CHAPTER THREE
BENNET
The conversation yesterday has been plaguing me all damn night.
I tossed. I turned. I stared at the ceiling of my very expensive penthouse and thought about my sister looking at me across a kitchen island and asking, with genuine sincerity and zero malice, if I was attracted to men.
Does everyone think that?
That's what kept me up. Not the board meeting. Not Meridian. Not the fountain, which has now been viewed four point two million times, according to my very stressed publicist.
No — what kept me staring at the ceiling until four in the morning was the possibility that I have accidentally constructed a persona so devoid of authentic human desire that the people who love me most have started questioning my sexuality.
That's going to be a problem. Eventually. When I get to a point where I actually want to...
I'll cross that bridge later.
Admittedly, I have no real game. None. The women the press have photographed me with have all been hired to play a part and gone home with significantly fatter bank accounts for it.
Every single one of them. It is a mutually beneficial arrangement, and nobody gets hurt.
It’s also not something I have examined too closely at two in the morning because it does not hold up too well under scrutiny.
Actually, hitting on a woman. Actually, picking one up in real life with my real face and my real voice and no agreed-upon arrangement in place beforehand.
I am ashamed to admit that I have never done it.
And then there's the other thing. The thing I don't say out loud. Ever.
I am a virgin.
Twenty-eight years old, nearly twenty-nine, self-made billionaire, six-foot-five, and I have never slept with anyone.
There it is.
Written in the stars.
Carved into the foundation of every bad decision I've ever made about intimacy and proximity and letting anyone get close enough to find out.
I can't really blame Rosalie for her assessment. When she lays it out like that; no dating, no real interest, a carefully maintained public image that is entirely performance...the conclusion she reached is not unreasonable. It's wrong as fuck, but it's not unreasonable.
Once four AM came around and sleep was still a distant and mocking mistress, I gave up. Pulled on shorts and came down to the building gym to work off some tension before heading to what I lovingly refer to as the den of wolves I call a board of directors.
I get two miles in on the tread, then my solitude is interrupted by my neighbor, Jenn.
Jennifer Vaughn has lived two doors down from me for eight months and has made her interest known in approximately forty different ways, ranging from subtle to legally actionable.
It’s not that she isn’t beautiful. She’s a stunning woman. Petite, porcelain skin and long, fire red hair with bangs that fall over her freckled cheeks. I just haven’t been interested in exploring a love life.
Today she's wearing shorts that ride completely up her ass — a genuinely excellent ass, I want to be clear; she has undoubtedly put in the work — paired with a sports bra that crisscrosses in the back.
I know about the back because it is currently facing me as she performs squats that are so elaborate they might constitute a religious ceremony.
She's watching herself in the mirror with the concentration of someone who is also watching me watch her.
My cock twitches.
And honestly? HONESTLY?! I could give him a fucking standing ovation right now.
Gay my ass, buddy.
We just had a physiological response to an attractive woman like a completely normal heterosexual man. Rosalie doesn't know shit.
I slow my pace on the treadmill, bring it down to a walk, and step off. Head to the free weights and start loading the bar.
Jenn chooses this moment to turn around, clocking me with a smile she has absolutely practiced. "Bennet. I didn't see you there."
She saw me there.
"Good morning, Jenn." I reach for the collar to secure the plates.
"Early morning?" She drifts toward the machine closest to me with the unhurried confidence of someone who has never been turned down and isn't expecting to start today.
"Board meeting." I take a long drink. "You?"
"Couldn't sleep." She tilts her head. Her brunette ponytail falls over one shoulder.
She is objectively, measurably attractive.
She is standing close enough that I could touch her if I reached, and my body has confirmed this morning that it is functional and interested in women.
But I feel absolutely nothing except a mild guilty wish that she would go to a different machine.
That's the part I can't explain to Rosalie.
It's not that I don't notice. It's not that something in me is missing or broken or pointed in a different direction.
