18. Ben
BEN
The last of the storm cleanup trucks pulled out of town yesterday, and tonight, a quiet descends that feels earned.
The air snaps with the first real chill, carrying a crisp, clean scent down the empty street.
I’m staring at an invoice for a busted transmission, the numbers blurring under the lamplight, when a flicker of movement in the wide-open bay door pulls my focus.
Chasity. She stands there for a beat, silhouetted against the dark, a small figure wrapped in a thick cardigan.
She moves with a new hesitation, one that isn’t born from anxiety anymore, but from a kind of quiet thought.
The garage, with its low hum from the old space heater and classic rock murmuring from the radio, seems to draw her in.
I put my pen down as she steps out of the cold and into the clutter of my office.
The lines of exhaustion etched around my eyes seem to soften just from the sight of her.
A small smile touches her lips, and an answering warmth spreads across my chest, chasing away the bone-deep weariness of the last few days.
She doesn’t speak, just points a thumb toward the battered leather armchair wedged in the corner.
I give a nod, and she sinks into it, curling her legs beneath her like she’s been sitting in that same spot for years.
The old chair groans a welcome. I pick up my pen again, turning back to the paperwork, but the tension is gone from my shoulders.
The air is different with her in it. The silence isn’t empty; it’s comfortable, filled only by the scratch of my pen against paper and the distant, muffled bassline from the radio.
It’s a stillness that grounds me. With Lachlan, I see a spark in her, a bright, crackling current that pulls them together.
With me, it’s this. A slow, steady calm that settles over the both of us like a heavy blanket.
She isn’t looking at her phone or fidgeting.
Her gaze drifts around the office, over the stacks of manuals and the schematics tacked to the corkboard.
Neither of us rushes to fill the quiet. There’s no performance here, no expectation.
There is only the simple, solid fact of her presence, and for the very first time in a long time, that feels like more than enough.
Her voice, when it finally comes, is soft. “You look tired.”
I manage a half-shrug, not looking up from the invoice. “Long couple of days for everyone.”
“Anything I can do?”
“Just being here is good.” The words are out before I can stop them. They hang in the air, truer than anything else I could have said.
She shifts in the old chair, the leather creaking. “So, are there special mountain shipping laws I should know about? Ones that specifically apply to stray possum-provoking sedans?”
The joke lands, but my body goes rigid. My pen stops moving. A hot wave of guilt washes over me, so strong I feel it in the back of my neck. I put the pen down with methodical slowness, forcing myself to meet her eye. The amused glimmer in her expression falters at whatever she sees on my face.
“I… could have pushed the parts order through faster.” The confession feels like dragging stones from my gut. “It probably would have been done by now if I’d really tried.”
The air between us thickens, charged and awkward.
I brace for the lecture, the anger, the accusation.
I deserve it. I watch her process the words, her brow furrowed.
Then a strange, choked sound escapes her.
It’s part gasp, part squeak, and she claps a hand over her mouth as a full, startled laugh bursts out.
It rings off the tool-lined walls, bright and clear and so far from the reaction I expected that I just stare, completely stunned.
Her laughter fades into a series of soft, breathless chuckles. The tension dissolves like sugar in water, leaving a warmth in its place. The honesty, though, remains.
“I just…” I start, my voice low as I look at my rough, grease-stained hands. “I liked having a reason for you to be around. The mornings you’d show up with coffee. Hearing you laugh at Micah's bad jokes from the front desk while you sorted invoices. It just… it made the days better.”
She goes completely still in the armchair.
Her hand drops from her mouth, and her brown eyes are wide, fixed on me.
I watch the subtle shift in her expression, the way her chest seems to tighten under the cardigan.
It isn’t pity or anger. It’s something raw, something fragile, as if no one has ever told her, in such plain terms, that her presence alone was a welcome thing.
Taking care of people has always come easier to me than asking for anything in return.
Fixing things, solving problems—that’s instinct.
But somewhere in the last few weeks, Chasity stopped being someone I just helped.
She became someone I wanted around. Needed, even.
That feeling lodges in my chest now, stubborn as a splinter.
