Chapter 10 Clover
Clover
Bennett is sharing a small log with a beautiful girl with brown curly hair. She’s even more stunning than the four that were sprawled across my bed just this afternoon.
The girl, the definition of lean and strong, is whispering in his ear, but he is watching me with unflinching concentration, his jaw working.
Tate’s hands drop to my hips, and we’re still swaying, but now his body curves to mine as he drops a soft kiss to my neck.
If I weren’t so consumed by the angry bastard across from me, I might have taken a moment to enjoy the warmth of his lips and the fact that a guy this hot and funny and charming is coiled around me like a snake.
Dancing flames frame Bennett as he stands and says something brief to the girl beside him. His gaze narrows on me for a moment before he storms off around the side of the house.
I reach up and cup the back of Tate’s neck to pull him down to me just in time for Bennett to glance back and see. I expect to find a hard, angry expression on his face, but what I see is harder to read. Hurt? Pain? That can’t be right.
“I’ll be right back,” I whisper to Tate.
“Sure,” he says. “Don’t go disappearing on me, pixie.”
Without Tate’s body heat and the proximity to the fire, an immediate chill hits me. I grab my empty drink from where I left it beside Tate’s and toss it in a recycling bin on the side of the house.
Now, I’m angry. He wants to stomp off with hurt feelings after I walked into our room this afternoon to find four girls hanging all over him on our bed? I don’t think so.
In the front yard, Bennett is pacing up and down the sidewalk, and the moment I see him, I hate myself for following him out here. It reeks of desperation, and an old ache that I’ve worked so hard to bury begins to resurface.
I spin around to go back, take three steps toward the backyard, and then turn around again, reinvigorated with rage as I march toward him.
This is a ridiculous waste of time.
What am I even doing?
I double back again before throwing up my arms in frustrated indecision.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt you.” His voice drawls as he watches me with his arms crossed now, leaning up against a random car, seemingly amused that I am at war with myself.
“Where the hell do you get off stomping around and pouting like this?” I ask as I subconsciously move closer to him.
“I don’t know,” he says, like this interaction is the most boring thing he can imagine. “Maybe I thought you might have the decency to not grind all over a piece of shit like that while we’re legally married.”
“Need I remind you that you literally had four girls in our bed this afternoon?”
“Julian!” he snaps. “Julian brought four girls into our room.”
“Well, you seemed pretty comfortable with them.”
He claws his hands down his face, muffling a noise that is half groan, half growl. “You have great taste, by the way,” he says. “Tate? That guy is basically a fucking predator.” The second the word is out, his mouth snaps shut.
“A predator, really? You mean someone who takes advantage of another person in a vulnerable state? Hmm, that sounds so familiar.”
Bennett pushes himself off the car and comes to meet me so that I’m toe-to-toe with him and am forced to tilt my head back to see him.
“That is not the same fucking thing and you know it,” he says.
“Forget about the fact that guy is trash. You want to blow up this whole little married act? Go ahead. See if I give a fuck. This was all your doing. You think Wexley is going to punish me? You think they want to risk losing a private donor like my mother on top of the corporate dollars she funnels into this place? Besides, I’m not the one taking advantage of this situation.
You are! So maybe you should think about that next time you want to let a guy like Tate hang all over you for everyone to witness. ”
A feverish heat spreads through my core as his focus darts from my eyes to my lips, his frame hulking over mine. I want to bite him. I want him to get close enough for a kiss and then I want to sink my teeth into his lip until he bleeds. I want him to hurt.
His hand comes up to my face, inches from my cheek, and I refuse to pull away. This thing between us is a game of chicken and I will not be the one to flinch right now. He’s been so brazen with me in public, but when it’s just us—I refuse to be the one to move first.
“Clover?”
I stumble back a little and see that Tate is just a few feet away.
“Everything okay here?” he asks, and holds a hand out for me like a lifeline as he lifts his chin toward Bennett.
“Tate,” mutters Bennett.
“Good to see you, man,” he says, and it is quite clear that good is the last thing he means. “I was about to head out if I can give you a ride, Clo.”
“Her name is Clover,” Bennett bites back.
“Clo is fine coming from friends.” I take a step back from Bennett without breaking eye contact. The adrenaline slowly leaves my body as I wrap my arms around my middle and pull Tate’s jacket tighter. “That would be great. Let me check on my friend inside.”
Against my better judgment, I leave the two of them outside while I head in to hunt down Daisy, who is cuddled up on a sofa with her hockey player.
She moves to stand up, but I wave her back as I lean down and yell in her ear over the music. “I’m going to head out, but only if you’re okay.”
“I’m fine,” she says. “Text me when you get back?”
“Of course,” I tell her. “Have fun.”
As I’m walking back outside, my body collides with another, and Bennett is gripping my shoulders. “Where’s your friend? Who’d you come with? Daisy? Briar?” he asks.
“Daisy. She’s fine,” I tell him. “She’s staying. I’m leaving.”
He shakes his head vehemently. “No. No way. You cannot go with him alone.”
“I’m a big girl,” I tell him. “But thank you for your sudden concern.”
“I know you think I’m a monster, but that guy is a pig, okay? He isn’t safe.”
