CHAPTER TWENTY
BENNET
"Jenn, are you listening to me?"
"Bennet, I'm on a date. Which I told you the tenth time you texted me, which you've now followed up with a phone call." A pause. "I can unequivocally say that I am not listening to you."
"Jenn, pleeease." I run my hand through my hair and pace the length of the men's room. "I will FaceTime you and get on my knees right here if I need to. I need you."
I hear muffled conversation on her end while I wait impatiently.
I know I'm being a whiny bitch right now. I am fully aware of that. I am also Losing. My. Fucking. Mind.
I excused myself to the men's room after what Blaire told me, and I've been standing here slipping back into this teenage obsession that I thought I'd buried along with my old name. She has consumed my every thought since she waltzed her fine ass back into my life.
Ugh. See. I can't even get through my own internal monologue without mentioning her ass. It's gone from putrid hate to lustful hate, and the distinction is not doing me any favors.
"Okay, you have three minutes, Sullivan," Jenn says finally.
"I'm on my public date with Blaire and she just told me about some genuinely horrific things she went through with her husband, and this morning we kissed in my office — it wasn't for the cameras, I just lost control and grabbed her by the throat and attacked her mouth.
Then she stroked my cock, and I had my fingers inside her, but Rosalie walked in on us.
Rosalie is my sister, by the way. You should meet her; I think you'd like her.
But now I want to kiss Blaire again and I want to do considerably more than kiss her and, god, Jenn, she's just like I remember her and—"
"Holyyyy fuck, Sullivan. Talk about word vomiting. Good god. One step at a time. First, take a breath."
"There is a lot of ground to cover, and I only have three minutes."
"Fine, you can have five." I hear her shifting, putting some distance between herself and whoever she's with. "What's the actual issue? Do you forgive her?"
"I think I do. But I don't want to."
"Well. I saw the pictures from the club. You two look good together. There's even a video of her on your lap. It was hot. I was almost jealous."
"Wait, you were? Jenn, I'm so sorry—"
"Fucking hell, focus, Sullivan. I don't want you like that."
"God, you're mean today."
"I'M ON A DATE!" she yells it, and I have to pull the phone from my ear.
A beat of silence passes. "Sorry. I am really looking forward to getting dicked down tonight and I don't need this six-foot six Greek god of a man getting the wrong idea because I'm on my phone.
But I'm here for you." Another pause. "Tomorrow. "
"Jenn—"
"Sullivan. You have feelings for this woman.
That is abundantly clear to me from the other side of a dinner I would very much like to get back to.
Stop hiding behind the anger; it's not serving you anymore.
" Her voice drops. "Now get back out there and stop being a dick to a woman who clearly makes you feel something. Figure the rest out later. Okay?"
I lean against the sink.
"Okay," I say.
"Good. Now good night."
She hangs up.
Blaire looks up when she sees me making my way back to the table, and her eyes soften in a way I didn't ask for and absolutely do not need.
Don't look at me like that, wench.
"Samson is coming back with dessert." She closes her eyes, smiles, and gives a small, unselfconscious wiggle in her chair. "Fair warning. I'm a dessert whore."
I pause.
“A dessert whore?”
"Completely unashamed." She looks up at me. "Don’t judge me."
She’s so fucking adorable.
No, she’s not. Ugh. I need this night to end.
I pick up my glass of whiskey and down it like a shot.
"Hey, Bennet?"
I look up. Her head is tilted and her expression is sheepish. She’s got the most expressive face I’ve ever seen, so quick to display everything she’s feeling. I used to appreciate how easy it was to read her; apparently, that hasn’t changed.
"I didn't tell you any of that stuff earlier to make you feel sorry for me," she says, a soft smile on her lips. "You can still hate me in private."
Fuck you, Blaire Alexander.
"Who said I wouldn't?" I wink.
I fucking winked. At her. My face did that completely without my permission, and I have no explanation for it.
Stand your ground. Stop it.
"As long as we're on the same page," she says, and pulls her bottom lip between her teeth.
My cock registers the movement immediately. I shift in my chair.
Absolutely not, I tell him. Sit down.
He does not sit down.
Ten years of solitude and self-preservation and carefully maintained distance. Two weeks of Blaire Monroe and I am seventeen years old again, doing long division in my head to talk myself down from something I have no business feeling.
Samson appears at the table with two dessert plates, and I could kiss that man.
"Tiramisu," he announces, setting them down with a flourish. "On the house. For one of my two favorite Monroes and this piece of shit." He thumbs in my direction while smiling down at Blaire.
"It looks perfect," Blaire says, eye-fucking the plate with zero shame.
Samson claps me once on the shoulder and disappears back toward the kitchen.
When I look back at Blaire, she has her eyes closed, spoon raised, doing a small dance in her seat — her ass shifting side to side, the spoon conducting in the air above the plate.
She hasn't even taken a bite yet. I don't know if this is some kind of dessert mating ritual, but I cannot look away from it.
Then she focuses in, takes the first bite, and lets out a low, guttural groan that travels the length of my spine and arrives somewhere it absolutely should not.
I drop my spoon.
"Good?" I ask, practically panting, watching the spoon slowly ease from between her lips. “You like it?”
She points at me with the spoon. "Don't look at me while I'm eating this." I almost laugh.
She takes another bite.
Makes the sound again.
Fuck.
I pick up my own spoon and take a bite.
"Oh, shit." My eyes go wide.
"See!" She reaches over and slaps the back of my hand. "It's fucking incredible!"
She's grinning with zero composure remaining, and her spoon is already going back in.
It's excellent.
This night needs to end immediately.
