are cut off when Ben stops, pulls me close and covers my mouth with his. I wrap my arms around his shoulders and lose myself in the kiss, which isn’t hard. He’s an unbelievable kisser. He uses his tongue with abandon, slides his hands through my hair and gets close enough for me to feel all of him through our clothes. We kiss for minutes. Or maybe it’s hours. Nothing else exists during that kiss except the two of us.
When he finally breaks away he presses his forehead to mine and sighs.
“Do you understand?”
He’s telling me that in order to be in his life I’ll have to accept that there will always be a part of him that he will keep to himself. For a while I’ve thought that Ben Beltran is the keeper of many secrets and now I’m sure of it. And if I want him then I’ll have to surrender the idea of finding out what those secrets are.
I do want him. And so I need to try to trust him enough to do as he asks.
“I understand.”
“And you’ll trust me?”
“Yes.”
Ben walks me right to my front door. I hate the idea of sending him out into the freezing night alone and without a jacket.
“Ben, I’m sure my dad would drive you home. Come inside. I’ll ask him.”
“No, I’ll walk.” He pulls me in and kisses me once more. “Good night. And happy birthday.”
“Good night.” I’m holding onto him. I don’t want to let go. I’m afraid that the fragile magic of this night will be broken if I let go.
“I lied,” I whisper in his ear.
He backs up and looks at me funny.
I take a deep breath. “I lied when I said I don’t know if I like you. I think I might like you too much.”
Ben lets a smile shine through. This boy lights up the night when he smiles. “There’s no such thing as too much.” He drops a kiss on my forehead. “I like you too, Galway. A hell of a lot.”
He doesn’t leave until I’m inside the house with the door locked. I know this because as soon as the door shuts I immediately look through the peephole. Ben sees the shadow and waves. Then he disappears into the darkness.
And I’m left here, leaning against the door with my knees weak and a smile on my face.
Ben
When my parents met my dad was married to someone else and my mother had just dropped out of college. Her parents had drowned in a boating accident a year earlier and she’d learned that the upper class life she’d grown up with was a façade of staggering debt and bad business decisions. Penniless and not used to making her own way, she had no choice but to leave school and get a job. Fate led her to a receptionist position at the Drexler Group, one of the largest property developers in the tri state area.
That’s where she met Harrison Drexler. She was young and naïve; he was rich and worldly but unhappily married. She got pregnant and he gladly arranged for a significant divorce settlement in order to be free and marry her. I was their only child and grew up in a very ritzy beachfront community. The other two homes in our cul de sac were occupied by my father’s older brothers and their families. My cousins were all boys, all far older, and most paid me no attention.
Angus and Grey were the exceptions.
Fraternal twins, they were six years old when I was born and I understood from a young age that they were people to be avoided. Some family tension arose when I was five and came home covered in bruises after an overnight visit to their house. Later I learned of the ugly confrontation between my father and Uncle Gannon. The boys never laid a hand on me again but they knew how to carry out torment in other ways. Especially Angus. In time I figured out how to dodge my deranged cousins and after they graduated from high school they found better targets to zero in on.
I realize now that I was a spoiled kid. I’m sure I never gave a second thought about why I could have anything I wanted. And I might have enjoyed the rest of my childhood in that moneyed world, groomed as the next generation of Drexler leaders that had dominated the local landscape for nearly a century, if not for the Marshlands.
The Drexler Group had