CHAPTER 65
NOW
Paloma
“P?” Bennett’s voice mixes past and present in my memory. “Just—”
He keeps speaking to me, but I can’t make out the words. They’re more like distant sounds. I’m in his room. A pang of loneliness hits and I’m desperate to chase it away.
“What do you need?” Bennett’s gravelly voice breaks through the pounding in my head. “Paloma, please—”
I yank at my dress, nearly ripping the seams at my chest, until I manage to pull it o. Standing before him semi-naked, my head swims.
“I want you.”
Bennett shakes his head at me, brow furrowing and eyes turning to turquoise wells of pain, so deep I find myself lost in them.
“No, P,” he begs. His eyes dart around, hand flexing—like he’s looking for Seven. His eyes close for a moment and he breathes deep. “Let’s talk. You’re upset—please—”
“I told you. You asked me what I need. What I want. I need you.” I reach for him again, planning to grip his button-down hard and rip it down the middle so I can smooth my hands against his chest, the tus of curls and strong hard muscle beneath. “Just this—”
He steps back again, nearly tripping as his shoulder hits the wall and his hands jut out to grasp my wrists.
I freeze instantly and just that makes him swallow hard and gasp in pain.
Like my reaction to his touch is as eective as a physical blow.
He drops my hands, raising his in the air like he’s surrendering, like I’m
pointing a loaded gun at him.
In a way, maybe I am.
Tears work their way into my eyes as I look at him, the beautiful man I’ve destroyed with my ugliness. And yet, I can’t fucking stop myself from reaching for him again.
“Paloma, please. This isn’t what you need right now.”
“It is,” I try to growl, but it comes out as a breathy sob. “Please.”
“Don’t do this, P. I’m begging.” He is begging, pleading for me not to use my one-time ask for something that will hurt us both, leave both of us in ruins. I know neither one of us will recover from the aftermath of what I’m
pleading for.
“It’s just sex,” I snap.
“It’s not,” he breathes. “Not with us. You know that. Tell me you know that.” The words seem as painful for him to say as they are for me to hear.
“What does it matter?” I spit. “This will mean nothing when you’re inside of me, Ben.” I try to make my tone dierent, to bring out the breathy smoky seductive voice I keep on me like a knife. My protection. “I’ll make it so
fucking good for you.”
Devastation settles over his features.
It’s like watching myself from a cage, unable to stop the fury and anger from hurting the one person I love more than anything. The one person that’s ever cared for me.
I wait to see what he’ll do. Hoping he’ll just give in.
Instead, I watch him build his armor, quiet but stable. The constant shore of unwavering love to the tumultuous sea of my own self-hatred.
“You’re upset because of what Ethan said,” he begins, eyes downcast. His voice is matter-of-fact, like he’s working through it aloud, trying to understand. “Maybe embarrassed, too, even if you shouldn’t be. But him talking about you as a kid? It hurt you, and you won’t tell me why.”
I flinch.
His voice has no emotion; his face is steel as he speaks. “You’re upset because of me knowing about your past. Maybe because of your mom, or
what Ethan said about her… reputation. About the trailer park you lived in—”
“S-stop it.” I manage to find my voice, backing away as he starts to advance toward me. “Bennett—”
“Someone hurt you in that house. Maybe more than one person, and just talking about that triggered you. You want sex because it’ll distract you. Make you feel better—”
Bennett watches my face intensely, and I see the slow realization overtake him. His eyes flare.
“No—fuck, Paloma.” His voice breaks over my name. “Y-you… you want sex because it makes you feel worse?” Bennett’s knees give out and he falls onto the edge of the bed. His breath shudders faster, eyes shining like he might cry.
“All this time… You thought that… that you deserve that? To feel bad?”
I slam my hands over my ears, tears flowing.
“Stop.” I want to scream, but I sound like a whimpering child. No, no, no —I grip hands into my hair and pull slightly. “Please, I—”
“Shhh,” Bennett tries to soothe me, reaching out to hold me up, and I realize I’ve stumbled toward him. His arms wrap around me, hands gently finding mine and pulling them from my scalp. He tucks them into his, our fingers interlocking. “Please, love. Just breathe.”
I do. He pulls me slowly, like coaxing a dog whose been beaten and chained, into his lap. Desperate to save it, as Bennett’s always been desperate to save me.
I press myself into his chest, ear to his heart, and breathe.
He’s crying, I realize, sobs wracking his body. It makes my hands go numb.