***
"How was it?"
Rosalie walks into the apartment like she lives here, which she doesn't, but has never let stop her. I let the door close behind me and head for the kitchen, still rubbing sleep from my eyes.
"Well, good morning to you too."
She sets her belongings on the counter. I've never seriously contemplated throwing someone from the thirty-second floor of this building, but I'm not ruling it out.
I pull the coffee down from the cabinet. "It's six in the morning, Rose. I haven't even had coffee."
"I couldn't wait. You didn't answer my texts last night."
Because I was having an existential crisis. And jerking off three times.
"I was out," I say.
"I'm aware you were out. I helped plan you being out. But after what I walked in on yesterday." She folds her hands on the counter. "Between the pictures from the club and last night circulating the internet—"
"I know what it looks like."
"You're not that good of an actor, little brother."
I set the coffee going and say nothing.
She watches me with the expression she's had since I was a teenager and lying badly about where I'd been. She has never once been fooled by me. Not once in my entire life.
"How was it, Michael?" she asks again. Quieter this time.
I lean against the counter and look at the brewing coffee. "Complicated."
"More or less than you expected?"
"More."
She puts her hands on her hips. "Are you going to tell me what actually happened or keep giving me one-word answers? You talk to me about everything. Why are you being so evasive?"
I push my hands through my hair and press my fingers into my brow, trying to head off the migraine I can already feel building.
I don't think I've ever been in a funk quite like this one.
Sleep evades me. Working out has become less enjoyment and more an outlet for frustration I can't articulate.
My nights out with friends have turned into nights in, pacing my apartment, vibrating with pure rage, until I end up in my workout room with boxing gloves on, punching the bag until my knuckles beg me to stop.
The last thing I want to do is talk about it.
"Can't I just come to you when I'm ready, and you not show up at my door at six AM on a Tuesday because you don't have a fucking life?"
Fucking hell. I can feel the sting of my words as they fall off my tongue, and yet, I don’t stop them. Rose gave up her life to raise me, and she doesn’t deserve me being a dick.
The kitchen goes very quiet.
I round the counter and pull her into a hug without saying anything else.
"Michael."
"I know. I'm sorry. You didn't do anything to deserve me being a dick to you. I love you, Rose."
"We don't have to talk about it." Her voice wavers, and I feel like an even bigger bastard. Rosalie doesn't cry. She is one of the most stoic people I've ever known. It makes her a formidable attorney, and I have her on the verge of tears.
I take a breath.
"I feel stupid for wanting her the way I do," I say into her hair.
"For feeling like a horny, out-of-control teenager every time she's in my line of sight.
I hate her and I want her at the same time, and I don't know how to process any of it, and talking about it with you when half the battle is of a sexual nature doesn't quite feel—" I pause. "Comfy in the tummy."
She pulls back and looks at me.
"Comfy," she says slowly. "In the tummy."
"Fuck off." I laugh and push her away. "You know what I mean."
"No, please. Tell me more about your tum tum."
“Our parents raised you better than this, Rose.”
She places a hand on her chest with mock outrage. "Mama would have been worse."
I chuckle and start pouring our coffee. "She would have called Blaire and both families for an intervention already."
A knock interrupts our laughter.
"Apparently no one understands it's six AM," I groan, setting the coffeepot down and going to answer it.
I open the door, and Jenn barrels through it before I've fully stepped back, Gerald tucked under one arm like a football, her hair in a messy bun and her eyes bright with too much damn energy at this socially unacceptable hour.
She stops when she sees Rosalie at the counter.
"Oh." She pulls up short. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have assumed."
"No, it's fine." I close the door. "Apparently my apartment is open to the public this morning." I look between them. "Rose, this is Jenn. My bestie with the great breasties."
Jenn looks up at me with an expression that is equal parts mortified and delighted.
"This is my sister, Rosalie," I finish.
Rosalie has put her coffee down. "Bestie with the great breasties," she repeats.
"His words," Jenn says.
"They're accurate," I say.
"Bennet." Rosalie says with a shake of her head. She looks at Gerald, who has dropped from Jenn's arms and is making his way toward the couch with proprietary confidence. I guess he’s decided this is his apartment now. "Is that a cat?"
"Gerald," Jenn confirms. "He likes it here."
"He hates everyone," I say.
"Except you, apparently." Jenn drops onto the stool next to Rosalie and steals my coffee and takes a sip without asking. "Hi. I've heard a lot about you."
Rosalie looks at her for a moment. "Have you?"
“She knows everything, Rose. You can turn off your lawyer brain.”
She’s been looking at Jenn with slow, assessing attention since she walked in. Like the woman is running a background check in real time.
"She does?" Rose tilts her head. "That's surprising."
"He told me after we had a pretty heavy make-out session, but we've decided to just be besties." Jenn takes another sip of my coffee. "Besties who apparently interrupt each other's dates like little pussies."
Rosalie’s head falls back with a loud cackle.
“Still upset about that, are we?”
“Yes. You almost cock blocked me.”
“Almost?” I ask with a smirk and take a sip from my new cup of coffee.
“Almost. God, was he hung.” She takes her forearm and drops it on the counter. “Like a horse, Bennet. A horse.”
"I like her," Rosalie giggles.
"Of course you do," I deadpan.
Gerald jumps onto the counter, which nobody invited him to do, and sits between Rosalie and Jenn like he's moderating.
"Okay." Jenn spins her stool to face me fully, the horse cock date situation apparently filed and closed. "Tell me everything about last night. How did it go after you called me?"
I look at the two of them. United, caffeinated, and locked in. "I’m going to need something stronger than coffee.”