Chapter 30
Alittle bell jingles over the door as I enter the cafe.
“Good morning,” a woman’s voice rings out.
I look around the cozy space, filled with red and white booths and a long counter with low red stools. A gray-haired woman appears from behind a wall with a tray of white porcelain coffee cups her hand. “You can grab a table anywhere you like. I’ll be right over.”
I thank her and slide into a booth far away from the windows that face the high rise across the street.
“What can I get you?”
“Oh, I’ll just have coffee, please. Cream and sugar. Maybe food in a little bit, I’m meeting someone.”
The woman sets down her order pad and leans on the booth across from me, smiling conspiratorially. “Big interview? Business meeting?”
I blush and look down at my law intern disguise. “Kind of. I’m meeting Mr. Adams from?—”
“Oh, Bentley. Yes, I know him well. He gets his coffee here every morning. You don’t have anything to worry about, love. His bark is worse than his bite, which isn’t something you can say about all the partners over there.”” She trails off and gives me a look that lets me know she’s got all the good gossip.
“Thanks,” I say, not sure how much I should tell her.
“I’ll send him over when he gets here.”
Bentley Adams.
I had just assumed Ben was short for Benjamin, but now I’ve got a whole new set of questions to ponder.
I’m still mulling it over when the man in question slides into the booth across from me. “Hey,” he says.
“Hey.”
He smiles up at the woman as she sets down two coffees, one with a side of cream and sugar for me, and just a cup of black for Ben.
When she’s gone, I narrow my eyes at him. “You couldn’t touch me in your office, but you’re comfortable having a personal meeting with an intern candidate in the cafe across from the firm?”
Ben smiles and looks around. “This place is a time warp. Things that happen here don’t count.”
I cock my head to the side. “I’m not sure that’s true. The waitress seemed to have the tea on all the partners over there.”
Ben lifts his brows in surprise. “What did she tell you about me?”
“That your bark is worse than your bite.”
He laughs and shakes his head. “I guess I should watch out. I wouldn’t want her telling that to just anyone.”
We fall into silence after that, neither of us sure how to move forward. I expect Ben to speak first, but he doesn’t. Finally, I can’t keep my mouth shut any longer.
“Your name is Bentley?”
His head cocks to one side as he processes my words. “Yes,” he says, but it sounds like a question.
“I didn’t know that.”
“Oh.”
“I just figured it was Benjamin. What kind of name is Bentley? That’s a car.”
“It’s a family name. I’ve always gone by Ben.”
“You gave me your own name as a safeword?”
It’s a sudden way of bringing our past relationship into the conversation, but I’m tired of waiting. Good or bad, I want to have this out with him right now.
“Yes.”
It seems like he’s going to stop there, and my own eyebrows go up in impatience. Ben’s eyes go up and to the right, not quite an eye roll, but at the very least an acknowledgement of my annoyance at his unsatisfactory answer.
“I…” he takes a deep breath and lets it out in a rush. “I was concerned from the beginning about how my position would affect your decision-making abilities. You seemed to want things to be secret, and I was never sure exactly what that was about. I know now, of course, but back then, I worried that you were concerned for your job or your reputation at the resort. But I couldn’t stay away from you. You affected me in ways no one ever has before. I worried that I was going to act out of character in some way that would make you uncomfortable in your workplace and you wouldn’t feel like you could tell me. It’s a balancing act to be the one holding the most power in a relationship. I had to be sure you had a way to release yourself from situations in public places if you needed to. In BDSM, safewords are used for that very reason. I figured if yours was my full name, a name you didn’t normally use, then you could call it in public if you needed me to back off. You calling out Bentley casually in a conversation wouldn’t seem odd to most people. It would be more appropriate than you calling me Ben, honestly. Bentley Adams is the name on the firm’s website. On my Wikipedia page. When employees who I’m not personally acquainted with call me by my first name, they often say Bentley.”
“I forgot to google you.”
Ben smiles again, but it turns sad as he shakes his head. “And thus my perfect plan for protecting you was foiled. I thought you knew.”
I can’t think of anything to say, so I take a sip of my coffee and don’t meet his eye.
“But I guess in the end, it didn’t matter, did it? You weren’t concerned about your job. You were worried that if people saw us together, they would tell me about your history with my son.”
