Author: Jill Shalvis

He rose up. “Wrap your legs around me.” His voice was rough, his hands gentle, as he slid his hand up her legs and directed them around his hips. He sank into her, hard. Perfect.

Their groans of pleasure commingled in the air. Leaning over her, he bent low and kissed her—fervent, erotic, rough, and wild.

Her body, already on fire for him, erupted again. Ben’s hands slid to her hips, cupped her ass, and, lifting her up against him, he thrust deep. It was enough to have her crying out, arching against him in an attempt to draw him even deeper. “Yes,” she moaned, clutching at him. “Like that.”

He growled low in his throat as he gave her what she wanted, on his terms. Slow. Purposeful. Taking her to the point of no return and beyond, to a place where she couldn’t have said what she wanted next if her life had depended on it.

It didn’t matter. Ben seemed to know exactly what she wanted. That was the thing about him. He instinctively knew when to be aggressive, when to be gentle and coaxing, and, best of all, he knew how to drive every last worry right out of her mind.

Chapter 25

A long time later, they collapsed on the bed, gasping, sweaty, breathing like lunatics. Ben threw a hand over his eyes as he tried to catch his breath, because though he could lie smooth as silk when he wanted to, he never lied to himself.

This wasn’t just sex between him and Aubrey. This was love.

“I need to talk to you,” she said.

“Okay.”

She was quiet so long that he dropped his arm from his eyes and turned his head.

She was looking at him, eyes shimmering with a suspicious sheen. “It’s about my list,” she said softly. “You’re on it.”

Ben stared at her. “You said I wasn’t.”

“I…misled you.”

He took this in for a full minute, running through his memories and coming up completely blank. “I don’t understand. What did you ever do to me?”

She sat up and reached for his shirt again, pulling it back over her head and down to mid-thigh.

Covering herself from him.

He wasn’t liking this much. “Aubrey.”

“Don’t you want to put something on?” she asked.

“After you answer me.”

She ran a hand over her eyes, and he realized her fingers were shaking. “I’m trying,” she said. “I’ve been trying for a while.” She shook her head. “No, that’s a lie. I didn’t know how to tell you. It’s been killing me slowly, but I—” She broke off and let out a long breath. “I screwed up.”

He pulled her hand from her face. “Just say it.”

“Okay.” She drew a deep breath. “Do you remember when Hannah broke up with you?”

“Yes.” It had been the summer after he’d graduated high school, and he had been night surfing. Alone. It’d been a dangerous, reckless thing to do, but he’d been stupid back then and had often pulled such stunts. It’d been some sort of teenage testosterone-driven dare, a challenge between him and life, and he hadn’t been too particular about who might win.

When he’d come back to shore, Hannah had been waiting on the beach for him. She’d stared at his feet and told him she was breaking it off because they were going to college in a few months, and they needed to spread their wings.

He remembered feeling blindsided. He’d told her that he didn’t need to spread his fucking wings, and she’d smiled a little bit sadly and said she was setting him free anyway.

He hadn’t seen her for two years. He’d finally run into her by sheer accident on spring break, and they’d reconnected. And though she’d never asked and he never told, he’d spent the two years away from her having a damn good time spreading his wings.

“What about it?” he asked Aubrey now.

“I told her you slept around with other girls, one of them being me. It was why she broke up with you.”

It took him a moment to find words, and even then he only had one. “What?”

“Yeah.” She nodded, chewing on her lower lip. “I caused her to…break up with you.”

He shook his head. She was making no sense. “You were two years behind us in school. You didn’t even know Hannah.”

“We were in after-school tutoring together. I was there for Spanish Two. She was in danger of failing Spanish Four.”

“You’re lying,” he said flatly. “Hannah was a straight-A student.”

“She’d always been, yes,” she agreed. “But Spanish flattened her. She had to get her grade from an F to a C or lose her upcoming college scholarship. She came to tutoring every day for an hour.”

He stared at her as the first inkling of doubt began to creep in. Hannah had been busy every day after school, but she’d told him she was working at the optometrist’s office where her mom worked. More than that, the college scholarship thing was setting off alarm bells in his head. Hannah had been all set to go to the University of Washington at Seattle—with him. But after she’d dumped him, she’d gone to a community college instead. He’d always assumed it’d been so that they wouldn’t be at the same school. But what if that hadn’t been it at all? What if what Aubrey was saying was true—that Hannah hadn’t brought her grade up enough and she’d lost her scholarship? “I don’t get it,” he said. “Why did you tell her we slept together?”

“I’d like to tell you the whole thing,” she said, “but the short answer is that I was jealous.”

“Jealous.”

“Yes.” She clasped her hands together and kept her eyes on them. “I’m not proud of that. I’m sorry, Ben.”

Was she serious? A “sorry” was supposed to make it all okay? He jerked upright and yanked on his pants.

