Page 137 of Crimson Promises
Aurora ran towards Connor and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Thank you,” she whispered into his ear. “Ben is lucky to have a friend who cares for him so deeply. You’re right he is rather harsh sometimes. Let’s agree to not let him push us away. Shall we?”
Connor nodded against her hair.
“Consider my thoughts on Riley, fair maiden.”
“Certainly.”
I cleared my throat loudly. While Connor was my whatever-he-was, I didn’t want Aurora to spend time in his arms.
Aurora stepped away from Connor, not before ruffling his hair affectionately.
“We should get out of here.”
“Sure,” Aurora rubbed her belly absently. “Connor, want to come with us?”
Connor looked at me as I mouthed, "No!"
“Nah, you guys head on out. I’ll make sure Sully doesn’t intercept.”
I walked towards him and grasped him in a manly bro hug. “In a weird way, thank you.” I clapped him on the back.
“Anytime, man. The accent may have been a little strong, but trust me, it works with the ladies.”
“I’ll just have to take your word for it.”
Connor kept his distance from Aurora as he waved to her. “Aurora, it was a pleasure. Hopefully, I’ll see you around here more.”
“You can count on it,” she grinned widely.
ChapterFourteen
Aurora
“So, Connor was nice.”
Ben snorted. “Well, that’s one word for him.”
“Come on. He adores you. Who cares if he has his own unique way of showing it? I thought the medieval accent was endearing.”
“Of course, you did.”
“Good friends aren’t something you should take for granted, Ben. They don’t come around that often. When they do, you should cultivate it instead of avoiding it.” I took a big bite of my sushi burrito.
A solid, unyielding friendship, the type that Ben had described he had with Jos, was something I had yearned for my entire life. Lucy was the closest I had to a best friend, but she was like everybody else. There was part of me that couldn’t blame her. No one wants to be the outcast growing up, be picked last for dodgeball, or be the only girl in the class not to receive an invitation for the sleepover. The Queen Bs had labeled me as ‘other,’ and had Lucy continued to hang out with me, she would have suffered the same lonely fate.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Ben said in a small voice. He reached out a hand to squeeze my elbow.
I nodded, still chewing. I was afraid if I opened my mouth to speak, I'd cry instead. I banged my heels against the rocky edges of the cliff. The sharp edges of the rocks were a pleasant distraction from memories of the past. Seeing how effortlessly Connor and Ben had formed a banter was a stark realization that I still hadn’t made any strong friendships at Arch Cape University.
What I needed was to root myself in the present.
The sun, a fiery ball of gold, slowly descended toward the horizon, casting a warm glow over everything in its path. Ben drove us to Hug Point in the Bronco, grumbling that we should be doing this drive on the bike. When I asked what happened to his beloved Ducati, all it did was set off a new round of nonsensical grumblings.
I swear he was taking out his frustration on me. He made me hike the entire length of Hug Point Trail and wouldn’t let me eat my burrito until we arrived at this spot. Ben kept throwing the fact that I wanted to train back in my face.
I had wanted to train, but we did already today. I didn’t plan on learning everything in one go. It should be a crime to deprive a woman of food while she was PMSing.If I embraced my angelic nature, would I still get my period?A girl needed to know these things, and I didn’t exactly want to ask the guy I’d been fucking.
Fucking. Because that’s all we were doing. Engaging in coitus for equal parts pleasure and release. There had been no proclamation of love or promises of forever. Or even dating. Once he fulfilled his obligation, he would be on to the next thing. Ben was an angel. He didn’t want to be tied down to a halfling.