It takes all my strength, but I look at him. I can’t shy away from this if I want to have any chance of moving forward with this man. I have to own my mistakes. “It was totally and completely fucked up of me to lie to you about Ainsley.”
Ben’s mouth quirks to the side as if I surprised him with that.
I hurry to go on. “I knew it was fucked up when I was doing it, and I knew it was going to end badly, but I never could have prepared myself for how hard I was going to fall for you. And falling so hard and knowing that you would never have me if you knew the truth, well, it drove me to some bad decisions. I regret hurting you with my behavior. But I do not regret a second of the time I got to spend with you. I’d do it again.”
Ben looks at me for a long time, his face unreadable. I nearly buckle under the pressure, but I”m rewarded for my patience.
“I would, too.”
The sky parts and the holy rays of sun shine down on me. “Give me another chance.”
The pensive look twists into anger at my words. “How am I supposed to do that, Victoria?” He shakes his head and drags a hand down his face. “What would I even tell people?” He shakes his head again, not looking back at me.
“You tell them the truth. Who cares what people think? Or you tell them nothing. No one here knows me.”
“Ainsley does.”
“Yeah, and who do you think helped me move here? Found me an apartment, picked out this ridiculous suit?”
Ben’s hands drop from his face, and he finally looks at me, mouth hanging open. “You…he…?” he shakes his head and drops it into both hands, propped on the table by his elbows. “I’m going to have a nervous breakdown.”
I laugh at that, leaning back in the booth and shaking my head. “You are not. You’re fine.”
“I’m pretty sure this is what a nervous breakdown feels like.”
I cross my own arms over my chest and wait. Finally, Ben seems to catch his breath and looks up at me. He’s looking frazzled and clearly exhausted, but he’s staring at me with those eyes that I remember from Merit. The ones that aren’t so concerned with the world around him. The ones that are free.
“Ainsley knew you were here the whole time?”
“It’s only been a couple of weeks, but yeah.”
“Why? I thought he was pissed about this whole thing. I haven’t brought it up a single time.”
“He’s not pissed. He wants to help. He knows we’re good for each other.”
Ben groans at my words, but I press on.
“He showed me the texts you sent him over the last year when he was traveling. I saw how they changed once we got together. Being with me changed you. He thinks it was for the better and I agree. You were happy. Even if it’s hard to remember that now with all the bullshit that went on, it’s true. You felt it, too.”
“He showed you my texts? You two have been talking about me? Jesus, I don’t know how to feel about all of this.”
“You can feel good about it. We both love you and want what’s best for you.” There. I said it.
Ben’s mouth drops open, and he snaps it closed. “You what?”
“I love you.”
He rests his head back into his hands without responding. It’s not like I was expecting him to say it back, but I was expecting him to say something.
When he finally does, I kinda wish he hadn’t. “How can you just say something like that with all that’s gone on?”
He’s looking at me though his fingers, so I shrug. “I’m in my truth telling era.”
His head sinks back down into his hands. I can see his eyes close as his chest rises and falls slowly with each breath. Finally, he lifts his face to look at me, rubbing both hands down his cheeks and up through his now messy hair.
He sighs and shakes his head. “I’ve been grocery shopping.”
I close my eyes and whisper, “Ben.”
When I look at him again, he shakes his head. “I can’t even remember the last time I went to the grocery store. Like, actually went there myself and picked things out.”
I wait in silence, afraid to even take a loud breath and interrupt whatever Ben is about to say. The air feels heavy, ripe with something. Whatever it is, I want it.
“I’m different. I can feel it in all sorts of ways. The grocery store is one of the more obvious ones, but it’s everywhere. I’ve been leaving the office on time every day. Somedays I just go for a walk in the woods on my property before dinner. I put on music in the house while I cook. I’ve been watching movies.”
“Scary ones?” I whisper.
Ben catches my eye and I see the tiniest smile tip the corners of his mouth. He nods.
Well, shit. The first tear rolls down my cheek before I realize it escaped. I hurry to brush it away but it’s no use. Ben saw it.
