Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
Bennett
T he entirety of my rage transfers to the chain in my hands. I wind the thick metal links around his neck, tighter and tighter, pulling until I can’t tell where the chain ends and my hands begin. Water moves over his face and distorts his gaped mouth and widening eyes.
“Is he almost dead?” Cat asks against my ear, and I hate that her warm breath makes me shiver.
“Almost,” I say.
I renew my grip on the chain and shove his body lower, ensuring he can’t rise for air again. In his death throes, he drives upward one last time before he finally goes limp. Seconds later, bubbles rise to the surface.
“He’s done. Let’s get the fuck out of here.” I release the chain, and the man stays put.
Cat grips me tighter as I turn and head for the exit. “But his mouth . . . his mouth was still moving.”
“Agonal breathing.” My feet meet with the ground, but I don’t tell her to get off my back. “The body doesn’t know when to quit.”
And neither does the heart.
I shouldn’t revel in the way her breasts press against my back. I shouldn’t want to help her overcome her fear of killing. She shouldn’t be any concern of mine, because I’m just her dirty fucking secret.
Yet I can’t turn it off.
“Can we get a check?” I yell down the lanes, but I don’t wait around to see if we came in first. With Cat still firmly attached to my back, I haul us out of the water and start for the steam huts.
“You read my mind,” Cat says against my ear, and I’m sure she felt the shiver that time. I’ll just pretend it’s from the cold.
I can’t feel my feet by the time I wrench open the heavy door and deposit Cat on a wooden bench inside the hut. Before anyone can interrupt us, I turn and lock the door.
Cat’s eyes widen as she pulls a robe from a hook and slides her arms into it. “I think these huts are supposed to be for everyone, not just us.”
“Yeah, well, there’s more than one. They can crowd into those. You wanted to talk, so let’s talk.” I rifle through the robes until I find one that will fit. Then I take a seat beside her on the bench, drop the back of my head against the cedar wall, and sigh through the intense shivering. Warmth from the stones and fire in the center of the room sends prickles of pain into my wakening limbs.
“What if people ask questions?” Cat says.
I close my eyes. “Then you answer them.”
“I mean about us. What lie can I come up with this time? Why have we locked ourselves in this hut, alone?”
“Tell them the truth.”
“I can’t. And neither can you.”
“You’re free to leave, then,” I say, motioning toward the door. “I’m not keeping you here. The lock only works on people who aren’t in here.”
“I know how locks work, Bennett.”
“Says the girl who panicked after locking herself in an outhouse.”
No, she doesn’t understand how locks work at all. If she did, she wouldn’t have let me past her defenses in the first place. Now we’re both fucked.
“Why does this have to stay a secret?” I ask.
She fumbles with her words before finally saying, “You know why.”
“Is it because you’re embarrassed? You say that isn’t the reason, but I think it is.”
She grips the edge of the bench and sits forward, looking into the small fire in the center of the room. “I guess I am embarrassed, in a way. It’s just . . . I don’t want to justify my decisions to everyone who knows us.”
Someone knocks on the door, followed by Ezra’s voice. “Everything okay in there?”
“We’re fine!” Cat says, loud enough for him to hear her. Hell, the Cattle in the mansion’s basement probably heard her. “We’re . . . talking.”
“Talking?” Kindra says through the crack in the door. “Why on earth would you two try to do something like that? And without a mediator, too?”
Cat motions to the door and gives me a look that says, See ?
“She said we’re fine, now fuck off!” I say, and that’s enough to get them away from the door. I can tell because the light filters from underneath once they walk away. “We all tease each other,” I whisper. “The jokes wouldn’t be anything new.”
She shakes her head. “It’s more than that. I’ll have to field questions, and you’ll get it even worse than me. Don’t hurt her, Bennett. Don’t cheat on her, Bennett .” She scoffs and runs her toe through the dirt. “Is that really what we want to deal with?”
Some things are worth it.
That’s what I want to say, but my lips won’t form the words. I can only watch the way the flames cast a glow over her pale skin.
“Then what do you want to do?” I ask instead.
“I don’t know. This would be so much easier if we were back in New York. We’re under a microscope here.”
Another knock comes at the door. This time, it’s Ice Pick. “Hey, any chance I can squeeze in there? The other sweat rooms are pretty packed.”
“The constant interruptions certainly don’t help,” I say to Cat. “Let’s pick this up back at the mansion. We’ll have a few hours before dinner.”
Cat nods as I stand to unlock the door.
“An hour after we’re back, let’s meet in the natatorium,” I say. “I doubt anyone will want to go near water for a while after this.”
I walk to the control panel in the natatorium and turn off those horrible screens. All that fake sun disappears, replaced by reality. And reality is dark, snowy, and cold. The overhead lights work off the same panel, so I dim those as well. The less attention I can draw to this room, the better.
Everyone was pretty tired after the disaster event, so we should be safe. Cat and I completed the only successful drowning. All the other Cattle died from hypothermia while the participants warmed themselves in the steam huts. Everyone should be in their rooms right now, sleeping off the cold and dreaming of the late dinner Kindra orchestrated to give everyone time to nap and warm up.
Not Cat, though. If she’s sticking to our plan, she should be coming through those glass doors at any minute.
I adjust the champagne and slender glass flutes at the edge of one of the hot tubs, which is tucked away in an alcove behind a few tall plants. It’s the only spot in the room that offers any privacy from prying eyes.
And that’s the thing. It’s not that I dislike the secrecy surrounding our exploits. It adds an element of fun, if anything. But I’d be lying if I said I was okay with the reasoning behind it.
Or that it will be hidden forever.
