18. Chapter 18 #2
He smiles a little ruefully. “I didn’t want to hit you with all this when you’re supposed to be having fun and relaxing, but with the wet humping…there has to be a line we shouldn’t cross while you’re engaged, and I think we’ve found it.”
Shit. He’s right. There isn’t a line, but we absolutely cannot go further than this without me telling him the truth about my engagement. Which means I have to make a decision.
Marry Milo, keep Happy Lake, but lose Benji.
Call the wedding off, lose Happy Lake and maybe Milo, but keep Benji. Until he gets bored with me or Happy Lake.
Marry Milo, keep Benji a secret, keep Happy Lake.
I don’t want to lose Benji. I can’t lose Happy Lake. So there’s only one real option.
Benji looks troubled. I can tell he feels bad about Milo. I wrap my arms around him, burying my face in his neck. His arms wrap tight around me. “You haven’t done anything wrong,” I say quietly. “We…haven’t.” Until I can talk to Milo, that will have to do.
After a moment, he whispers, “Thank you.”
His shoulders relax, and when I eventually force myself to let go, he looks at ease with the world again.
I’m feeling less so. I don’t know how Milo is going to react to me wanting to tell Benji the truth.
I don’t know how Benji will react. I can’t call the engagement off, but asking Benji to be my secret?
Milo and I will have to play out a happy marriage for Diana’s holiday visits so our eventual divorce doesn’t look like it was always the plan.
How could Benji stand that? He deserves to be loved openly and fiercely, not in stolen moments behind closed doors.
We eat dessert and lounge some more, then slowly pack everything back into the canoe. Puffy clouds are building to the southwest, and the breeze is picking up—it’s going to storm soon, so our timing is good.
We slide by my dock half an hour later, nosing the canoe up to the shore. When he turns to smile at me as he holds the canoe steady for me to climb out, I know I can’t lose him.
Milo is sitting alone by the campfire when we walk up from the dock, his expression grimmer than usual.
I touch Benji’s arm. “Can you give us a minute?”
“Sure,” he says with a soft smile. “I’ll be inside.” He takes the cooler with him, whistling as he goes, probably expecting me to tell Milo the wedding’s off. Maybe if I’d been the one paying for everything, I could do that. Or at least it would be an option.
Once the door shuts behind Benji and I hear him loudly greeting Trouble, I trudge over to Milo and drop down onto the adjacent log bench.
“Cheryl dropped by about an hour ago,” Milo says. “She was worried because you called in sick for the working bee. She left some chicken noodle soup.”
Guilt sucker punches me, but not as hard as it might have hit before. “What did you tell her?”
“That you were asleep.”
I let out a relieved sigh, and a long moment of silence follows. I can feel him staring at me like he no longer knows me. I’m not sure I recognize myself either, but I also can’t go back to who I was before Benji showed up.
My fingers twist, and here goes nothing. “I want to tell Benji the truth.”
Worry darkens his expression. “You’re falling for him.”
Yeah. Big time. “I didn’t mean for it to happen.”
“But it did, and now we need to deal with it.” He takes a deep breath and glances up at the sky. “Do you want to call off our engagement?”
My feelings for Benji are one thing, but Happy Lake is another. If we call off the engagement and lose Happy Lake, and Benji leaves at the end of summer, next year, or whenever, it will all be for nothing. “I want Happy Lake. We’re too far down this path to turn around now.”
His shoulders relax, but he stares at the cold ashes of the fire for a long time before saying anything.
“Tell him the truth.” He doesn’t sound happy about it, but he’s still saying it.
“But the two of you need to keep it a secret. Keep it in your cabin. Once Diana sells us the lodge and leaves for Florida, it won’t be so hard, but until then, she can’t find out.
She’d never trust us with Happy Lake. Make sure he understands that. ”
I fling my arms around Milo’s neck. I shouldn’t need Milo’s permission. It chafes that I feel like I do, but I’m putting everything Milo and I are desperate to hold onto at risk to be with Benji.
Milo unwraps my arms from his neck to stand. “I’ll spend my nights in the woods for a while. Give you two the space to be together.”