“Bennett?” I ask, pulling back. But he only holds on tighter.
“Paloma,” he breathes into my hair, hands pressing like he’s memorizing my body, inch by inch. “God—I didn’t know. I thought…” he stalls, but I hear him anyway.
He thought when we were apart I used sex as an outlet, a distraction. But I wielded it like a razor, crawling deeper into that dark pit every time. And Bennett stood there and watched it happen, thinking he wasn’t enough.
Thinking I wanted a release, just trying to feel good—and was looking for something he couldn’t give. Something I wouldn’t take from him.
I know he blames himself entirely, as if he stood back and forced me to go upstairs and into dark hallways and further down the rabbit hole of my self- hatred.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper into his skin, pressing so I can feel his neck against my lips. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just want you, just you. Just this. I’m sorry.”
There are broken pieces of us scattered on the floor. Raw. Vulnerable. And for a second, the thought of running and hiding feels like a comfort. I want to — But then he kisses me. And it makes everything right, even just for a moment.
We stay there for a long time before Bennett stands and carries me to the bathroom. He turns on the bathtub and pulls open the drawer of all my favorite soaps and hair products he keeps around.
It feels silly, to be so comforted by the idea of a bubble bath at the hands of Bennett Reiner, but as soon as the overly warm water conceals my naked body there’s a loosening in my chest.
Bennett stands for a moment, easily taking up too much space in the small room, still in his suit pants and button-down, sleeves rolled up, hands tucked deep into his pockets.
“I should…” He trails o, eyes downcast.
My hand reaches out, wet against the dark fabric of his pants. “Stay?”
Bennett nods, eyes finding mine as he kneels by the lip of the tub, his palm touching my cheek. I nuzzle into it with a soft, contented sigh. And then it’s nothing but the sound of water moving as I shift beneath the sudsy curtain.
“I was an only child,” I suddenly confess. My eyes shoot down, watching my own fingers play and swirl. “I don’t really talk about my mom—and I don’t want to. She didn’t care about me, never protected me. My childhood wasn’t… it was bad, Bennett.”
Bad is an understatement. But telling him this is hard enough.
“My mom was in trouble a lot—drugs, violent boyfriends, anything you can think of. And sometimes the cops that came were… ‘friends’ of my mother. Sometimes they were worse than the assholes she brought home.
And…” I shake my head, words trailing away. But the pain-soaked intensity of them hangs behind.
Bennett’s hand reaches out, grasping mine with a gentle, reassuring
squeeze.
“Don’t. Not if it hurts.”
He seems to wince at his own words, shaking his head like he knows. It all hurts.
“There was someone, though, who was kind to me when we met.” I want to tell him. I want to let the name spill from my lips, but I can’t. “He was older than me. He knew I’d been sleeping in a house with no power in the dead of winter or sneaking into the school to sleep.”
“You slept… at the school?”
“All the time.” I laugh, no humor in it. “It’s… it was warm. And no one tried to get in my room.” I stop there, swallowing hard. By the time I met Ethan I didn’t trust anyone—man, woman, child. It was me versus everyone else.
“Goddamn it,” Bennett mutters, eyes darting down before wiping at his eyes. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t know why that…”
I stay silent.
“I just… picturing you alone and scared, and sleeping in a fucking school?”
His voice is still whisper quiet, soft and gentle despite the harsher language.
“It’s okay. It wasn’t that bad.”
He shakes his head, eyes darting to me like he wants to tear those words from my mouth and lay his anger into them.
I wait and Bennett calms, stays quiet while I tell the rest. But the tears slowly tracking from his ocean-blue eyes never quite stop.
The words pour from me like water, and he absorbs them all. The unshakable, constant shore bowing to my fraught waves.
I explain Ethan’s treatment—how his demeanor ran so hot and cold. How he was the first adult to take care of me, how I trusted him. The way he showed me aection when I’d never had any before. I might as well have been touch starved.
Desperate for anything. And he knew that, used it against me.
“I’d never had anyone pay attention to me like that,” I say, voice bitter and resentful. No amount of time changes the way I feel about myself at fifteen, sixteen, and so on—desperate and so stupid. “I was grateful, that he seemed to care for me. I thought I should be glad… but then he changed, and I didn’t realize he’d never looked at me like a daughter.”
The words dredge up the usual nausea, tenfold at having to confess this to Bennett.
