We might have fallen asleep side by side, but that wasn't how I woke up. Using his body like my own personal pillow, my head rested on his chest—damn. And my leg hooked over his hips—shit. One of my hands had tangled itself into his hair—wow, it was soft, and just long enough to properly tug.
Lord help me, I was practically groping him in his sleep. What's worse? I'd never ached for someone so hard in my life. Seriously, it felt like my lady parts were on fire. So completely turned on. So wet. So ready. So suddenly desperate for sex, for Ben, that it was overwhelming. Never in my life had I woken up like this—like some kind of horny teenager.
This wasn't the first time I'd wanted to pounce on Ben, either. In the middle of performing last night, I'd felt the same rush of desire. This sudden, uncontrollable need. Prior to this, I'd thought Quinton had completely screwed me up and ruined sex for me, possibly for life. But the way I wanted Ben...it made me feel like maybe sex with him could be okay. More than okay. And normal. And most importantly, safe.
Carefully, I untangled my hand from his hair. Then lifted my leg off his body and rolled away, back over to my side of the bed. It was wrong of me to want him the way I did. He might have made a couple mistakes in his life, but he still had a world of possibilities in front of him.
The other day, Rhett told me a few new things about Ben. He told me that Ben had graduated a whole year early from high school, but had he finished he would have been the valedictorian. Ben was also an incredible quarterback for his school's football team. Everyone expected that he'd play college ball and then possibly continue on into the professionals. That made him smart, talented, and only twenty-one.
His 'fake-death' was only a small blip in the grand scheme of his life. He'd get back on his feet—as he already was doing. And the last thing he really needed was pregnant me slowing him down.
My eyes started to burn. Don't cry, dammit, I scolded myself. There really was nothing to cry over. But still, silent tears slipped out, hitting my pillow, as I stared up at the ceiling.
It was selfish and wrong of me to ask Ben to stay last night. He was too good of a guy, so obviously, he hadn't told me no. But he'd violated his parole because of me, and I never should have asked him to do that.
Getting out of bed, I tiptoed down the hall for the kitchen.
I had a fresh five-hundred dollars now. What if I left Kill Devil Hills? Moved on to some new random town? Started over all over again? I could easily grab all my stuff right this second, pack up, and leave forever.
I sat down on the living room couch, seriously considering it. Except, I made no attempt to gather my stuff. Deep down, I didn't want to leave.
A moment later, I heard Ben's feet padding across the tile flooring. He'd woken up before I had a chance to decide anything.
I froze on the couch as he came into view. Damn, he was cute in the morning. His dark hair stuck up adorably, his blue eyes were lazy with sleep, and he had a ridiculously sexy smile on his face. He looked like he'd gotten lucky last night when he obviously hadn't. He moved toward me, all tired and smiley, and collapsed on the couch beside me. His arms circled my body and he pulled me in against him.
What the…
Had we already crossed some line I wasn’t aware of?
I swallowed hard. It felt so nice in his arms. But it also made my stomach prickle with guilt. “What are you doing?” I whispered. It was only a hug, but I didn’t know what it meant.
This groan, almost like a growl, left his lips. He pulled away, leaving the couch, and me, moving across the living room, putting a fair amount of distance between us. “Sorry,” he muttered. And then he sighed, sitting down in the recliner on the opposite side of the room. He rested his elbows on his knees, running his hands through his hair. Tugging at it only made his hair look more disheveled and sexy. Then he stopped fidgeting and stared across the room at me.
“Actually, I’m not sorry. Not even a little bit.”
Oh, shit.
There was something about the tone of his words, all straightforward and direct, that had my undivided attention. I could tell where this was about to go. And part of me jumped inside; another part grew scared shitless.
“I don’t think it’s smart to blur the edges of our friendship,” I told him, in some half-attempt to stop the inevitable. “Do you?”
He stood. “The edges of our friendship are already blurry as fuck.”
Well, he did have a point.
He moved back across toward me, and I stared up at him with wide eyes, when suddenly he dropped to his knees in front of me.
His face, his lips, his mouth—were all dangerously and deliciously close to my own. And my body started to tremble because of his proximity. “I’m pregnant...with somebody else’s kid,” I said softly, throwing it out there as my only defense, as if he wasn’t already aware.
“It doesn’t matter to me.”
Complete and utter shock vibrated through me. “It doesn’t?”
“It doesn’t change how I feel.”
My heart swelled. “How do you feel?”
Instead of answering my question, he kissed me. It happened suddenly. No lingering. No hesitation. No time for my body to properly prepare itself. Just Ben's swift movement—his hands gripping the sides of my face and his lips crashing into my own.
Oh, sweet mother of all things holy.
I sat back on the couch and let him kiss me. Not only did he catch me off guard with his kiss, but the kiss itself was surprising. It lacked control, when, in general, Ben was a very controlled person. There was desperation, almost as if he’d been holding back doing this for quite some time now.
