Page 17 of Give My Everything
I expect him to smile. He’s won, after all. He’s gotten what he wanted.
But instead, he reaches over and slips his hand into mine.
For just a second, I think I catch something uncertain within his gaze, but it’s gone too quickly for me to know for sure.
Instead, he turns his head and looks toward the entrance to the main hall.
“Ready?” he asks, giving my hand a squeeze.
I let out a long breath, knowing I have no real idea what I’m getting myself into, but also knowing I don’t have any better options.
“Ready,” I reply, squeezing his hand back.
And then the two of us walk into the party together.
We spend the rest of the evening side by side, our hands together.
Ben truly is a great actor. He knows just how to look at me, how to keep me next to him, how to lift my hand and kiss the inside of my wrist in way that makes it seem like he thinks nobody is watching.
But we both know everyone is watching.
A Calloway and a Wallace? Together?
If you ask my mother, a truer match couldn’t be found, not even in the movies.
We both come from new money families, strong backgrounds, good education, and the right upbringing.
To be honest, it hadn’t ever occurred to me before. In all the things Ben talked to me about when trying to convince me this marriage idea of his wasn’t completely insane, never once did he mention the way it would feel for me to stand at his side.
The only person I’ve ever had a true relationship with is Lucas. As amazing as he was, the expectation weighing on his shoulders is a fraction of what rests on mine.
His mother is barely a part of his life and he lives a very free, very independent kind of existence. There isn’t any pressure to conform, to be a family representative, to carry yourself a certain way because you’re in the public eye.
Sure, he has to be careful because he’s a surfer and needs to manage his sponsorships, but that’s his own choice, a life of his own making. At any point, he could shuck all of it off and move away, never having to deal with it again.
The expectations I face are…grand, and often suffocating.
It’s one of the reasons I stayed away for so long, one of the reasons I fled from here as soon as I was able to and tried to create a life for myself somewhere else.
Away from the watchful eyes.
But I always knew I would eventually have to come back to this, would have to come back home to the family that expects me to be a certain way. To say certain things. To follow certain rules.
Feeling completely directionless doesn’t fit into that.
A pregnancydefinitelydoesn’t fit into that.
Standing at Ben’s side, though? Hearing him talk business and socialize while I smile and laugh beside him?
I’m almost shocked at how easily it fits.
When Ben proposed marriage to me, I assumed it would feel like shoving a square peg into a round hole.
I never expected for it to immediately feel like slipping into a shoe tailor made for me.
I let out a small huff of laughter through my nose at my own reference. Leave it to me to assume my role in life is to be the wicked stepsister and not the fucking princess.
Ben looks at me, a question in his eyes.
