Page 35 of Every Broken Thing

“Well, I knocked but you, uh, didn’t hear me. Obviously.” I gestured to the door as I shifted my weight before stuffing my hands into my pockets. “Aunt June told me to come down.”

“Oh.”

His face was drawn, and as his hands landed on his hips, my gaze lowered unbidden to his waistband. Oh hell, he wasn’t wearing boxers underneath his sweatpants. Low-slung and barely hanging on, his pants offered the slightest peek at the darker hairs of his groin. He really was trying to kill me, wasn’t he?

I pinched my leg through my pocket to keep myself from hardening in my jeans as I lifted my eyes from his boxer-less hips. “I, uh, texted you, but you didn’t answer. I thought I’d come and… I mean, I just wanted…” Ben pulled his phone from his pocket as I drifted off, and his brow furrowed when he discovered the unread messages I sent him. “I’ll just head out since you seem busy.”

Mortified, I spun on my heels to follow through with my words, but he stopped me.

“Don’t.” He rubbed the back of his neck and motioned to his laptop. “I need to finish this, but stay.”

“It’s cool—”

“Please?”

After searching his gaze, I nodded, and his serious mask cracked, the ice in his expression melting. He smiled, a sad excuse for his normal, lopsided grin, but I smiled back tentatively.

“Just give me a minute to finish this.” He crawled onto his bed, giving me an incredible view of his ass as he did, and I bit back a groan.

He settled himself against his headboard, and I wandered toward the bed, stopping by the edge of the pool table and leaning my hip against it. I crossed my arms over my chest and made myself comfortable as Ben smirked.

“You can sit if you want,” he offered with a motion to the empty piece of mattress at his side.

My eyebrows shot up. He wanted me to sit on his bed with him on it,shirtless? I deserved a medal for the self-control I was currently exercising.

“Okay,” I croaked as I ambled to the edge of the bed.

I gave him a moment to reconsider his invitation, but he merely cocked his head to the side innocently before pulling out his phone and plugging in his earphones. I sank down on the mattress and mirrored his position with my back against his headboard.

The back of his hand landed on my thigh as he offered his phone to me, and I froze under his touch. “Here. It will be a couple minutes, so you can listen to some music if you want.” I took the phone from his hand, and instead of removing it frommy leg, he flipped it over and squeezed the spot above my knee. “Thanks, by the way.”

The heat of his hand on my leg almost broke my fragile control as I glanced up at his intense expression. “For what?” I whispered, my breath coming out shaky as I tried to quell the fluttering in my stomach.

“For worrying about me.”

His lopsided smirk made me scoff as I shoved his hand away. “I wasn’t worried.”

“Sure,” he said simply as he focused on his laptop once again, and I scowled at the smugness curving over his lips.

“I wasn’t worried,” I repeated, but he didn’t respond, his smile widening.

I squirmed on his bed as I settled his earphones on my head and searched through his music library. His shoulder rested inches from mine, and every time one of us shifted, they made contact. I hoped he didn’t notice the subtle touches or the stray glances. I shouldn’t have been checking him out, but you only live once and all that.

We sat side by side in silence, and I basked in the tranquility of his presence. I listened to a few of Ben’s playlists, but I was focused more on playing Mahjong than actually exploring his tastes. At some point, Ben lifted one side of the earphones off my ear and leaned in to hear what I was listening to. Bear’s Den played as Ben’s cheek hovered a centimeter from my face. My throat clicked. Ben glanced at me from the corner of his eye. I probably looked like a deer caught in headlights. He was so close.

The song ended, and Ben removed the earphones from my head completely. With the added distance, I remembered how to breathe as I handed his phone back to him.

Ben said, “I’m sorry about earlier.”

“It’s cool. Is, uh, everything okay?”

“I think so.” He fiddled with the ties of his sweatpants as he swallowed heavily. “Aunt June got a call from the doctor, and it freaked me out.”

“Why did she get a call from the doctor?”

“She had breast cancer a couple years ago, but she’s in remission now. Has been for about six months. She had some tests done, and the doctor called to have her come back in to redo a few of them, and…” His chin trembled, and he clenched his jaw to stop the emotional display.

He shifted ever so slightly until his shoulder pressed to mine, the heat of his skin burning me through my shirt. I understood his silent request and angled my body to push back into him, providing the comfort he quietly sought. He didn’t always explain things with words, but his silence spoke volumes.

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