His tongue parted my lips and he deepened the kiss. All my insecurities, mostly about not being good enough for him, faded into the background. The only thing I focused on was the sweet tingles happening all over my body.
Once, when I was a little girl, my mom took me to an aquarium. There was this one room—a room pitch black and filled with bioluminescent jellyfish. All my life I had always remembered that room, and the magical feeling I felt watching the jellyfish pulse and strobe with rainbows of iridescent colors, as if they were putting on an electric light show just for me.
That was what kissing Ben felt like. Magic. Amazement. Wonder. A pulsing rainbow of electricity jolting through me.
All too soon, the moment ended and he pulled back, his eyes on my eyes. My lips felt swollen, already missing his lips. And my body ached for much more than just kissing. “That should have happened last night,” he told me. “And the night before. And maybe even the first time I met you.”
“Agreed,” I uttered, my voice all hoarse and shaky.
Sighing, he added, “I have to work today.”
“No,” I practically groaned. “Don’t go. You can’t kiss me like that and then go.”
He chuckled, pressing a small, teasing second kiss to my lips. “I have to. I’m taking the realtor exam today.”
“You’re going to be a realtor?” I wasn’t sure why that surprised me. His parents were realtors, I knew that much. I just didn’t expect that for him.
“Yeah. It’s whatever.” He moved to sit on the couch beside me. “Until I figure out what the hell I actually want to do with my life, I figure that’s good enough for now. It’ll be much better money than what I’m doing currently.”
“Well, good luck with your exam,” I told him, meaning it. Although, since he was almost the valedictorian of his graduating class, I had a feeling he didn’t need any luck.
“Thanks. I’ll come back here afterwards. We could go somewhere for a late lunch. Or we could work on blurring the edges of our friendship a little bit more.”
Damn. That felt like a threat and a promise.
I liked it.
I liked where this was heading already.
CHAPTER 11:
BEN
The realtor exam wasn’t nearly as hard as my mom had lead me to believe. It wasn’t hard because I was prepared. I’d been studying
for it for the last few weeks now, I’d completed all the hours of my pre-license course, and, in general, I was good at standardized testing. I was sure I’d pass before I even walked in the door.
I didn’t, however, expect the damn thing to take over three hours to complete.
By the time I finished, it was well past lunch time. Lilly didn’t have a cell phone, so I had no way of contacting her to let her know I was running late. Plus, Mom had asked me to stop back at the office so we could ‘chat’ after my exam. ‘Chat’ probably meant she was going to chew my ass out about spending the night next door last night.
Since I'd seen Jack at the bar last night, I wasn't expected to call him when I got home. But that didn't mean Mom would let one night slide.
I parked the Jeep in front of the Sandy Shores Realty Company and jogged inside. The faster I got this over with, the sooner I could hurry back to Lilly. I desperately wanted to pick up where we'd left off this morning.
The office was quiet. Only a few people.
“Um, Brianna,” I said to one of the office secretaries, “where's my mom?”
Brianna, a middle-aged woman with a bad perm and too much hairspray, stared up at me. “Oh good. You're here. We can eat your cake now.”
“Cake?”
“Yeah. Your mom got it for you—to celebrate you passing your realtor exam and all.”
“How did she know I passed?” I asked, confused. And where was my mom?
“I think she assumed. You did pass, right?” Brianna said, her voice dry and flat. I think the whole nepotism in the workplace thing bugged her. She'd never been my biggest fan.
“I passed.” And the cake was super thoughtful of my mom. I guess I shouldn't have assumed the worst when she said ‘chat.’
“Oh, and there's a woman waiting for you over there.” Brianna pointed, then looked back at her computer as if she was done with me.
What woman? I glanced up.
“There he is,” the woman on the opposite side of the office shouted. She had a plate with a slice of cake on it, my cake.
What. The. Hell.
I knew this person.
My heart plummeted to the floor.
“You ghost-crab catching, speedo-wearing, son-of-a-bitch!” she shouted. “You get over here, Ben Turner! Come give me a hug!”
It was Lilly fucking Davenport. Not my Lilly Davenport, the Lilly Davenport I'd been falling for over the last few weeks, but the real Lilly Davenport. I recognized her instantly. She was the adult version of the girl I'd known as a child—burly, large, tall, red-headed, and loud. She set her cake down, rushed across the room like a linebacker, and squeezed me around the middle.
My feet left the ground. This girl was that strong. And my back cracked under the pressure of her enormous hug. “Hi, Lilly,” I choked out.
On the outside I remained calm. On the inside, I screamed at myself.
How could I have been so fucking stupid?
Real Lilly continued to shake me. I let her because I was too stunned to think properly. The other Lilly Davenport had played me, she'd been lying to me this whole time. The realization of it felt like a punch to the gut.
On the night we meet, I'd seen her red hair and just blindly assumed she was my former friend. I mean, I found her inside the Davenport house, so what else was I supposed to think? But she wasn't Lilly. Because this beast of a woman squeezing the crap out of me was clearly the real Lilly.