“He—” My throat closes and I wipe away a few silent tears. “I didn’t want it, any of it. But I wanted someone to…” God, this hurts most of all. “I just wanted someone to care about me. Even if I didn’t want to be with him. And I didn’t.”
A sob stabs at my throat, voice sticky. “Please, believe me.”
Bennett’s arms loop around me, tugging me into his warmth so I can sob into his soft chest and release everything I’ve held back from him since I met him.
“I do,” he whispers. “I do. I believe you. God, Paloma.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” I breathe, shame casting my eyes down.
“Don’t,” he nearly cuts me o. Water sloshes over the lip of the tub as Bennett picks me up and steps to sit in the bath, still fully clothed. He settles me onto his lap, facing him. “Please, P. I believe you. I believe you.”
He whispers the words like his own form of poetry, soothing and
protective in equal measure.
“You’re okay—you’re safe now.
“I’m so sorry, P.
“I won’t let anything happen to you again.”
We sit like that for a long time. I try to focus on anything but the torrent of emotions still plaguing me—the left-out detail of my story that’s begging to be told. Instead, I take in the movement of the water. His big body taking up too much space. The soft damp fabric of his shirt against my chest where he’s got me crowded into his body.
My fingers fiddle with the button of his shirt.
“Can I wash your hair?”
The question is as soft as his fingers as he tips me back by the neck, until my hair swirls in the water. He keeps hold of my neck in one hand, using the other to grab for the shampoo. I turn in his arms, still naked and vulnerable.
He spreads his legs to pull me closer between them, my back to his chest now.
Bennett presses a soft kiss to my temple before sudsing his hands and massaging my scalp, careful and slow so he doesn’t get anything in my eyes.
He does the same slow movements with the conditioner. It’s our routine, at least a version of it—and I can feel that it soothes him arguably more than me.
Maybe this is the moment—a fresh start. A clean slate, all my darkened
secrets finally in the light.
Not all of them.
“Take your time,” Bennett whispers after he’s wrapped me in a towel and shucked o his wet clothes, grabbing his own towel o the bar on the wall.
“Take as long as you need.”
Calm settles over me like a weighted blanket, like Bennett’s massive body might. I wring out my hair, using all the luxury products that I haven’t allowed myself in years, taking the time to plait my wet hair into pigtail braids before slipping on his massive Berkshire shirt and forgoing the rest of the clothes he left out for me.
I still feel raw as I emerge from the steamy room, but my throat catches as I see the pretty lights he’s plugged in along with the usual lamp.
Bennett turns from his computer, Ben Howard plays softly through the speakers as he steps toward me. He’s changed, too, soft pajama pants and no shirt like he usually sleeps.
I stand there blankly, unsure what to do now. Unsure of where I belong.
My fingers play at the sti wet end of one of my braids as I chew on my lip.
“I’m not tired,” I blurt. “I couldn’t sleep if I tried.”
Bennett smiles, small and quick, but I hold it close to my heart, warming myself from the inside out. “I know, love. I want to show you something.”
He walks over to his dresser, just past the golden lamp on his bedside table.
Tucked against the wall is a tall, full-length mirror. Tall enough to capture the hulking form of the 6’6” goalie—and me.
I look down at the ground quickly, but Bennett sweeps up a hand to my chin.
“Look,” he whispers. “Tell me what you see.”
“I see… something bad. Someone who hurt you,” I whisper, ashamed of the words but needing him to know. To understand that I hate myself for it all.
“Stop it,” he whispers, his head dipping to nuzzle the crook of my neck. I go nearly boneless as he scoops an arm around my middle. “Look.”
“Bennett…” My eyes cast down just slightly, avoiding the glass.
“Just look, P. This is the girl I’ve loved for four years of my life. Steadfastly adored. My soulmate.” He tilts my head again to look in the mirror. “You.
Exactly like this.”
I look.
His body encases mine, and it’s hard not to focus on just him—on the rugged lines of his face that mix so well with the aristocratic nose he broke when he was twelve. Of the clean cut of his stubble, the soft waves of his chestnut hair that look like warm coee or the freshness of fall in the city. The long, thick muscles of his arms, the grip of his hand on my hip— On the generous curve of my hip. I follow my own body down to my ankles, seeing the tightness of my legs that allow me to swim every day. To run away, when I’ve needed to. I see the way Bennett’s shirt falls over me like I could live in it forever. Like it was made for my body. Mine. I see my face, bare and clean, looking youthful and content. Beautiful. My skin, pink from the hot bath that the boy I love made for me. Warm from the way the boy I love holds me.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispers, kissing my neck. “So strong. You aren’t that little girl trapped in that house anymore. You’re so smart, clever. Kind
and wonderful.”
