Page 110 of Daring You

“Ben?”

I peer closer at him, horrified at the red-rimmed eyes, the sallow cheeks, the colorless palette his features have to deal with.

“What are you doing here?” Ben rasps. His lips barely form the words.

Asking him if he’s okay seems dumb. Putting my hand on him is a lethal mistake. His eyes sober and clear the longer he keeps his attention on me.

“I can fix this,” I blurt. “I can help.”

His chin jerks back, the rest of him barely following suit. I’m afraid he’ll fall off the stool. “What the hell are you hoping to fix? Soon, the world’s gonna know who I am. The mafia is gonna come and shoot me. Right here.” He pats his chest for emphasis. “If they don’t dismember me first.”

I rub my lips together, wishing I hadn’t kicked the habit of chewing them off in law school. “Maybe…”

No. This can’t be done another time. There is no more time. Even if Ben’s drunk.

“The firm isn’t going to leak any information,” I say instead. “At least with Yang, your identity’s safe. He’s not going to tell the defendants…or their families…either.”

“Oh, the firm, you say? Not your firm?” He leans forward, and his elbow nearly falls off the bar. “Did you lose your pretty pink job up there in your dark, evil tower?”

Ben’s slurring, he’s going through some deep shit, and he’s possibly seeing two of me.

Fuck him, anyway.

“To the contrary,” I say. “I can save my job if I get you to testify.”

Ben blinks. Then bursts into a high, uncharacteristic guffaw. I watch him, closed-lipped.

He gets enough breath back to say, “Knew there was a reason you’d be here for your own benefit, Astor.”

“I’m here to tell you not to do it.”

He pauses in picking up his half-empty beer. “Come again?”

“You may think you have me all figured out, that I aim high and fight low. I constantly have to prove myself in rooms full of testosterone and boys’ clubs and brotherhoods and I’m proud of every step and move I’ve made. I’ve worked hard to get where I am at such a young age. I’ve sacrificed plenty, though it’s easy to think I bite off children’s heads and feed them to vultures at night as some sort of ritualistic, bitchy sacrifice, because what does a woman like me deserve success for? Right?”

Ben has trouble focusing on the bar. “Jesus, Astor. I didn’t ask for a speech—”

“You didn’t. That’s right. You’re sitting here getting drunk, letting men like Yang railroad you—”

“Hold up just a minute—”

“I’m on your side, Ben!”

I shout it loud enough that heads turn. I’ve certainly gained Ben’s full attention.

“You may have convinced yourself that I work only for me, and when that’s not in my favor, I impress my boss enough that it benefits my career, but you have me so wrong. The minute this firm wanted to hunt down a child’s trauma for the good of known mafia consorts, it went too far. I gathered the information because I was on auto-pilot. I’d become so numb to everything, every emotion, and it didn’t seem to matter, then, if I imploded someone else’s life. But even before knowing it was you, well into tracing the inheritance funds, I knew it was wrong. I felt it. And I didn’t want it anymore.”

Ben asks quietly, “Want what?”

“This life.” My voice cracks. “I love what I do. I’m an excellent lawyer. But I’m terrible at being a human.”

“That’s not true,” Ben says. He looks to his beer, swishing it around in the glass. “In all the craziness of trying to make sense of my situation, the fear, the anger, I’ve related to you most of all.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re the first person I want to come to when my life’s in shambles.” Ben pins me with bleary, pale blue eyes. “The woman I want to confide in. The one whose opinion is most important. I told you who I really was and…and you didn’t see me as Ryan. You still looked at me as Ben. That, more than anything, tells me you’re a person who cares.”

“I care about you,” I say, my throat thick with emotion.

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