It's that noticing has never been the problem.
The problem lives further down the line, in the part where you let someone close enough to do something about it.
In the part where you make yourself that vulnerable again.
I don't do that part. I can’t do that part.
"You should come to my friend's rooftop thing Friday," Jenn says, smiling. "It'll be fun. Low-key."
"I've got a thing on Friday." I don't have a thing on Friday.
She seems to accept the rejection with more dignity today. "Some other time."
"Sure."
She drifts back toward the squat rack. I put my earbuds in. My cock, apparently satisfied that he's made his point, settles back into irrelevance.
Gay my ass.
I've got a board meeting to survive.
But ugh. Fuck.
Rosalie has colonized my brain, and she's not paying rent.
Because now I feel the itch. The need to prove something.
To put myself out there, get back on the horse, demonstrate conclusively and with empirical evidence that I am a heterosexual man who is capable of pursuing a woman like a normal person.
Except.
Isn't this exactly the fucksicle I'm already in?
I hired women to prove to the world I could get woman after woman.
Built an entire persona around it. Became the bad boy billionaire as a coping mechanism with a publicist and a wardrobe budget.
And now the logical next step my brain is proposing is: date someone to prove to your sister you're not gay.
These are not, I will acknowledge, stellar choices in a lineup.
The rational move — the obvious move — is to leave my earbuds in, finish my workout, go upstairs, shower, get to the board meeting, and call my therapist on the way. Dr. Amara has a sliding scale for exactly this kind of 4AM spiral, and I pay her well not to judge me.
That's what the rational part of my brain says.
The other part of my brain — the part that has apparently learned nothing in twenty-eight years — looks at Jenn doing squats in the mirror and decides we're doing this.
Before I can locate the correct authority to stop myself, I'm crossing the gym floor.
Jenn sees me coming. Her eyes light up. Her whole posture shifts — that particular kind of readiness that says she has been waiting for this specific walk across this specific floor and is prepared.
I stop in front of her.
"Jenn."
"Bennet," she smiles. It's a good smile. She's done nothing wrong. None of what is about to happen is her fault.
"So," I clear my throat. I have prepared nothing. I am improvising in real time. "You're of childbearing age."
Her smile flickers. Just slightly.
I press on. "You're not exactly my type, but I could do worse.
" I say it reasonably. Objectively. Like I'm reading from a dossier.
"And you're probably pretty good at — you know.
The sex. I'm guessing. Based on available evidence.
" I gesture vaguely at her shorts situation and immediately regret it.
"So. Yes. I'll go out with you. I'll pick you up tomorrow at seven. "
Silence.
Her smile has evaporated. Entirely. The expression that's replaced it is something between affront and genuine bewilderment, like she's trying to locate the version of this conversation where what I just said was a compliment.
Her mouth is open.
I stand there and wait for a response.
She does not provide one.
I replay the last thirty seconds in my head and listen to it this time, really listen, and—
Oh.
Oh no.
"Was that—" I start.
"Not my type?" she says. Quietly.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
"I meant that as a positive—"
"Could do worse?"
"In context—"
"The sex?" Her voice has climbed a register. "You're guessing I'm good at the sex?"
I panic, looking around the gym. There is a woman on the treadmill in the corner who has taken her earbuds out. She is not even pretending not to listen.
When did she even get here?
"I'm going to be honest with you," I say, because apparently that's the hill I'm dying on this morning. "That came out differently than it sounded in my head."
"How did it sound in your head?"
"Better," I say. "Significantly better."
Jenn stares at me. I can just tell she’s drafting a story she's going to tell her friends tonight and laughing about for years.
"Seven o'clock," she repeats flatly.
"You don't have to—"
"I'll be ready at seven." She picks up her water bottle with enormous dignity, turns, and walks to the other side of the gym.
I stand there.
The woman on the treadmill puts her earbuds back in.
I need to call my therapist.