thing he’ll pull at, albeit rarely. I was on call for the lab, and my phone buzzed. I answered it, thinking it was work, when really it was my ex—”
He winced.
She nodded, wondering why she was telling him this part when she hadn’t told anyone else about Jeremy calling, about him yelling at her and distracting her, and . . . no, about her stupid self picking up the phone, allowing herself to be distracted.
“Fred saw the squirrel. Fred decided that this was his one opportunity out of ten to lunge for the squirrel that had come into his orbit—”
Another wince.
“Yup,” she said. “The leash wrapped around my legs and took me down. I fell awkwardly, dropped my purse, my cell, and landed wrong. Really wrong. And I remember just lying there, trying to summon the strength to push myself up, to reach for my phone that was just out of reach.” She sighed. “And when I grabbed it, I could still hear my ex being an asshole, yelling about me yelling into the speaker when I’d fallen and then continuing on with some grievance about a sweatshirt.”
“A sweatshirt.”
“I may or may not have decided to keep his comfy sweatshirt after that,” she admitted, not really feeling guilty about it, even though she probably should, considering it was stealing. “Because he was a total dick about it, and then I had to have the surgery so it wasn’t exactly at the top of my priority list. The worst part is that he didn’t even ask if I was okay when I told him I thought I’d broken my ankle.” She wrinkled her nose. “He just told me that I’d better drop it by his place and . . .”
She trailed off at the expression on Ben’s face.
Thunderous was the mildest description she could come up with.
“He didn’t ask if you were okay?”
A deadly question.
“I—”
“You told him you thought you’d broken your ankle, that you’d fallen, and he was worried about a fucking sweatshirt?”
Stef winced. “Um. Yes?”
The only sounds were those of the waves breaking against the shore.
Then Ben asked, “What’s his name?”
Now, he looked downright scary, and she knew it must be the ruthless business side of him coming out, the part that made it possible for him to own that building in the city, to make whatever deals were necessary in order to achieve his ends.
Heat curled between her thighs.
Probably, it shouldn’t. But the fury had her shifting on the sand, clenching her legs together, wondering what it might be like to unleash that ferocity in bed.
“Stef.”
A slightly sharp command, not fierce enough to make her bristle, but enough to make her wet, to make her want to argue with him, just to see where it would get her.
What was wrong with her?
But nearly the same moment, a thought grasped onto the coattails of the first, one that was opposite and important and—
Because what was finally going right with her?
She felt blazingly alive. She wanted things, and yeah, so maybe wanting Ben wasn’t the same as wanting things, as in plural. Though she supposed it was plural in the sense that she wanted to do multiple things with him.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “He doesn’t matter. We’ve been broken up for almost a year now. My ankle was . . . God . . . six? Seven? No, it must have been nine months ago. He’s ancient history.” A shrug, deliberately ignoring the fact that it hadn’t been that long since he’d showed up on her porch demanding that stupid vase. She hadn’t heard from him since; that was all that mattered. “I’ve moved on.”
“It still hurts you.”
Stef shrugged. “It was a bad break. It probably always will ache a bit.”
His palm came to her cheek. “And he yelled at you about a fucking sweatshirt instead of helping you.”
That was what people did.
People who weren’t Ben with his picking up at bars, his returning of cars. He was an anomaly. People weren’t good, not like him. Unless you really meant something to them, they didn’t go out of their way for others.
And she’d never fallen into the category of meaning enough.
She wanted that.
She’d seen what her friends had with their significant others. She’d even been lucky enough to feel the care they gave her as friends. So, she wasn’t so cynical as to think that it didn’t exist, that she was ultimately unworthy of it.
Stef was a good person. She had some great qualities.
But she was realistic enough to