes,” he said. “Planned. You remember that concept? We spent months building this structure. You need a plausible process for eliminating the other candidates, a pattern of fair play for the lawyers, and a trail of footage that will stand up in court if your stepmother contests the will.”
He pointed toward a different monitor, where the male Ben decoys were getting last-minute notes from a staffer, ties straightened, domino masks in hand.
“All nine male decoys wear identical masks,” he reminded me. “Same style. Same color. Same cut. You’re one of them now. That was always the plan if she passed your tests.”
“I get to replace number seven,” I said.
Henry’s brows ticked up.
“As we planned.”
“I had you assign Brandon as her original partner for a reason,” I said.
“So you could ‘eliminate’ him in the foyer. He earns his money, plays the horny idiot, gets theatrically removed from the Game, and suddenly there’s a vacancy.
I step in. Jacob becomes number seven. Number Seven is Chrissy’s new partner in the challenges.
It’s the perfect inroad to get to observe her closely. ”
Henry’s mouth twitched.
“Brandon did play it well,” he allowed. “Overacted the whole thing just enough to make you look justified when you volunteered.”
“He’ll be compensated,” I said. “Bonus for taking the public hit. He did so well I wanted to throttle him, honestly.”
“Good. I’ll see that it’s paid.”
One less variable on the board, and one less decoy between me and my girl.
Henry adjusted his cufflinks, eyes sweeping the wall of screens again.
“She will be allowed to go to dinner,” he said. “On probation. We’ll stay with the script you wanted: a maid knocks at seven-twenty, tells her Mr. Stonewood has reviewed the footage and chosen to give her ‘one chance’. It will reinforce the idea that the Game is strict but fair.”
“She already knows I’m her partner,” I reminded him. “They all do. I volunteered in front of the entire foyer.”