Bad Swipe Bad Swipe (Billionaire's Club #12) - Elise Faber Page 0,12
his crate, a rare occurrence that illustrated exactly how much fun her little man had had splashing in the waves.
So now, she was eating a salad and eyeing her phone.
Do you want to get a coffee?
She did. Stef wanted that. Bad. And that was what fucking terrified her. Because she’d barely recovered from Jeremy, and Jeremy had been an asshole. Ben Bradford might turn out to be an asshole, too, but he’d complimented her smile, and Jeremy had never done that, never complimented much about her, and certainly not just out of the blue. To avoid a fight? Oh yeah. To get laid? Certainly. But just something nice without being prompted? No, not that she could think of. All of which said something sad about her, something that she didn’t want to keep considering because it illustrated exactly how pathetic she’d been to waste her time with Jeremy.
Had he ever liked her?
Like at all?
Or had she been convenient and allowed herself to be a punching bag?
He must have been nice in the beginning. He had to have been. Right? Except . . . she couldn’t think of any examples, and that just made her feel worse about herself.
Which . . . seriously, how was that possible?
More than six months of pretending to be fine about the breakup while knowing that she hadn’t been fine before, hadn’t been fine while they were together.
But she was going to be fine.
And she was also kidding herself if she thought that Ben didn’t have an ulterior motive. He wasn’t looking for love. Just like Jeremy, he wanted to bone and then go on with his life.
Tell me how you know that.
Why—seriously, fucking why—did every second guess she had of herself come in the form of her mom’s voice? Always chastising and disapproving. Always making her second-guess what she was doing.
Fuck.
“Enough,” she murmured. “Just enough.”
That was a sufficient amount of self-reflection and pitying for the evening. She needed to go back to what she did best—looking forward, picking up, and moving on. She’d done it when her brother had been sick, so sick, so troubled, struggling so fucking much, that she’d basically been on her own. Alone, even amongst her family, she’d needed to live her own life. She’d done it when he’d taken his own life and her parents had needed someone to pick up the pieces and move everyone on.
But she’d spent too long picking up the pieces for everyone else.
Now, she needed to pick them up, only for herself this time.
That was why she left her phone in the corner of the room, the battery slowly draining, while she and Fred finished bingeing that superhero show.
Chapter Eight
Ben, Three Months Later
He ran a hand over his head, feeling the bristles of his hair against his palm, knowing he needed a haircut, yet not wanting to take the time to bother.
Hunt Inc. was firmly in phase two.
He’d worked himself to exhaustion every night for the last few months. The company’s stock was up. He’d never been more productive.
But he couldn’t stop jacking off to red lips and deep brown eyes.
His cock twitched.
“Fuck,” he muttered, tossing the file he’d been reading onto his desk, just as there was a perfunctory knock at the door and Claire stuck her head in the opening.
“Do I need to escort you down to your car?” she said, leaning a hip against the doorframe. “Or are you going to leave at a reasonable hour for the first time in an eternity?”
Ben sighed, considered telling her to piss off, or maybe threatening to fire her again. But that never worked, and frankly, he didn’t have the energy for it.
Not today.
Not on this day.
He’d put his mom in the ground exactly one year before.
“Ben?” Claire asked, the sass leaving her tone, worry taking its place. “You okay?”
He blinked, pushed to his feet, and reached into the top drawer of his desk to retrieve his wallet. “I’m out of here.”
“You are?” she asked, shifting to the side when he approached the door. “Really?”
“It’s Friday,” he told her. “Why don’t you take off early, too?”
Her brows lifted before she lifted her wrist and glanced at her watch. “Early meaning eight-thirty?”
Shit. Was it already eight-thirty?
He glanced out the windows, saw that it was dark. Ah. Yeah, it was.
“Okay,” he amended. “Why don’t you get out of here now?”
“That’s the plan.” She followed him toward the elevator after briefly asking, “You want to come out with us?”