Chapter 42
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Ben
I ’d strategically ducked every attempt Thatcher and Flint had made at cornering me after seeing the look in their eyes—confusion, a little pity, concern.
I didn’t want it. I wanted to move ahead, keep going, get to the next week and the week after that so I wouldn’t feel so hollowed out. Time would help.
My therapist had listened. He’d let me get it all out. He’d asked me only two questions. Do you think she cares for you? And Do you care for her? For some reason, his refusal to be outraged on my behalf, even though that was patently not his purview, had infuriated me.
In some ways, it was a relief to feel something other than the sad, resigned feeling since I’d boarded the plane. Of course I had hurt, I had some anger, I had disbelief, but mostly, I felt like what had happened was what was always going to happen because being with Whit had been too good to be true.
But Dr. Cartan’s two questions had stuck needles between my ribs, and I felt irritable the rest of the week with them running around in my head.
Did I think she cared for me? Sure. Probably some part of her. I did think we were friends, whatever else happened.
Great.
But where that also took me was that she clearly hadn’t cared for me enough . Not enough to avoid a spectacle, not enough to tell me the truth, not enough to love me back.
What a fool .
I especially avoided Major Flint because I knew what was coming—he’d essentially called this. He’d warned me. He’d known my heart was soft and easy and just waiting for someone to give it the time and attention it needed. He’d known that the tour and hell, maybe even the fame, had drawn me in.
He knew his cousin, too. I’d been arrogant enough to think I knew her better than he did—that he was wrong about her. I’d had dose after healthy dose of humility in the last few years, and I’d wanted to be right about this, about her.
Damn it .
Bridgette texted me at least twice daily, begging me to talk to her, to tell her how I was doing, what I was thinking, what was going on, when she could come up to Nashville and slash Whit’s tires. I’d responded to the first message telling her I was fine, that I was sad, but fine.
I didn’t want to sit down in it with her, or with Thatcher, who looked like he was ready to hear my tale of woe whenever I wanted to lay it out for him. But I didn’t want to. I wanted to one-foot-in-front-of-the-other until it didn’t feel so empty right under my breastbone.
“Lieutenant Holder, I’d like to see you before you head out,” Flint called to me as he passed my desk where I was gathering my things for the day.
I’d avoided everyone’s subtle prods, the whispers and glances of more than a few soldiers who had to have seen the show and put the pieces together that Whit Grantham’s boyfriend (though former echoed in my head) was me.
“Roger, sir,” I said, praying this was something official and not the inevitable comeuppance.
I finished loading my bag, shutting down my computer, locking my file drawer, and then made my way to Flint’s office. I ducked my head in, hoping to get away with that and not the whole sitting down and heart-to-hearting.
“Sir?”
“Plans tonight, Holder?” Flint said, not looking up from the planner set in front of him.
“Uh, not sure, sir. Probably something low key?—”
“Good. Come to the house. Erin is making homemade pizza. I already told her you’d be there.”
“Uhhh… I’m not sure I can,” I said, my stomach clenching at the thought of an evening with him and Erin, sickeningly in love and determined to help me.
“Nonsense. I’ll see you there in half an hour. I’m walking out in ten.”
I pulled up at Flint’s house to find Erin sitting on the back steps, evidently waiting for me, since she stood and smiled as I parked next to the garage. Flint’s car wasn’t home yet, but he was minutes behind, if that. I didn’t have a full minute to take a deep breath and steady myself before Erin had pulled open the door to my truck.
“Come here, you,” she said, that sweet voice at once comforting and a harbinger of doom.
I hopped down, and she pulled my shoulders into a rough, quick hug, then released me. “You okay?”
“Yep,” I said with a curt nod, wishing that’d be the end of it.
“Okay. Come in and fix your pizza. Crusts and fixings are ready—you just have to build it.”
She led the way to the door, then into the kitchen, and I had to appreciate her way with me, or really everyone. She was a tender-hearted person, incredibly empathetic, but she understood me well enough to know, or maybe she could just see, I didn’t want to sit and talk.
She was good at giving me something to do, and topping a pizza after a long day with an unsatisfying lunch hitting bottom over six hours ago meant I was more than ready for food. That my dinner would be some of her food was an unexpected delight for the day.
Before I’d finished spreading the sauce over the homemade and shaped crust, Flint came through the door. I focused on my pizza as Erin went to greet him and ignored the pang their murmurs and Flint’s low laugh caused.
“Beer?” he asked after delivering his keys to the hook where they stayed by the door and dumping the empty container he’d used for his lunch and coffee in the sink.
“Sure.”
“Me too,” Erin said, as she swirled sauce from a pan on the stove over a large pizza already sitting on a stone.
Somehow, we made small talk for a few minutes before Flint crossed his arms, leaned back against the counter next to Erin, and leveled me with the look I was all too familiar with.
“How was your weekend?” he asked, like it wasn’t a grenade.
“Eventful.”
I didn’t want to drag this out, but I hadn’t talked about it yet, except to my therapist, and that had been one big, pathetic whining tirade, and I didn’t know how to even think about it any other way.
“Have you spoken with her since she got back?” he asked, and I wondered if he was avoiding saying her name for my sake.
“I don’t know if she’s back.” That should make it clear I’d had no communication and had been off social media completely.
Erin glanced at me as she shoved one pizza stone into the top oven. “She is.”
I sipped my beer, watched Flint’s cat meander into the kitchen and start his path of weaving between each set of legs, begging for attention. The cat was shameless and endearing because of it.
“Did you know she wrote that song about you?” Flint asked, pinning me with that intense stare so I had nowhere to go.