His smile grows a bit, but it’s sadder this time. “I know it’s you. You broke something open in me, Vic. I still have my shell, but there are cracks and little parts of the old me are escaping. The weight of the world on my shoulders is lifting. It’s scary to let this stuff out, but I don’t think I could hold it in now if I tried. Now that I remember what it feels like to be happy. To laugh and feel free. I feel like such a fool for living this way for all these years. It’s no wonder I drove my son away.”
His head slips back into his hands, and I reach over, braving a touch for the first time since seeing him again. My fingers curl around his and slowly pull his hands down to the table, away from his face. His head still hangs but he tips it up just enough to catch my eye.
“You didn’t drive anyone away, Ben. Ainsley is right here in New York, going to school.”
He nods, looking down at where our hands are still touching on the table in front of him. “I don’t know how to do this, Victoria.”
A rush of adrenaline hits my system at the words. Do they mean he’s willing to try? “I don’t either. But we can figure it out together.”
His eyes close again, and I take a deep breath. It’s time for me to say the words I came here to say.
“You’ve told me over and over that I changed you, Ben. But what I’ve never said is that I feel the same. You can’t understand what it’s like to be a woman my age, faced with life and choices and the enormity of it all on my own. My family isn’t rich or well-educated or even particularly interested in what I do. I have to make all my own decisions, and it’s fucking terrifying. Around every corner is a new decision and there’s no one to help. If I choose wrong, I fail at life. But then I met you. And sure, you questioned some of my decisions at first, but it never stopped you from treating me like a whole person. After a while, I started to realize that it wasn’t my decisions at all that were driving my self-worth. It was something else. Something innately me. You practically said as much when you told me that the women you usually date are doctors and lawyers or whatever. And you chose me anyway. It couldn’t be my life path, it had to just be me. Somehow, I was good enough, just for being me. As soon as I realized you seem to think that, I wondered if maybe I could think it too.”
My voice is raising but Ben doesn’t look nervously around like I would if an overenthusiastic woman was ranting at me. He watches me with rapt attention.
“And I might have made the worst decision of my life choosing to keep something so important from you. Choosing to lead you on and lie to you. But by the time you found out, I had already learned that my decisions didn’t create my self-worth. It was separate. I could still like and love and believe in myself even after I made that mistake. And so that was the choice I made. And it’s the choice I’m asking you to make.”
His eyes meet mine, and I see nothing but questions there.
I panic.
“I know this is a lot to put on you at once. You don’t have to give me an answer right now.” I pull my hands back, icy cold with the loss of his touch, and clasp them nervously in front of me. “We can just start slow. I’ll go, and you can think about this, and…” I trail off, unsure of what to say.
“You’ll go where?”
I lock eyes with him once more, biting my lip. “I’ll go home. Back to my apartment.”
“Which is where?”
“Brooklyn.”
Ben grimaces and I laugh. “This isn’t the eighties, Ben. Brooklyn is very nice.”
“I’m just imagining the nice Brooklyn apartment you’re paying for with your Pilates salary.” He looks up at me, narrowing his eyes. “Unless Ainsley is paying for it.”
I roll my eyes. “He’s not paying for it. And it’s okay. It’s fine,” I add quickly when he balks. “I can take care of myself. I’m perfectly safe.”
“Says the woman who gets off on danger and fear.”
My face spreads into a smile at his mention of our intimate past. Maybe this isn’t such a lost cause after all. “Why don’t you come over and see for yourself how safe it is.”
His face twists into an evil grin. “If you mean you want to lock yourself in your apartment and see if I can break in, I think that’s a game best played at my house where there’s no risk of me getting arrested.”
His words suck the air right out of me. I blink a few times in shocked silence before I can get a single word out. “Okay,” I say.
Ben leans back in the booth, eyes locked on mine. He still looks exhausted, but at least he’s holding his head up now. His eyes carry questions, uncertainty, but he doesn”t look like he’s about to bolt. I hold his gaze and wait patiently.
Finally, after what feels like an eternity but is probably only a minute or two, he looks away and reaches into his pocket to draw out his phone. “It’s probably best for me to check out this apartment. I’ll call my car.”
I smile. “Not driving yourself around, huh?”
He sniffs out a laugh and shakes his head, tapping on the phone screen. “I have to draw the line somewhere.”