Chapter 10
ten
CASS
The walk back from O’Neil’s is quiet, but not uncomfortable.
Not for me, anyway.
Ben, on the other hand, is a walking disaster. His shoulders are hunched, his hands are shoved deep into his pockets, and his gaze is locked on the sidewalk cracks like they hold instructions for a dignified exit from his own existence.
I, however, am deeply satisfied.
The hockey guys saw exactly what they needed to see—Ben’s hand on my breast, my body pressed against his in a display of casual intimacy that sold the whole charade. Sure, he accidentally groped me in the process, but he didn’t bolt, so that’s a win.
“That went well,” I say, testing the waters.
He makes a noncommittal mumble that might be agreement.
I turn and glance at him, and it’s clear he’s replaying every second on loop, building a comprehensive list of his failures. I realize then that he needs a controlled debrief, a chance to calm down with me close, because if I leave him to his own devices, he’s going to drown in self-loathing.
“Your dorm’s closer, right?” I say, my tone deliberately casual. “We should debrief.”
He stops walking and faces me, eyes wide with fresh panic, like I just suggested we storm the dean’s office naked. “My—my dorm?”
“Yeah. A post-game analysis.” I give him a look. “Unless you want to keep walking around campus looking like you’re about to vomit.”
His mouth opens, closes, opens again. “I… uh…”
I start walking again, forcing him to follow. “Come on. It’s not a big deal.”
It is a big deal, but not for the reason he thinks.
I knew I’d need to train him, but so far stripping down to my underwear and pressing my breast into his hand clearly wasn’t enough, because he’s still seizing up every time I get close. This arrangement only works if he can touch me, hold me, and act like a functional human boyfriend.
And it needs to happen soon, before our next public outing, because real couples kiss and touch and talk and laugh. But, right now, that’s beyond Ben’s bandwidth, so I need to escalate the plan on his home turf, where he feels safe enough to, maybe, not go to water around me.
He leads me to his dorm, which is on the third floor of South Campus housing, at the end of a long hallway. We don’t speak the rest of the way, because I don’t want him to chicken out, so I just stand back while he fumbles with his key, opens the door, and steps inside.
I follow.
And stop.
Oh.
This isn’t a jock’s shrine to his own ego. There are no posters of half-naked girls draped over sports cars and no trophy shelf documenting his athletic dominance. In fact, there’s nothing to suggest he plays hockey at all. Instead, it’s a mad scientist’s workshop.
A workbench made from a repurposed door and two sawhorses dominates one side of the room, its surface a chaotic sprawl of tools, solder, and components that look like they were salvaged from a 1980s RadioShack liquidation sale.
Gasping with gleeful shock, my eyes gravitate towards a cassette deck, which sits open with its silver faceplate removed, its insides surgically exposed. I cross the room, moving past him, and reach out to touch this piece of musical treasure.
But then Ben makes a small, protective noise in the back of his throat.
I glance up at him. He’s watching me like I was just about to put my hand on something sacred. And, at that moment, I realize that this isn’t just his chosen field of study, it’s his world—his everything—and he’s terrified I’m going to break it or mock it. It’s a feeling I know well.
“Sorry,” I say, my voice soft as I pull my hand back. “You actually know how to fix this stuff?”
“Yeah,” he says, his voice tight with anxiety. “I know it’s a total mess in here, I—”
“Ben, it’s cool,” I say, cutting him off.
The tension in his shoulders vanishes, like I just entered the correct password to bypass his entire security system. He blinks at me, his expression shifting from mortified to cautiously hopeful, like he’s not sure if I’m mocking him or if I actually give a damn.
“That one’s been kicking my ass,” he says, and for the first time tonight, his voice doesn’t sound strangled. “The capstan motor keeps seizing up.”
I lean closer, genuinely curious. “What’s wrong with it?”
He stands next to me. “The motor’s fine,” he says. “It’s the lubrication. The old grease dried out and turned into this gummy crap that jams up the whole system. I’ve been trying to clean it out without damaging the bearings, but it’s—”
He stops himself, glancing at me like he’s worried he’s boring me.
“It’s what?” I prompt.
“It’s tedious as hell,” he finishes, a small, sheepish smile that’s as cute as hell tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Like, ‘clean-it-with-a-Q-tip-and-rubbing-alcohol’ tedious. One wrong move and I strip a gear or crack a bearing race. Reminds me of an amp that I had to fix onc—”
“You fix amps?” I interrupt.