Her fingers curl into fists on her knees, knuckles pale. The silence stretches too long, and I prepare for regret, for her to shut down and retreat. But then she exhales, slow and soft.
“Nobody’s ever made me feel like this,” she murmurs. “Safe. Not because you’re telling me what to do, or trying to fix me—” Her breath hitches. “But because even when I’m falling apart, you just… exist there. Steady.”
My throat locks. The words sink into me like a handprint pressed into wet cement—undeniable, permanent.
She pushes up from the chair. The desk separates us, but she moves around it with a certainty that makes my pulse stutter. Her hands frame my face, warm and steady, tilting me up to meet her. The kiss lands soft at first—testing, unsure. Then her fingers tug in my hair, pulling me closer.
Heat scorches through me. My chair clatters back as I stand, hands sliding around her waist, molding her against me.
She makes a noise against my mouth, half-surprise, half-desperation.
The scent of her—vanilla and black coffee—fills my lungs.
My touch drags up the slope of her spine, fingertips pressing hard enough to bruise.
She gasps when my teeth catch her lower lip.
The sound unravels the last shred of control.
I spin us, pinning her back against the desk.
Paperwork flutters to the floor. The radio croons some forgotten ballad, muffled beneath the rush of blood in my ears.
Her hands fist in my shirt like she’s afraid I’ll vanish.
“Ben—”
I swallow her name, kissing her deeper. She trembles. Not from fear—from the sheer, reckless force of wanting. Every rational thought catches fire and burns. All that’s left is her.
Her hands fumble at my belt, fingers trembling against the buckle. I catch them, press my forehead to hers just long enough to murmur, "Okay?"
Her lips brush mine—soft, sure. "God, yes."
My hands slide down her sides, fingers catching in the waistband of her leggings.
The fabric stretches as I peel them down inch by inch, revealing smooth skin beneath—first the dip of her hip bones, then the curve of her thighs.
She lifts one foot, then the other, stepping free as the leggings puddle around her ankles like a dark shadow.
A quick kick sends them skidding across the oil-stained concrete floor, forgotten near a stack of spare tires.
I don't bother with finesse when it comes to my own clothes.
My belt buckle clatters against the concrete as I shove my jeans down past my hips, the denim rough against my skin.
The late autumn air creeping through the garage's drafty walls raises goosebumps along my arms and legs, but it doesn't matter—not when she's right there, warm and willing, her breath already coming faster.
My hands find her waist again, fingers sinking into the softness there as I lift her effortlessly onto the cluttered work desk.
Papers rustle and crumple beneath her—invoices, receipts, half-finished parts orders—the mundane paperwork of my daily life now serving as an improvised bed.
A wrench clatters to the floor somewhere behind us, but neither of us pays it any mind.
All that exists is this moment, this heat between us, the way her legs instinctively wrap around my hips as if she's afraid I'll pull away.
She arches beneath me, legs falling open in silent invitation—no hesitation, no second-guessing, just pure want. I press my throbbing cock into her slow, savoring every inch as she stretches around me, the breath stuttering out of me in a rough exhale when she takes me completely.
Her thighs clamp down on my hips like she's afraid I'll pull away, her nails scraping down my sweat-dampened back in a way that borders on painful.
I don't mind. The sting keeps me grounded, reminds me this is real—her warmth, the way her body yields to mine, the soft sounds she makes when I shift just right.
Her breath hitches, lips parting around my name like a prayer?—
"Ben—"
It's half plea, half surrender, and I know without asking what she needs.
"Look at me." The words come out rougher than I intend, scraped raw from the back of my throat. My hands tighten on her hips, fingers pressing bruises into soft skin I know will linger tomorrow—marks I want her to remember me by.
Her eyes flutter open, dark and dazed with pleasure, pupils blown wide enough to drown in. When our gazes lock, something tightens in my chest—something possessive and tender all at once.
Fuck, she feels good.
Every slow drag of my hips pulls another broken sound from her lips—gasping moans and shaky exhales that fill the cramped space between us.
I bend her backward over the desk, arching her spine just right as my mouth finds the delicate column of her throat.
She tastes like salt from exertion and lavender from whatever lotion she'd rubbed into her skin earlier—something sweet and floral clinging to her even now.