Call Her Mine (Harmony Pointe #1)- Melissa Foster Page 0,39
look much calmer.
“Ben, are you sure about this?” she asked uneasily.
“No.” His eyes never left the road. “I’m a little afraid if it is her, I’m going to give her hell, and I don’t want to. I mean, I want to, but it probably won’t help the situation.” He glanced at Aurelia and said, “Are you sure you’re okay coming with me?”
“No, but I’m here.”
He reached across the seat, and as he took her hand, she noticed his was sweaty. “Thank you.”
“This is messed up,” she said. “I don’t blame you or anything. Accidental pregnancies happen, but . . .”
“Listen, Aurelia. This is a lot for me, and it’s my fault. I can’t imagine how it makes you feel. I appreciate you coming with me and sticking by me, but if at any point this gets to be too much and you want out, just tell me. I won’t hate you for it. I don’t want to screw up your life.”
“I don’t want out. I just want answers. I know you do, too.”
He nodded as he turned onto a dirt road just outside of town and pulled up in front of a quaint rambler. He looked a little green as he put the truck in park.
“Are you okay?”
“No,” he confessed. “But I’m glad you’re with me.”
She looked at the house, trying not to think about Ben having sex with someone else inside it. “Did you drive all this way drunk the night you were with her?”
“I wasn’t drunk. You know I don’t get tanked.”
That should make her feel better, because he wouldn’t have risked lives on the road, but it just made the reality of his one-night stand hit harder. “This is where she lives? How can you remember that and not her name?”
“This is where we came that night. I had to focus so I knew how to get home. I know this makes me a dick, but her name wasn’t important at the time. Jeannie or Jenny—whatever it was didn’t make a difference. We were both only in it for the night.” His chest rose as he inhaled a long, uneven breath.
“Can I ask you something that might be uncomfortable?”
A small, strained smile lifted his lips. “More uncomfortable than admitting to you all that I have about this situation? Or more uncomfortable than asking a woman if she dropped off a baby on my doorstep?”
“Both. How do you go from one woman’s bed to the next like that? Doesn’t it feel weird not having a stronger connection? How can you even . . . You know?”
His jaw tightened and he turned away, staring out the window.
“I’m not just being nosy,” she said. “I really want to know.”
“You’ve had one-night stands. You know what it’s like. For a brief period of time you’re not thinking about what you don’t have. You’re just thinking about not thinking for a little while. Disappearing into something that feels good so you don’t have to feel bad.”
The idea of Ben feeling bad tweaked her heart unexpectedly, especially given the circumstances, when jealousy should be her overriding emotion. “You have everything, Ben. An amazing family who loves you, friends, a career that most people only dream of, a house, a truck that cost more than the bookstore I just bought. What could you possibly feel bad about?”
He turned slowly toward her with a tense expression, as if it was all he could do to hold his emotions in check. “That I was filling a void where you should have been, and I knew it, but I never stopped to fix it.” His eyes went glassy, and he said, “And now there’s a little baby whose entire life will most likely be overshadowed by that weakness.”
Tears burned in her eyes, not just because of what he’d said about her but because of how deeply he’d thought about B and the impact his actions might have on her life.
“I take full responsibility, Rels. But if you want to know what each of those times was about, I’ll tell you. Those were the nights you had dates with other guys, and I’d have done anything to escape the gnawing in my gut caused by the thought of you being touched by someone else.”
“Ben . . .” Her throat thickened, making it hard to speak.
“I’m sorry. As I said, this is all on me. I was an ass, always waiting for the right time. And in the end I chose the worst time of all.”