“I’m not. I’m mean.”
“Your meanness has kept you safe. I don’t care if you’ve used it against me, because it’s kept you safe.” He emphasizes it again, hands crawling up my body to grip the small of my waist.
“I’ve been so horrible to you,” I whisper. “I don’t—”
“I would crawl through broken glass to get to you, P.”
His voice is breathy and soft, but the words build pillars in my mind, making something new in the rubble of destruction. I turn in his arms.
“I would for you, too,” I say, feeling ridiculous at the repeated sentiment, but I don’t know how else to say it.
He presses a hard, fierce kiss to my lips.
“I know,” he says, before kissing me again, gentle and slow, as he backs up to his bed, scooping me into his arms and settling me on his lap as he sits.
His hands smooth against my skin, leaving chilled bumps in their wake as he pulls my shirt up and over my head. Music plays. His eyes sparkle like living waters, and I feel the last piece of my armor break.
I push my hands against his shoulders, letting him settle into the mattress slowly as I rock against him and kiss him again.
He rolls me beneath him, my thighs stretched impossibly wide around the bulk of his body.
The way Bennett looks at me feels the exact same as the first time, on soft blue sheets with waves crashing outside and soft moonlight along more boyish features. When this pull between us was unmarred and pure.
Something soft.
Maybe for him, nothing ever changed.
His pants come o and I can feel him against me. Skin to skin.
We kiss, touch, push into each other for a long moment, before I press against his shoulder and roll until I’m on top of him again. I lift up, looking at him for approval as I reach back and hold him in my grip. He’s so fucking big it should be frightening, but I’ve never wanted anything more. Because it’s
him.
Him, him, him, like a silent chant.
“Are you sure?” I ask.
He nods, but his lips press to my cheek, his hand caressing lightly against my skin. “Please don’t break my heart again,” he begs, then follows it with a watery smile and half chuckle. “I don’t think I can take anymore.”
“Never,” I vow. “I love you,” I breathe, as my hips slip down and I take him slowly into my body.
He jolts, hips arching, and I moan a curse at the sheer size of him.
“Say it again,” he begs. “Please.”
I push up on his chest when he’s still only halfway inside me.
“I love you.”
I breathe in and sink the rest of the way down, hung and moaning as he takes up every inch of space and then some.
And we stay there, hips flush. Completely connected.
His eyes shine with tears; his cheeks are wet. He reaches up to touch my cheek and I realize I’m crying, too—for the first time, happy tears.
“You’re so beautiful,” he mutters again, eyes in awe of me even as his gaze doesn’t dip to my body. He’s only looking at me. Me.
“I love you.”
“You’re so perfect.”
“Just you.”
“Just you,” he whispers back, picking up the pace. “Just you and me, forever, love.”
Falling in love with Bennett was like jumping into the ocean, expecting the water to be icy and painfully cold, only to be completely encompassed in comforting warmth. A warmth that has never faltered.
“I love you,” I say again, because I can’t help it. He slows again, savoring the feeling of us this close, before he presses his lips to my neck, just below my ear and whispers poems into my skin as he makes me come again and again, until we’re both wrung out.
Love from Bennett Reiner will always be this—perfect and warm. It’s homemade versions of my favorite food, warm blankets, firm hands on sore muscles, and gentle fingers in my hair. It’s slow indie music that’s just soft enough to be a lullaby, but with lyrics so beautiful my ears ache to listen. It’s poems ripped from his favorite books lying on my pillow, with the words he struggles to say splayed on softly crinkled paper.
“You’re the only person who has ever had me,” I breathe, tears still spilling quietly over my cheeks. “All of me.”
My words make him moan into the curve of my neck.
“I’ll take care of you forever, P,” he says, angling his neck to press our foreheads together in the quiet dark. “You just have to let me, love.”
I release a hiccupped cry, overwhelmed by how I feel about him, distraught over the cycle I’ve felt perpetually stuck in that wouldn’t allow me to have him until I could defeat this evil thing I’ve let live in my head since I was fourteen.
Bennett tucks me against his chest and pets my hair, soothing me, whispering soft poetry that I’m almost sure is his, until I’m calm again. Until I fall asleep with him still inside me.