I can’t stop from rolling my eyes. “Do you ever wonder how many people warn their friends to stay away from you?”
Bennett flinches, but I’m not done.
“Safe or not, he’s more than a coward who plays people like a fucking piano.”
He shakes his head slightly, still holding my shoulders, chest heaving.
I can see the words piling up on his tongue.
The pulse in his throat is thrumming. He is so close to me that I can see the flecks of green in his blue eyes and I dare him to try to explain himself.
To come up with an excuse for the damage he caused me.
For how he broke me when I still believed in good things.
Stupidly, I glance down to his lips and I’m left wondering what would have happened just a moment ago if Tate hadn’t interrupted us. An inexplicable, irrational part of me wants to trace the bottom curve of his lip.
However, the miracle of common sense forces me to look back up into his eyes and see the absolute torment there. I am so angry at him for daring to be the wounded one in this scenario.
Bennett remains silent as I push past him and out the front door. I don’t bother to apologize when my shoulder collides with his arm.
Tate is waiting for me. “Everything okay with you guys?”
“Just an old family friend,” I tell him. “Proving over and over again that he hasn’t changed.”
“Yeah, I know Bennett. We’ve run in the same circles before. Thinks he’s the center of the universe and that every other person is basically an NPC.”
“That’s exactly it.”
He walks me to his car with an arm around my shoulder.
“You want to grab a late dinner?” he asks once he’s behind the wheel of his Range Rover.
“Is it okay if you just take me back to the dorm?” I wait for the moment when he will do something to prove Bennett right, but it never comes. And I’m not surprised.
“Of course,” he tells me, and then flicks my seat heater on for me. “Let’s get you back to campus.”
We drive back and he pulls up as close to the dorms as he can get. “I can walk you up,” he says as he reaches for his seat belt.
“Oh, I’m fine, but thank you. Here.” I start to take off his fleece.
“Keep it,” Tate says. “I don’t want you to get cold walking inside.”
“Thanks,” I tell him. “For the fleece and for a nice time.”
“Of course. See you on Monday, Clo.”
When I go inside, Briar’s door is open and she has a line of at least nine people and a tip jar full of singles. I let her know that Daisy is safe and with her hockey player and she gives me a nod while accepting a digital payment on her phone.
Our room is dark and empty as I change into my sleep shorts and T-shirt.
I curl up under the blankets with the fleece on. Despite my absolute exhaustion, sleep is impossible. Old memories that suddenly feel as fresh as yesterday play on a loop in my head.
When the door finally opens, I stay as still as possible while Bennett undresses and gets into bed.
It’s only when the room goes quiet that my growling stomach gives me away. Normally, I would apologize, but not tonight.
He gets up and leaves the room, and I sit up, wondering if I should follow him. Was my stomach that offensive? Is he going to sleep on a couch in the common room? God, that’s not really going to send the message of happily married, is it?
As I’m still debating what the hell I should do, the door swings open again. Lit in moonlight, Bennett is shirtless, wearing only a pair of joggers and carrying two paper plates.
He turns on the small reading lamp next to his bed and hands me a grilled cheese with an iron imprinted on the bread.
“They’re not bad,” he says. “I bought one from her last week. I think she uses a garlic mayonnaise.”
As I glance down at my plate, I decide that I’m not too proud to call a temporary truce in the name of grilled cheese.
He’s right about them being good. Or maybe I’m that hungry. The cheese is the perfect degree of molten and the bread is crisp on the outside and soft on the inside.
After we’re both finished, Bennett turns off his light and I slide back down in bed, curled up on my side with my back to him.
I wish I had some kind of white noise app, because the only sound there is to concentrate on is the pattern of his breathing.
“I’m not going to see anyone else this semester. And I haven’t been, just so you know,” he says into the darkness. “It’s too risky and … it’s too complicated.”
Our bed feels so cold in comparison to the warmth of Tate’s body and the fire earlier tonight. It’s been so long since I let myself open up to someone. It seems unfair that once it finally happens, it’s simply not the right time. “Okay,” I tell him. “Tate is just a friend.”
“Not what it looked like tonight,” he spits back, and then adds, “Sorry. I, um, I know this afternoon wasn’t a good look either.”
“Yeah.” It’s one word, and right now it’s all I’m willing to give him.
“Vanya is just a friend,” he says. “The girl you saw me with tonight.”
“Oh, really? Not what it looked like,” I say, parroting his words back to him.
“Well, she wasn’t always, but she is now. And we were never anything serious anyway.”
“Okay.” I don’t give him anything else because I’m scared he’ll hear the relief in my voice.
I force my eyes to close and come up with a word.
And then I think of a word that starts with the last letter of the first word.
I do it again and again. It’s an attempt to tire my brain out, and by the fifth word it’s starting to work.
Sleep skirts the edges of my mind and laps over me like a wave.
“You should come out to see Grandpa Dean’s hives sometime,” Bennett says. At least I think he does. “Vance, the groundskeeper, helps me keep them going.”
Vaguely, I hear myself make some sort of affirmative sound.
Then as I’m in the fragile space between awake and asleep—between dreams and reality—I hear four words that could very well be my imagination.
“I was jealous tonight.”