Beg, Borrow, or Steal (When in Rome, #3)(101)
In one ninety-second video, Fredrick Bennett kicks the legs out from under my seat.
And it’s my fault. I’m the one who told my dad in some righteous act of heroics. I feel sick. I should have known better. He can’t tolerate being bested, so I should have considered that he would try to undermine me in some way that leaves him controlling the narrative around my success. Fredrick Bennett would never fight a bloody war; he only fights with pinpoint accuracy. Poison down the throat.
I’m lying on my terrible mattress staring at my ceiling as construction sounds outside my bedroom door, and my phone relentlessly vibrates beside me on the bed. Questions being lobbed at me from all corners of my life. Personal and professional. Is this true??? How have you kept this a secret?! Can you sign my books when we go back to school??? And then there are the constant phone calls from my agent that I keep leaving unanswered because I feel too heavy to acknowledge them.
What I have always considered to be my safe place in life to escape to is now sitting on full display for everyone to gawk at. Even worse, it’s sitting in my dad’s display case, being used as one of his trophies.
Maybe if I lie here long enough it’ll all go away. One big bad dream.
The power tools stop outside my room and low voices take their place. And then my bedroom door opens and for one absurd second I worry it’s my dad with a live camera about to force me to admit he gave me all my ideas. It’s not my dad. It’s Emily.
“I heard the news” is all she says before she looks around my small, sparsely furnished room and frowns. I peel myself up into a seated position as she approaches because I can’t let her see me this miserable day one of our relationship.
“How are you?” she asks, coming to sit by me.
“I’m okay.”
But Emily just looks in my eyes, tilts her head, and asks again, “Jack . . . how are you?”
I shut my eyes. “I’m not okay.”
She lays her head against my shoulder and slides her hand into mine. “You deserved to be the one to tell the world. Not him.”
Outside the door, the sounds of construction resume. Emily stands up from the bed, tugging my hand so I’ll get up with her. “Emily . . .”
“Come with me.”
“I’m not feeling very entertaining right now.”
“Jackson Bennett,” she says, stepping between my legs to cradle my face and tip it up to look at her. “You said you’d sit with me in my darkness; don’t you dare keep me out of yours. There’s not a single thing you need to say or do, just come with me.”
So I do. I get up, and with Emily holding my hand, I follow her through my construction zone, out the front door, and across the yard to her house. She ushers me inside the quiet and then steers me to the couch. I’m gently pushed by the shoulders until I sit, and then I’m pushed even more so that I sink fully back into the comfort. She buzzes around the living room collecting things. A fuzzy blanket that she drapes over my lap. A cushy pillow that she places under my feet on the coffee table. She goes back to her room and emerges with Ducky, placing her right into my arms where she immediately goes back to sleep and purrs like she’s the happiest cat in the world.
Emily rushes into the kitchen and comes back with a bowl full of what looks like candy salad. There are seriously five different types of fruity candy in this bowl. She then curls up next to me on the couch, candy bowl clutched to her and TV remote in hand.
“What do you want to watch?” she asks, looking over at me as if everything she just did was completely normal. “What?” she asks when I just continue to stare at her with questions stamped all over my face. “I can’t fix what happened to you this morning and I can’t make your dad pay like I want either, but I am excellent at comforting the people I love.”
I lean over and kiss her, savoring the way she smells and feels. The heaviness in my chest recedes. I may have lost the safe place I needed all these years, but I have found a far more incredible one for the years ahead.
“And to think you consider yourself hard to love.” I kiss her temple. “Loving you is the easiest thing I’ve ever done.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Emily
The shower water is scalding but it’s nothing compared to Jack’s palms as they scrape deliciously around my skin. We’ve done nothing but couch rot all day. He was pretty sullen at first, but after bingeing nearly an entire season of The Golden Girls (his choice) with his phone nowhere in sight, his spirits lifted. Lifted enough to have sex on the couch—which admittedly makes almost everyone feel better. And now, he’s sudsing me up like his life depends on it. He’s already washed my hair and conditioned it, peppered my entire body with kisses so sweet I could die, and now he’s washing me. Head, shoulders, knees, and toes. He keeps squinting because he’s not wearing his glasses or his contacts. Scrumptious. I love him.
I turn and loop my arms around his neck and say it out loud.
He smirks. Kisses me, and then says, “Mm. I love . . . your nipples.”
“Romantic.”
He laughs. “You already know I love you. It’s time I wax poetic about these nipples you once asked me about and I couldn’t give proper feedback on. But now that I’ve really been up close and personal,” he says, covering me with his hand, “I just need you to know that I’m a big fan.”