So there is my answer—I will never,everdelete any message from him.
Whatever it costs me later.
26
Of course, the one day I'm planning to wear white pants, I get my period—four days early. A betrayal from my own uterus so precise, it deserves applause.
I'm in the shower, letting the cramps and hot water battle it out, and it doesn't help that I'm not in my own bathroom; I'm upstairs with Ben.
He sprinted out like a man on a mission—poor guy nodded through my crash course on ultra-absorbent wings like his own life depended on it.
And just to top it off, it started mid-sex. White sheets. Crimson horror. I wanted to die when I saw it on his thighs, his belly, his... everything.
My face went redder than the sheets and I bolted, locking myself in the bathroom, him on the other side, begging me to open because it was fine and he really didn't mind and apparently, I couldn't be hiding here for my whole life—says who?—so I opened.
"Knock knock. I come bearing offerings," I hear him behind me, his voice impossibly soft.
Supplies land on the sink. "Need anything else?"
"No," I grumble.
I should apologize for traumatizing him, but instead, I put more strawberry scrub on and hope I can exfoliate my shame away.
He notices my terrible mood and takes a step forward.
"Don't come closer," I warn, voice ricocheting off the tiles. "This is a battlefield."
He tilts his head, frowning. "Do you know who you're talking to? I don't scare easily. Not from a little war."
"It's not a little war. It's catastrophic. Trust me, you don't want this visual." I turn around, hoping he'll go already.
"Try me," he says instead.
When I look behind my shoulder, my eyes widen.
I see him through the fogged glass, pulling his tee over his shoulders, then unbuttoning his pants and dragging them down.
"What? Ben! No!" My hand wipes the fog and I gape at him, horrified. "What do you think you're doing?"
He doesn't answer. Instead, the shower door swings open and my eyes drop to his fully naked and unapologetically male body.
"You're not getting in." I plant both hands on his chest, trying to shove a man who may as well be carved from stone. "Ben, seriously. Leave."
His hand hooks the door, the other snakes around me as he walks in, and those maddening eyes that still look at me like I'm something precious lock on mine.
Thick steam curls around us as he says, "Turn around."
"There's no way we're having round two," I snap furiously. "Absolutely not."
A long inhale from him, like he's fortifying himself against my barbs, and then his hands, gentle but insistent, catch myhips, and he turns me himself.
Oh god. I shouldn't have looked down but instinct won.
The blood—my blood—trails down my thighs, swirling into the water around his feet like spilled ink.
Mortification hits hot and I press my forehead against the tile. "Ben, I swear I will end you if you don't back off. This is disgusting." Heel to the drain, I try to push it in. Manage some of it.
Ben's mouth brushes my shoulder. "Nothing about you disgusts me." Then he kisses the other one. "I'd drink all your body fluids, and eat out of all your holes—every single one of them. Don't care."