The fact that I’m thinking in timelines doesn’t exactly bode well for me, either. Relationships and commitment and feelings have never been a consideration. If I fucked a girl one day and my buddy fucked her the next, it was never a problem. Hell, sometimes we’d both fuck the same girl at the same time. I didn’t care.
Until now.
I knew this was more than I initially bargained for when I looked up and saw Maverick wrapping a warm towel around Cat’s shoulders at the event. Because that’s when the white-hot needles of jealousy plunged into my chest.
He sees her as a sister, and I’ve heard Ezra say he’s told him as much too, but the way he looked down at her as he draped the warm material over her exposed skin...Let’s just say it was a very incestuous glare if he considers her his sister. If I ever have the chance to meet my illusive sister, my gaze won’t form a fucking airlock on her nipples.
The door to the humid room swishes open. Cat enters and hurries over to the pool as if someone’s right behind her. Before I can call her name, she jumps into the water and disappears below the surface. Clothes and all.
“What the fuck?” I whisper as I continue watching.
She silently dog paddles to the side of the pool facing the door, then grips the edge so that she can peer over. And there she waits, watching the wall of frosted windows until a dark figure happens past.
Ice Pick toddles to the door, which isn’t frosted, and peers inside. Cat lowers her head beneath the water as Ice Pick continues searching for her in the shadowy room. Satisfied that his quarry isn’t here, he continues on.
“The coast is clear, Ariel,” I say when she resurfaces.
She squeals and nearly drowns herself as she spins to see where the voice came from.
I give her a wave and raise the champagne bottle. “Figured a little alcohol might help.”
“I need something stronger than champagne,” she says as she hauls her dripping body out of the pool. The pink sweatshirt clinging to her curves threatens to send her back into the water, so I hurry to help her.
Once she’s secure on dry land, I help her out of her clothes and lead her to the hot tub. She studies the romantic setup with wary eyes.
“What’s all this?”
“Me first,” I say. “Why were you running from Ice Pick?”
She steps into the roiling water, then lowers herself with a sigh until only her head pokes above the surface. “He saw me come down the stairs and started heading toward me. Figuring he wanted to try out flirting again, I nearly broke my neck trying to get away from him before he could catch up.”
“Aw, does my kitten have an admirer?” I say with a smirk. I slide into the water and nearly send it into a full boil with what she says next.
“Apparently, he isn’t the only one. Eve mentioned that Maverick might not be so against something between us after all.”
I swallow the possessive words creeping up my throat and do my best to seem indifferent. “That so? What do you plan to do with this information?”
Her slender shoulders lift in a shrug that barely clears the waterline. “I don’t know. But that isn’t why we’re here. You said you wanted to talk, so talk.”
What I planned to say—that I’m falling for her and I think we should consider what that means—doesn’t seem so wise now. If I’m sick of being the butt of everyone’s jokes, I have to stop setting myself up so easily. She’ll just laugh if I tell her how I truly feel. Especially now that her obsession is within reach.
So I stare into the water and say nothing.
“Wow, something really is bugging you,” she says, and there’s no condescension in her voice.
“It’s nothing. Just a me problem.”
She slides a little closer and places a hand on my thigh, then almost immediately pulls her arm away, instead choosing to pat my back. The second action isn’t any less awkward than the first.
“We aren’t very good at this,” she says with a small smile.
“What? Comforting each other? We could be.”
“How so?”
I wrap my arm around her waist and pull her onto my lap. An action I almost regret, because the feel of her slippery skin against my thighs is enough to stiffen my dick. If she notices, she’s too polite to say anything.
Brushing her hair away from her face, I look into her eyes. If I want this—and it’s becoming clear that I do—I’ll have to put in a little more effort. She likes Maverick because he’s an open book, so maybe I just need to crack open my cover and at least give her a peek at something .
But not the feelings I have for her. I’m not ready for her to read that part of my story yet. Those words may stay buried in a chapter I have to close at the end of the retreat.
“My mom . . .” The words jumble in my throat, choking me with their truth. It’s one thing to lie to Ezra about my mother’s condition. It’s another when I lie to myself about it. Telling someone the truth makes it real. “My mom is dying.”
The words tumble out before I realize I’ve said them, and the situation almost cheapens them. In a way, I’m spilling my guts to manipulate Cat into liking me more than Maverick. But in a way, I’m telling her these things because she’s the person who can put me back together when I break, even if she doesn’t realize it.
Cat leans down, enveloping me in her arms and resting her head on my shoulder. “Bennett, I’m so sorry. We all knew she was in a care home, but Ezra hasn’t mentioned her condition.”
“Because he doesn’t know.”
“No wonder you walk around with a chip on your shoulder and a glare in your eyes.”
“Everyone eventually dies. I don’t know why this is affecting me like this, but it is.”
“No, I don’t mean your mother’s situation.” Her fingers trace lazy circles on my back beneath the water. “You’re a man alone on an island. You depend on yourself for everything.”
“Isn’t that what men are supposed to do?”
“No, jackass.” She giggles against my neck, and that taunt becomes a term of endearment as it falls from her lips. “No one should be expected to get through a shitstorm alone. It’s okay to let other people care about you.”
“I’m not stopping anyone from caring about me.”
“But you are.”
“How?” I tilt my neck so I can look down at her.
“If you don’t tell people when you’re hurting, how can they care?”
I scoff. “You’re talking about pity. I don’t want anyone to pity me.”
“Well, for what it’s worth, I don’t pity you. I care about you.”
She snuggles into me as her words dig barbed hooks into my heart. The girl is making herself right at home there.
If only she’d stay.