Page 31 of The One I Left Behind

“I’m not sure there’s going to be another time. You don’t know if you’re staying, and I’m taking the bar exam soon. If I pass, I’m looking for a new job… outside of Willowbrook.”

He drops my hand. “Oh.”

“We can circle one another for a little bit and be fine. If we were both planning on staying here, I’d say let’s hash it out, but one or both of us are leaving.”

Hurt lines his eyes, and I’m not sure why, since he said himself that he might not be sticking around.

“You went to law school?” he asks.

“No one told you?” Here I thought his family was feeding him information about me over the years.

He shrugs. “All I’ve ever done is stalk your socials, and you’re piss poor at updating them.”

I laugh. “You’re kidding, right? Lottie? Romy? Emmett? No one told you anything?” One time I had no one to call when my car broke down, and Emmett came to my rescue.

“I’m not very receptive when your name comes up. They tried to tell me things at first, but I’d change the subject. It hurt that you were moving on without me.”

“Is that so?” I roll my eyes.

“Just because I was the one who left, doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt. I’d never felt more alone in my life. And it took me a long time to get used to not being in Willowbrook with you and my family and friends.”

I’ve never really thought about his side of things. I assumed Clemson was all fun and games for him. He was off living his dream while my life had stalled.

“So, you got to ignore my life while I had to hear about you all the time, watch you on television, see you in ads in magazines. I’d be going about my life, having a pretty good day, taking Clayton to the doctor, picking up a magazine, and bam, there you were. Don’t get me started on the Google searches I did when you weren’t single.”

He leans against the open truck bed, arms crossed. “You can’t believe all the pictures you see.”

“So you weren’t on dates?”

“Are you suggesting that you haven’t dated the entire time I’ve been gone?” He raises his eyebrows.

“It’s not easy when you’re a single mom. Briar would watch Clayton sometimes, but I never wanted to date. I just wanted adult conversation, and Laurel handled that.”

“So, there’ve been no other guys?” His eyebrows haven’t come down, and I can see he’s not going to let this go.

“Only a few. Not nearly the amount you’ve had, and none of mine were models.”

His hands move to grip the edge of the bed, and his knuckles whiten. After a beat, he circles around and leans over the bed of the truck to grab both of our coffees.

I admire his ass in his worn jeans. Why does he have to be so damn good-looking? Why can’t he have gotten uglier over the years? Maybe have grown moles all over his face? Or his teeth turned yellow from not going to the dentist?

Ben clears his throat, and I look up from his crotch.

“I wasn’t…” I feel my cheeks heat.

A sexy, flirty smirk crosses his face. One I’m sure earned him a lot of attention from the women who wanted to bed a pro player. “It’s okay. I always loved your eyes on me.”

“You need to stop.” I take my coffee from his hands, and our fingers brush. The coffee slips from my grasp, splattering over the gravel ground and on my shoes “Shit.”

Ben laughs, holding his coffee out to me.

I shake my head. “It’s not funny.”

He slowly stops laughing, his face growing more serious. “What? The fact that you still want me as bad as you did when you were a seventeen-year-old?”

I stare blankly at him. “No.”

“It’s okay. I want you as much as a thirteen-year-old boy who just saw his first set of tits.”

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