“I try,” he says, suddenly suspicious again. “Why?”
I say, sitting back on my heels. “My old amp’s got this hum. My bassist thinks I should just buy a new one, but—”
“I heard it, but it’s not about the hum, right? It’s your sound?” he finishes, his voice suddenly intense. “You can’t just replace that.”
I stare at him.
He gets it. And, unlike the other revolving door of guys who fall in love with the image of me or say whatever they need to to get into my pants, I think he means it. Because, if there’s anything certain in this world, it’s the fact that Ben Kellerman is objectively terrified of me.
“Exactly,” I say, my voice rough. “Joel doesn’t get it. He just hears the hum and thinks it makes us sound amateur.”
Ben frowns, his brow furrowing in that intense, analytical way. I can almost see the calculations running behind his eyes. “I thought I heard a sixty-cycle hum, but it might be higher? Does it change when you touch the strings?”
I blink. “Uh… it’s sixty-cycle, I think. And yeah, it gets quieter when I touch the strings or the bridge.”
He nods. “That’s a grounding issue. Probably a broken ground wire somewhere in the signal chain, or a bad solder joint on the input jack.
The hum you’re hearing is your amp acting like a giant antenna, picking up the sixty-hertz AC from the power lines.
When you touch the strings, you’re grounding yourself, which completes the circuit and reduces the noise. ”
I just stare at him.
He just diagnosed my amp in thirty seconds.
Mistaking my shock for confusion, he crosses to a small whiteboard mounted on the wall next to his desk. He grabs a dry-erase marker and starts sketching a signal flow diagram on the board like some sort of mad scientist finally figuring out how to split the atom.
“OK, so the issue is probably here,” he says, tapping the board with the marker.
“Somewhere between your guitar and the amp’s first gain stage, you’ve got a break in the ground path.
That’s letting noise into the system. If we isolate each connection point—your guitar’s output jack, the cable, the amp’s input jack—we can find the break and fix it. ”
God, the change in him.
The guy who froze up in the bar in front of his friends and almost had a stroke when he saw me in my underwear and accidentally touched my breast is suddenly animated and sure. And I realize, with a dizzying clarity, that I’m not just tolerating this, I’m enjoying it.
He catches himself mid-explanation. “Sorry, this is probably boring.”
“It’s not,” I say, and I mean it. “Keep going.”
Relief flashes across his face. “Okay,” he says.
This is who he is when he’s not scared.
The thought lands with unexpected weight. This version of Ben—focused, confident, in his element—is an entirely different person from the stammering, terrified boy. Here, in this chaotic workshop of broken things, he’s not awkward. His hands are steady and his voice is sure.
“You’re really into this stuff, huh?” I say.
He glances back at me, the marker still in his hand, and for a second, his expression is completely unguarded and vulnerable. “Yeah,” he says simply. “It’s… I don’t know. It makes sense. You take something broken, you figure out what’s wrong, and you fix it. There’s a right answer. It’s not like—”
“It’s not like people,” I finish for him.
His eyes snap back to mine, wide with surprise. “Yeah,” he says softly.
We stand there for a moment, and the easy competence he just displayed starts to fade as the silence stretches. The confident engineer is receding, and the anxious boy is creeping back in, his shoulders hunching slightly.
“Here, you’re comfortable and confident,” I say, putting my hands on my hips, deciding I need to push him now while the embers of that confidence are still glowing. “But in public you’d rather be waterboarded than touch me.”
His face flushes a deep, painful red. “I—”
“Don’t apologize,” I cut him off, my voice firm. “Let’s fix it.”
His mouth closes, and he just stares at me, his expression a mix of confusion and dread, like I just told him I’m going to perform surgery on him without anesthesia. It’s clear it’ll take some convincing to go along with what I’m about to do, but it’s necessary.
“You need to get comfortable with me and my body,” I say quietly. “And the only way to do that is exposure.”
“Okay…” he says.
“I’m going to do something,” I say. “And I need you to trust me, is that okay?”
He gives a short, jerky nod.
Good enough.
I turn my back to him, presenting the zipper of my skirt. “Take off my skirt,” I say softly.
“What?” he stammers, his voice cracking on the single syllable like I just asked him to defuse a bomb.
“The skirt,” I say, my voice patient but firm. “Unzip it.”
There’s a long, agonizing pause. I can hear his breathing, shallow and fast, and I can practically feel the frantic scramble of his thoughts. Then, with breathtaking hesitation, he reaches out, and his fingers find the pull tab.