Page 59 of Fighter
He'd moved closer, just enough that I could smell him again. Memories of his sheets, the scent of his pillow, washed over me like a warm wind. I swallowed, my eyes darting to his lips and then back. My stomach tightened with warmth and it took all I had not to utterly throw myself into his arms again.
“Yes?”
“Can I kiss you now?”
His lips moved into a smile. His hand slipped to my neck, where the tip of his thumb ran along my lower jaw. The touch of his palm felt hot against the back of my neck.
“I thought you'd never ask.”
Like magnets, our lips found each other again. Tonight, though, the frantic buzz of energy had faded. Some sort of hunger always burned hot in Benjamin, but tonight it had been tamed. Whether it was his jog home, a long day at the gym, or distance from the experience with his Mom, I didn't know. But it translated to a calm touch for such a strong fighter of a man. His lips were so warm. His touch was so gentle. My heart flopped in my chest like a dying thing. And even though we hardly touched at all, my entire body felt like it was on fire.
When he pulled away, he didn't go far. His eyelashes batted open and gazed so deep into my soul I thought he knew everything. The intensity of our stare caught me up in it, and I couldn't have looked away if I wanted to.
“It was a rough day at work,” he said. “Frustrating. Just . . . normal stuff, but still frustrating. Knowing that, at the end of it, I’d come home and you'd be here gave me such relief. I was worried that you would be distant or upset or frustrated. So I'm even more relieved to see none of that's true.”
My fingers found a lock of his hair on his forehead and pushed the tumbling tendril away. I smiled softly.
“I'm here,” I murmured. “Always for you.”
Ben leaned back, grabbed a pillow, put it on his lap, and pulled me onto it. I lay across him and closed my eyes. He played with some of my curls with gentle fingers, the tips of his finger scraping my scalp in a soft way. His head was tipped back, his entire body relaxed. I wasn't sure whether playing with my hair was for his benefit, or mine.
“How was your day?” he asked with a wry smile and one hand on my hip. “Give it to me.”
And so I did.
When I unloaded the day without the context of my spiraling thoughts, I realized that it really had been a good day. Easygoing, the way I liked it. At the end of my retelling, his fingers stopped. He stiffened suddenly.
“We didn't talk about how things went with Ava while I was gone. Wasn't there something you wanted to tell me about Sadie?”
Ah, tension. How quickly such a fickle mistress returned. Just Sadie's name garnered the same reaction in him. I sat up, shoving the hair out of my face. Wariness had replaced the hints of passion in his gaze.
“Right,” I murmured. “I'd forgotten in all that mess last night. Ava talked about her mother and it . . . wasn't what I expected.”
His throat bobbed as he swallowed. He looked ready to take a sucker punch. From what I knew of Sadie, I wasn't surprised. A lift of his eyebrows was my only encouragement to continue.
“It was at the store.” I tugged on my own hair now, suddenly nervous. Would he be mad? What if I hadn't handled it the way he would have wished? Perhaps I should have said something different. I wasn't truly ready for this level of parenting. “She was weird about buying new clothes.”
He frowned, as if he agreed, but said nothing, so I laid it out from start to finish. His expression didn't waver, except to go farther into his frown. I leaned against the back of the couch with one shoulder and stared at him in the shadows. His heavy brow fell on top of a stare that glowered at the coffee table.
“Sadie told her she'd never be happy here?” he asked quietly.
“Among other things. That's what Ava said, anyway. Sounded like Sadie just didn't want her to go to you. Maybe she knew that Ava would be happier with you, or something. She is happier here, with you. She told me that herself.”
His nostrils flared as he shook his head, but he didn't seem to hear that most important part. For several moments more, he seemed to process what I'd told him, then stood up. When he paced, he looked like a caged panther again. Regret that I hadn't thought to tell him this last night, when he had something appropriate to punch, washed through me. This wasn't the sort of news that any father would be glad to hear, but Benjamin was already so insecure about his parenting.
“That's Sadie.” He laughed, but it was mirthless and bitter. “If she wasn't with me, she didn't want me to win. She was competitive to the point of brutality. Even with her daughter.”
I curled one leg into my chest and the other one underneath me while I attempted to put my thoughts together in a way that didn't make me sound like a shrew. “I'm sorry about Sadie. I . . . I'm sad that Ava had to lose her in such a permanent way, but I'm grateful she's with a more stable parent now.”
He snorted and ran a hand through his hair. “Hardly stable.”
“Ben, you're doing great.”
“Sadie was . . . she took over everything. Sucked up all my energy. She took, and took, and took. Never gave back.”
He finished his bold statement quietly, and something cold grew in me. Hadn't Ben expressed a similar sort of insecurity before?
You do way too much for us already,he'd said when I brought the pot roast.
