Benny was already asleep. He didn’t wake as I moved his limbs to clean him up as best as I was able to.
Then I yanked the blanket out from under him, chucking it somewhere to deal with later and getting us a fresh one from where I’d discovered the linen closet was, and tucked us both in to sleep.
thirty
Harper
MOVIES AND MORE.
It was finally Friday.
I’d left work slightly early so I could race home and shower before heading over to Benny’s. I couldn’t remember a time when a week at work passed so slowly. And it hadn’t even been a full week.
Without Benny there, my nights had gone back to being restless, and sleep had been difficult again—it didn’t want to be there without him either, it seemed. Along with that, my appetite, or lack thereof, had also returned to normal.
Matthew still bought breakfast for me on the drive to the office each morning. On Tuesday, when I hadn’t eaten anything, he threatened to tell Benny on me. I’d simply rolled my eyes at him and ignored the threat. That was until he followed through and my phone blew up over lunch with concerned and upset messages from Benny about me not eating enough. I’d begrudgingly eaten something under Matthew’s watchful eyes in the rearview mirror every morning since. I’d called him a snitch. He didn’t seem to mind.
After I showered, I dressed in my gear and headed off to the address Benny had given me, feeling increasingly impatient to see him again.
My father hadn’tseemedsuspicious of the time I’d spent working from home, but it was always difficult to know exactly how he was really feeling, so I still took a longer route than necessary to ensure he hadn’t sent anyone to follow me.
Benny’s house was cute, newly built with two stories and a double garage, and located in the Harborview hills, away from the coast. It was a nice neighborhood, where all the houses were large and classically homey complete with white picket fences. It was the kind of neighborhood where well-off families lived. But I couldn’t see Benny living in an apartment, so this place made sense for him.
I was about to kill my engine when one side of the garage’s door opened to an empty space, so I pulled in there instead, thankful that my bike would be out of view from the street.
A sleek black Audi S7 took up the space on the other side.
Benny appeared in the doorway leading into the house as I dismounted. His eyes locked onto my bike as he frowned.
“What?” I asked him as I pulled my helmet free.
“You don’t have a car?”
“I don’t need a car. I have a bike.” Ididhave cars. Multiple of them. My father bought me a new one every year for my birthday, most recently a Bugatti W16 Mistral, but Benny didn’t need to know that.
“Well, it isn’t as safe as a car. Plus, there’s only one seat.”
A hand on his chest forced him to take a few steps backward so I could close the door and block his view of my Ducati. Then I pinched his cheek and used the hold to pull him down enough for me to claim his lips—hard and deep. It was only the start of my desire to express how much I’d missed him the last few days.
“Well, I only have one butt.” I smirked as our lips parted and he blinked, processing, the kiss clearly having distracted him to the point he needed to find what I was talking about again.
“Still, you’d be safer in a car.”
He was probably right. I didn’t care, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.
“It’s plenty safe.”
Benny rolled his eyes. “Not as safe as a car, though. I tell Rikky this too. Are you goin’ to ignore me like he does?”
“Probably.”
Benny huffed, and I pulled my eyes away from him to take in the space.
Just as I’d imagined, it wasfilledwith color. The walls were a cinnamon orange, and the dark wood floors were lined with rugs that didn’t match the walls or each other. I liked it.
“Give me a tour?”
Benny took me through the ground level first and revealed more of the same. Oranges, greens, reds, blues, yellows. They filled every room. Cushions that didn’t match the sofa or each other. Dining chairs that looked like they hadn’t even been built in the same time period, not to mention the same factory. There was a huge Pride flag on his living room wall.
