17. BEN
17
BEN
D amn it, Sofia was great. And that pissed me off—I didn’t usually think women were great, so it was easy not to get attached, to get rid of them, to walk away without a second thought.
What was I supposed to do when I walked away from Sofia? I couldn’t stop thinking about her, and it was infuriating.
It always irritated me that she irritated me. She challenged me, she wasn’t scared to tell me off or get angry with me when she thought I was doing something wrong, and that just infuriated me more.
But what I was pissed off about now was that she wasn’t willing to open up to me. And it pissed me off that I was pissed off about it.
Yeah, I was a fucking anomaly. It didn’t make any sense and I didn’t like that I felt as much as I did with her.
“Hey!” Amy said when she answered the video call. “Are you ready to paint the town red in a couple of days?”
Luke appeared in the picture, too.
“You better have your drinking shoes on because visiting family always drives me crazy and I can think of only one way to forget all my sorrows.”
I sighed heavily. “Yeah, I’m about ready to forget my sorrows, too.”
“What’s up?” Amy asked, picking up on the double entendre. I wasn’t just joking along about drowning my sorrows and Amy was so fucking sharp when it came to my emotions, she always got it out of me.
“This business trip is just getting on my nerves,” I said.
“Is it Sofia?”
I groaned. “Yeah. She’s a pain in my ass and I’ll be happy when this is over. I can’t believe how long I have to be cooped up with her in this shithole of a town.”
“Well, soon we can meet up and you can blow off some steam,” Luke said. “Amy will take Sofia off your hands for a while, right, sis?”
“Thanks for offering my services, bro ,” Amy grumbled. “What about we just hang out the three of us instead of dragging her along?”
I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to go out without her, and I scowled when the thought lodged firmly in my mind.
“We’ll figure out the logistics closer to the time,” I said.
Amy narrowed her eyes. “You want her with us, don’t you?”
“I don’t want to be rude,” I said. “That’s all.”
Amy snorted. “As if you’ve ever worried about being rude. You’re the biggest dick out there.”
“Why, thanks,” I said with a smirk.
Amy rolled her eyes. “Not anatomically. I meant personality-wise.”
I rolled my eyes. “Why change a winning plan, right?”
“Unless it’s not a winning plan anymore,” Amy pointed out.
“Jesus, will you let it go?” I snapped.
Amy didn’t respond to my sudden anger at all. In fact, she just laughed.
“It’s not like you’re touchy about the subject or anything, huh?”
Amy was like a sister to me. She and Luke were an extension of my family, people I could turn to with the things that I couldn’t turn to my brothers or my dad with. But just like a sister, Amy was also a pro at teasing me, pushing my buttons, and getting me worked up because she knew exactly how to piss me off.
“Let me know when you’re done with family, and we can meet up,” I said, not taking her bait. “I have to go.”
I ended the call before either of them could say something.
It wasn’t long before my phone rang again.
This time, it was Luke on a normal call.
“Hey,” I said.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really.” I pushed open the doors to my balcony. The air had the tang of salt to it but it was different down here than it was in Newport. The sun was warm on my skin.
This was the kind of place someone could be happy. The people in town stayed here for a reason, even though it was such a rundown place and maybe this was why.
“She’s just so different ,” I said, even though I’d told Luke I wasn’t going to talk about it. “I actually like the way she thinks. And that’s fucked up because I don’t like anyone.”
“Hey,” Luke said with mock hurt in his voice, but he chuckled. “I get it, though. Sometimes, there’s just that one woman who manages to change everything.”
“You’ve had one of those?”
“Sort of,” Luke said.
“Who?” I’d known everything about Luke since we’d met in college, and he’d never mentioned this.
“It didn’t work out, so it’s not worth talking about. All I’m saying is I get it. Are you going to make a move?”
I thought about fucking Sofia, having her writhe beneath me, or riding me, her breasts jiggling, her hair on my chest…
“No,” I said.
“Why not? You like her; what’s the problem?”
“I’m not the dating type.”
“You could be.”
I stayed silent, not responding to that. The fact was that with Sofia, Luke was right. I did feel like I could be the dating type. She opened up my eyes to the rest of the world, distracting me from my own problems and it was refreshing to know that I wasn’t the only one who had it rough. It sounded backward to say it like that, but it made me feel less lonely.
“I’m not the dating type,” I said again.
He didn’t need to know why. Hell, Luke and Amy knew all about the Blackwood brothers and where we really came from, but he didn’t have to know the real reason I wasn’t going to get involved in a relationship. I just wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t good enough to fight for as a kid, I wasn’t good enough to get adopted right away, and I wasn’t good enough to give Sofia the kind of life she deserved.
Sure, I could give her all the money in the world, but somehow, Sofia didn’t care about money and I didn’t have anything else to offer. Without my money, stripped of all the luxury and the title being a Blackwood afforded, I was just… me.
And there was nothing about me that made being with me a good deal.
“I know you’ve been holding onto this thing that you’re a single god and you can get any woman you want, but there’s no shame in changing, you know. Look at Alex. He was Mr. Cold and now he’s married and they have little Tommy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man turn to mush the way he does with Charlotte.”
“Yeah,” I grumbled. “I guess people can change.”
But it wasn’t about what I did . It was about who I was .
“We’ll probably be done in the next two days and then we can flee without it being rude. Then we can get back to life as normal.”
I laughed. “You can’t tell me it’s cool to change into a family man and then in the same breath tell me you want to escape your family.”
“Hey, I’m talking about the family you can’t choose when I say I want to escape. Not all of us were lucky enough to be adopted into a Daddy-Warbucks-esque life. But when I talk about changing into a family man, I’m talking about the family you can choose.”
“For a player, you’re being very wise about settling down.”
“Hey, it’s way easier to give advice than to follow it.” Luke chuckled.
I laughed. He was right, of course. It was always easier to comment on someone else’s life, but working on yourself… yeah, that was fucking hard and not my favorite thing to do.
“I have to go,” I said. “I want to work on the presentation I’m supposed to give Richard while I have Sofia on my arm, fluttering her eyelashes.”
“On your arm?”
Right. I hadn’t told them about it.
“Don’t tell Amy, okay?”
“I’m going to tell Amy,” Luke said flatly. “You know I do that. I can’t promise I’ll keep my mouth shut.”
I groaned. “Fine, then just keep it between you two.”
I told Luke about Sofia being my pretend wife and how I’d put my foot in my mouth in that meeting.
“Holy shit,” Luke said when I was done.
“Yeah.”
“Holy fucking shit .”
“Yeah, I heard you,” I grumbled.
“I’m just saying…”
“You don’t have to say it,” I said. “I know .”
“Yeah,” Luke said. “Well, good luck with that part. I’m starting to think you’re making your life a lot more complicated than you need it to be.”
“Thanks for that,” I said sarcastically.
“You don’t always have to play your life on hard , Ben,” Luke said. His voice was serious now. “Sometimes, you can cut yourself some slack.”
I wasn’t sure what that had to do with the fact that I’d told Richard Sofia and I were married, but I had the feeling he was talking more in general.
And the fact was maybe he was right.
But like he said, it was much easier said than done.