“I did not,” I admitted.
“No clue?”
I stretched my neck to one side, then the other. “You remember what I was like the first few weeks back. I put the black-out in black-out drunk. I’m pretty sure it was on one of those nights, and obviously enough, I don’t remember anything about that week or two before I at least tried to stay conscious.”
I’d paid penance for that time. I’d worked through it. But realizing that I’d had an interaction with someone like Whit and had no memory of it created no small amount of shame in me.
Our interaction had been influential enough for her that she’d walked away and created something from it. Something meaningful. Something I’d found to be meaningful, and I’d had no idea it was about me.
No wonder it had always felt so familiar.
I’d walked away from it and probably puked my guts out the next day, remembering nothing but that I’d spent fifty bucks on booze and a taxi ride home. Maybe I even woke up to someone I didn’t remember talking to, much less sleeping with.
That thought sent a fresh flash of frustration and fear through me. It could have even been Whit, and I never would have known. The very behavior that’d been the catalyst for my change, for the promise I’d made myself and that had kept me from sleeping with Whit, was potentially something that had had me with her without even knowing.
My cheeks were burning, but Flint and Erin gave me a moment to work through my thoughts before he continued.
“So you found out Sunday night? That’s how she told you?”
“Me and everyone else watching.”
I wished the bitterness in my voice wasn’t something I actually felt. I wished the significance of her saying those words at that moment wasn’t so huge—that it was just her telling me this secret she’d kept, and that was all we had to work through. Instead, it had been the end of our relationship, the end of anything real between us.
Flint cursed, which had my eyes jumping to him because he, as a rule, didn’t curse. “I’m sorry, Ben. Truly.”
“It’s fine,” I said, not believing it.
“It’s not. You know it’s not. I’m certain Whit knows it’s not.” He pulled Erin to him as she wiped her hands on a kitchen towel.
Erin looked at me with a regretful smile as she leaned into Flint. “She definitely knows. She has put on a good face in interviews, but she clearly knows—I can tell she’s not all right.”
Despite myself, a spike of alarm shot through me. “Is she okay? Why do you say that?”
She gave me a sweet smile. “She’s just… it’s hard to explain, but she seems different in interviews. And people keep asking her about you guys, and she’s being very evasive.”
A bitter laugh escaped. “I’m sure it’d be inconvenient if it came out we’re not together anymore.”
I would have liked that to sound harsh, sharp, but it only sounded sad.
“I know it’s wrong she didn’t tell you, but is it really something you can’t forgive?” Erin asked.
I bought time by swigging my beer. “If that was the only issue, I could get over it.”
Her brows rose while Flint watched with his eagle eyes. “Then what?—”
“It was all for show. All of it. It started with a signed contract, and over Christmas, I thought we essentially shredded that and started off at the beginning of a real relationship. I missed all the signs that it was still fake. I was an idiot, and as angry as I am with her, I’m mostly just disappointed in myself.” I set my bottle down and crossed my arms.
“What signs?” Flint asked. Demanded.
“Probably the biggest one was that her manager or PR person or whatever she is, Nikki, she had me sign some new confidentiality agreements and a few other forms I don’t even remember. I’d thought it was because the old ones I’d signed when I’d agreed to the fake relationship were void or something, but now I realize it was likely because she was going to up the ante, and me going public with the information that our relationship was all for show wouldn’t sit well after that big announcement she made.”
Erin recoiled and looked at Flint. “That doesn’t sound like Whit. She’s dedicated and motivated, but I just can’t see her using you like that. Why would she want you to think it was real when she already had the fake set up that you’d agreed to?”
I ignored Flint’s clenched jaw. “That I don’t know, nor will I pretend to understand. At this point, all I can say is I should have known.”
“Why?” Erin pressed, God love her.
I forced a laugh, feeling no humor whatsoever. It was kind of her to seem so clueless.
“I don’t know what she could have seen in me other than the story of it. The guy who inspired the song, and here he is, seemingly a good guy who has ties to her cousin, so she knows he can’t be all bad, and he’s decent-looking. Beyond the visual, I’m just a regular guy. I don’t have incredible talent or money or even ambition. I certainly don’t have military career aspirations, though I know she couldn’t have known that to begin with. It just… makes no sense. And I knew that, but I ignored it.”
That was the killer. I’d had those cow-eyed thoughts and shoved them away. I’d even sort of brought it up with her, and in retrospect, she’d done nothing to reassure me, had she?
It was all jumbled together. Every touch, every look. And how convenient for her that I was always the one putting on the brakes physically, so she didn’t have to seem like she wanted that distance, though she’d never done much to force the issue. I’d thought it was her being respectful, but from this side of things, I suspected it was a convenience. She didn’t have to sleep with me to get me to cooperate.
That’s not how it was .
That still-hopeful part of me, the smallest shred, wouldn’t believe that. I wished the rest of me could believe it—that she’d wanted me like I’d wanted her. That she’d cared for me in some real way.
That thought was the reason I knew I’d be okay. That little glimmer of something positive, and it came as a rushing relief for me. I wasn’t tempted not to get out of bed, or stop going to work, or drown myself in so much whiskey I wasn’t thinking about her all the time.
I hurt . I felt terribly sad. But I knew I could get up and do it again the next day, and for that, I thanked God, my therapist, my friends standing in front of me, and myself.
Flint practically growled, either at my expression, or what I’d said, I didn’t know. “You’re wrong about that.”
The oven beeped, and he turned to help Erin removed the pizzas while I pondered his claim and what he meant by it.