“Wait,” she said, jumping up, too. “Let me tell you the rest—”

“I don’t give a shit about the rest.” He shoved his feet into his shoes and turned back to her. “Just tell me one thing—why now? Why are you telling me this now?” Then it hit him, and he let out a harsh laugh. “The damn list. You need to clear your conscience. Well, congratulations, Aubrey, you did it. Job well done.” He snatched up his shirt and, without putting it on, stormed to the door. Needing to know one more thing, he whipped back. “Wait. Why did she believe you?”

Aubrey stood there before him, pale, eyes filled with regret and other things that he didn’t want to see, wearing his damn shirt, looking devastated. “I can be very convincing,” she said softly.

“Yes,” he agreed, staring down at her bowed head. “You can.”

She winced as the barb hit, and he told himself he didn’t care. “So what was this between us? Amendment? You fucked me to make up for lying about fucking me?”

“No. No,” she said. “You saw my list. FUCKING BEN was not on it.”

“Well, BEN was on it. Don’t tell me you’re also fucking the pumpkin man.”

“Don’t you get it?” she cried. “I didn’t plan to sleep with you at all!” She tossed up her hands. “And trust me, this”—she gestured to the bed—“was not how I planned to make amends.”

“Okay, so out of morbid curiosity, how were you going to do that? How were you going to give me back the two years I missed out on with my wife?”

“I didn’t know!” she said. “I still don’t!”

Suddenly drained, he moved to the door. “You let me know when you figure it out.”

When he was gone, Aubrey’s legs gave way, and she slid down the wall. Hugging her knees, she dropped her head to her chest and fought the tears.

She remembered that long-ago night as if it were yesterday. She’d been at a party where she hadn’t belonged. It’d been for seniors, so she’d been lying low when she saw Hannah and a girlfriend get in Hannah’s car to leave. Talking and laughing, Hannah had pulled out into the street without looking and caused a wreck. With the cars still smoking, and horns and alarms going off, Aubrey had watched in disbelief as the two girls had switched spots, crawling past each other in the front seat so that Hannah was no longer behind the wheel.

When the police arrived, Hannah’s friend—the sober one—had saved Hannah from getting a DUI.

Aubrey couldn’t believe it. As the girl who had always gotten in trouble for every little infraction—and some that weren’t even hers—she had been infuriated.

The next day at tutoring, Aubrey had told Hannah that she knew what she’d done. At first, Hannah had pretended not to know what Aubrey was talking about—until Aubrey told her she’d seen it herself. Hannah had paled but rallied quickly, telling Aubrey that no one would ever believe it.

Their tutor had broken up the heated whispered exchange, yelling at them to be quiet and work. Hannah had told him that Aubrey was trying to cheat.

Aubrey had gotten detention.

“You see?” Hannah had whispered. “No one will ever believe you over me. The girl who dresses like a prom queen when she’s not. The girl who needs tutoring in all her classes. The girl no one wants. Even your own dad picked your sister over you.”

Horrifically wounded by this, her secret and humiliating hot button, Aubrey’s mouth had disconnected from her brain, and she’d said, “Ben has no complaints about me every time we meet in the woods.” Not about to stop herself—her biggest regret—she’d gone on. “And I’m not the only one he’s doing it with, so obviously he’s not getting off on you.”

Hannah had stormed out, earning herself detention right alongside Aubrey. But she’d dumped Ben.

And then eventually fate had stepped in and gotten them back together, though Hannah must not have told Ben about Aubrey’s tale.

But he knew now…

Ben didn’t sleep. Every time he closed his eyes he saw Aubrey’s face as he’d left. The regret and fear and misery in her expression haunted him, making him want to toss aside his hurt and anger and soothe hers.

So he stopped closing his eyes because he needed to hold on to the hurt and anger. He needed that badly, and as to the reason why—well, he didn’t want to study that too closely.

When dawn came, he went for a run. He beat Sam to the pier, but not by much. When Sam came up level with him, he stopped and frowned. “You okay?”

Ben grunted in response and took off. Sam caught up with him but didn’t ask another question. Ben ran hard and fast, and Sam kept pace, never slowing until Ben did.

Just before they got back to the pier, Sam spoke. “You know where to find me if you need anything.”

Ben met Sam’s gaze and saw nothing but sincerity. He nodded. “Thanks, man, but I’m good.” Actually, he was the opposite of good, and they both knew it, but Sam let the lie go.

Ben skipped the bookstore. The work he had left to do there was minimal. He knew he needed to finish, but hell if he could face her yet. So he went to work and put in twelve straight hours on a subterranean water leak out at the dam, which was threatening the properties below the harbor. That night he stumbled into bed, exhausted, and proceeded to stare at his ceiling for hours.

The next morning he heard a polite knock at his door.

He ignored it.

He ignored the doorbell, too.

But he couldn’t ignore whoever the hell was letting himself into his house. He slid out of his bed, prepared to take on the intruder bare-handed and in his boxers, thinking maybe a good old fight would loosen the two-day-old knot in the center of his chest. He was ready when he padded into the living room, but stopped short at the sight of his aunt Dee.

She was in his kitchen, unloading a bag of groceries. She had a carton of eggs in one hand and a gallon of orange juice in her other as she looked up and caught sight of him. “Hey, baby.”