“Thank you,” I say.
He nods, then scowls. “And for fuck’s sake, don’t look at him in public if you can’t look at him like he’s your second cousin. And tell him the same.”
I wipe my damp eyes with the back of my hand. “Okay.”
“I mean it, Gina. Don’t get caught. Don’t fuck this up for us.”
Something a lot like fear prickles up my spine. Happy Lake is riding on me, now more than ever, and I’m about to do something stupidly irresponsible.
“I won’t,” I whisper.
Milo walks off to the cabin to gather his camping gear. The thought of following him in, where Benji is waiting, feels suddenly overwhelming, so I drop back onto the bench and stare at Milo’s RV.
I feel guilty that Milo will be sleeping in a tent in the woods, but even before Briar moved into his coach, he’d hike out into the woods to camp on his days off anyway. He likes the solitude, and with Benji and Briar here, he’s probably been itching for more personal space anyway.
Milo utters a curse from the front door, and I turn to see Trouble streak toward me with something white in his mouth.
“I’ll get him,” I say, getting to my feet as Trouble runs by. He disappears under the RV.
Milo mutters loud enough that I catch the words ‘little fucker’ before the door closes behind him.
I’d laugh, but I don’t want to be the one to break it to Briar that her cat ran away and got eaten by something bigger, so I hustle over to the RV and kneel in the grass to look underneath it.
Trouble is crouching in the grass next to one of the tires. I creep closer, talking sweetly to him and hoping he doesn’t bolt again.
Back by the cabin, the spring door sprangs open and bangs closed. Benji’s on his way. Thank god. Trouble likes me since I regularly feed him, but Benji is his person.
“Let me grab him,” Benji says. Since I’m not in a hurry to get scratched to hell, I move aside so he can reach under and haul Trouble out. “That was naughty, Trubs,” he says, getting to his feet and mollifying the cat in his arms with a couple of treats.
I reach under to grab the sock Trouble stole, but my fingers brush something hard and familiar—my rings, cinched with a hair tie, exactly how I left them in the trinket box under my bed.
There’s more: a scrunchie that isn’t mine, a child’s sock, a Happy Lake key ring from the lodge with the price tag still on it, bottle caps, a can cooler, and half a dozen pinecones.
I pull everything out, laying it in the grass—except the rings, which I slip into my pocket while Benji is busy admonishing Trouble for turning to a life of crime.
It’s stupid not to tell Benji I found them, but I’m about to tell him the truth about me and Milo.
There’s a chance he won’t be so understanding.
The rings are all I have from that night, and if he won’t go along with our plan, they’re all I’ll ever have.
Maybe if this works out, if Benji stays and Diana goes, I’ll “find” them again.
The sentimental value of my rings aside, looking through Trouble’s stash, it’s clear that while he took nothing valuable, he has been getting out and wandering around the camp, which isn’t great for him or the birdlife.
Benji takes Trouble into the RV as I gather the cat’s loot.
Milo exits the cabin, his pack slung over one shoulder. He nods at me and walks down the trail that leads deeper into the woods towards his workshop.
And now it feels real. Too real. I might be one conversation away from losing the man I’m falling for, and it’s too late to take anything that happened today back.
Thunder rumbles in the distance. The sky above has gone gray. Out across the lake, it’s almost black. Milo will shelter in his workshop until it passes, so I don’t have to worry about him.
Nope, the worry twisting my guts is all about what happens next.
“He’s got food, water, and some toys to keep him busy,” Benji says, shutting the RV door behind him and hanging a cat toy from it to let Briar know Trouble is inside.
If he saw Milo leave, or if Milo said anything to him when he went to get his gear, Benji doesn’t say as we walk across the meadow to my cabin.
It’s dark inside, thanks to the coming storm. Everything feels thick and heavy. Benji leans against the kitchen counter like he’s waiting for me to say something.
“I’m going to shower,” I say abruptly, chickening out. “Unless you want the first—”
“You take it,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. He looks like he might say something else but turns around and fills a glass with water.
Okay. Shower first. Then I’m going to do it.