15
My worries about Cam wanting to discuss how much time I was spending with Ben turned out to be unfounded. Mostly because she was never home. She was spending nearly every spare minute with Brody. While I was happy for her, I was also worried. She was in deep. It was obvious whenever she talked about him or whenever she was around him. It was a side of her I'd never seen before.
He was in just as deep with her. He looked at her like she was the center of the universe, the answer to every question he'd ever had.
Every time I was around them, I had to suppress the yearning for someone to look at me with that light in their eyes. Dammit, their ooey-gooeyness was rubbing off on me if I was thinking about things like that.
Because Cam was gone so often, I ended up bunking with Ben most nights. The first time, it was an accident. He'd exhausted me so thoroughly that I'd passed out on his bed for the entire night. The next morning, I woke up when he was getting dressed for his five a.m. workout.
But I'd played possum, waiting until he disappeared into his home gym before I snuck into the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee. Usually, I would have made a fast, semi-stealthy exit, but Ben wasn't a one-nighter. He was my friend and I wouldn't do that to a friend.
At least that's what I told myself.
So, wearing nothing but one of his tees, I carried my coffee down the hall to the spare room where his workout equipment was and I watched as he lifted, pumped, stretched, or whatever it was all called.
I realized I wouldn't mind waking up at five in the morning for a workout if it meant I was watching Ben do this. From the doorway while drinking a cup of coffee.
Before he saw me, I wandered back into the bedroom and climbed back into bed. The sheets smelled like him. His soap was simple Irish Spring, but somehow the scent changed on his skin, became deeper. Addictive.
I wallowed in his soft, smooth sheets and the best mattress I'd ever experienced until he walked in, sweaty and shirtless, wiping his chest with his tank top.
"Good workout?" I asked.
He paused in the dim bedroom, looking toward the bed. I flipped on the lamp.
"Same as always," he replied. "Did I wake you?"
I shrugged one shoulder. "I felt you get out of bed."
"Want to take a shower with me?"
Like any woman with half a brain, I'd said yes and ever since that morning, I'd started most days that way. Strangely, it never felt awkward. We had a rhythm together, both in bed and out. Sort of like the rhythm I had with Cam.
Which cracked me up. My first best friend had somehow led me to my second best friend.
Cheesy, I know, but it was true. In a short amount of time, Ben had somehow become the only other true friend I had. He never judged and he never pitied.
And considering how similar our childhoods were, he understood me a lot better than anyone besides Cam ever had.
He even tried to teach me how to cook. We started with a simple stir-fry. It was a lot of chopping, which I got bored with, so I drank iced tea while watching Ben chop the veggies. Then, I got distracted by how sexy he looked in the kitchen and we ended up making out for so long that the meat and veggies burned.
Thank God for frozen cauliflower pizza.
I should have known it was too good to be true. We spent all our free time together and it had to end sometime.
Unfortunately, the ending turned out to be a fucking mess.
My eight weeks of leave were almost up, but I didn't mention it to Ben because I fully intended to work remotely until I absolutely had to go into the office. I refused to think too hard about what would happen next. I was still enjoying Ben's company, so why mess with a good thing?
Unfortunately, it all started going downhill when I pulled my head out of my ass. Yes, I was in denial. I didn't realize it until much later, but I was.
I woke up one Saturday morning, nearly eight weeks to the day since my first time with him, to Ben's touch. His hands wandered over my body. Not in a sexual way, but as if he wanted to memorize every curve and angle, the bones and the softness.
I stretched under his caress and shifted my head from where it rested on his shoulder so that I could see his face.
"Feeling me up while I sleep, huh?"
He smiled at me, a slow, lazy smile that brightened his hazel eyes. He looked younger when he smiled like that.