So who the hell did that make the woman I'd been kissing this morning?
“Speedo-wearing?” Brianna asked, snickering.
Real Lilly set me down, all smiles, so happy to see me. “This kid right here,” she told Brianna, “was obsessed with Michael Phelps. That last summer we vacationed in Kill Devil Hills, he wore that same speedo daily. You should have seen him swim, though. Like a fish.”
“I was ten,” I clarified. “And I was all-state in the 200-meter freestyle my junior year, five seconds off from Phelps' world record. And it was my mini obsession with Michael Phelps that saved my life when I fell overboard.”
“Oh, yeah. I heard about that.” A serious look crossed Real Lilly's face. It only lasted a split second. “And your ‘fake death.’ Damn, that's crazy. So—” She changed the subject. “I’m here because I need to clean out the personal closet at the house.”
Lots of beach rental properties had ‘personal closets’ because most owners would come and stay a few weeks out of the year. And many owners preferred to leave a locked closet with some of their stuff stashed away.
“So, let’s do that,” Real Lilly said, slapping her hands together. “Will you come with? Show me around the house. I haven’t been there in years. It would be way too freaky to go there by myself. I mean, there’s probably only old beach chairs in the closet. But the fam-bam can’t very well sell it without going through that old junk. You know?”
My frame of mind shifted.
My Lilly was at the house, living in the house, occupying the house. I was pretty sure in most states that was called breaking and entering. Which was illegal. And possibly a felony.
What would happen if she got caught?
What kind of jail time would that lead to?
Instead of feeling hurt that I’d been lied to all this time, I switched over to protective mode. “I need to make a phone call before we go,” I told Real Lilly. “Give me a minute.”
I rushed through the open office for my mom’s cubicle. My hands shook as I picked up the phone. My heart raced. My mind spun. I started to dial the only number I had memorized.
My Lilly didn’t have a cell phone, so I obviously couldn’t call and warn her. Thank God my family still had a landline. I dialed the number.
It rang, and rang, and rang.
Pick up. Pick up. Pick up, dammit!
Of course, no one would answer. No one ever answered the landline.
Then, at the last second, someone answered. Thank the fucking Lord!
“Hello,” said a male voice. It was Noah’s voice.
Of all people to answer, it just had to be Noah.
“Shit,” I said as my greeting. “Is Georgina there? Or Ellie?”
“Nah, they both went to the store like an hour ago. Who is this? Ben?”
“Yes, it’s me.” My hand was gripping the phone so tightly my fingers were starting to cramp. “I need a favor. You can’t ask questions, you’ve just got to do it for me.”
“Fine,” he said, surprising the crap out me by agreeing so easily. “What is it?”
“The real Lilly is here in the office. She wants to see her house. Like, now.”
“Who does that make the woman next door?”
“Exactly,” I muttered. “I want you to go next door, warn her, and get her the hell out of there. And you’ve got to straighten up the place so it doesn’t look like anyone has been living there. Can you do that for me? Without freaking her out?”
“I’m on it,” he said. And the connection went dead.
I stood there for a second with the phone beeping in my hand, staring into space. Well, that was surprisingly easy. I guess now I just needed to stall Real Lilly.
Still...I couldn’t believe my Lilly had betrayed me. She'd assumed a whole different persona...and for what? A free place to live? I didn’t even know this girl's actual name. Or anything about her. Or how much of what she'd shared with me had been truth and how much had been complete bullshit.
All I really knew was that she could have, at any point in time, told me the truth.
Last night, when she asked me stay, I'd stayed. It had meant everything to me. There was no question about it, I was falling for her. I'd let myself foolishly start to picture a future with her, a future that included more than just the two of us. It included her child, too. And me staying in this town. All for her.
What a fool I was.
“Let's go,” I called out to Real Lilly. “Let's go see your house.”
To hell with it. If other Lilly wasn't out of there in time, it would
be her own damn fault.
CHAPTER 12:
JUNIPER
Knock. Knock.
A sudden, sharp rap on the front door startled me. I'd been reading one of the random books from the bookshelf in the living room. My book had just started to get good, when another—
Knock. Knock.
“I'm coming,” I called out, assuming it was Ben.
I set my book aside and hurried downstairs to let him in. Pulling open the door, I found...not Ben. Instead of Ben at the door, it was Ben's sister Georgina's boyfriend. I knew who he was because he'd been with her at the bar last night. He had long blond hair, pulled back in a ponytail, and super serious dark eyes.
I realized I didn't know his name.
“Hey, I'm Noah,” he said, as if he'd read my mind. “I don't think we've officially met.”
“I'm Lilly,” I started to say, when he shook his head ‘no,’ cutting me off.
“You aren't Lilly,” he said, firmly.
I'm not? Shit.
He handed me a trash bag, and brushed passed me, rushing into the house. He held a second trash bag in his own hand.
“Um?” I turned and hurried after him. He headed for the kitchen. “I'm...” I didn't even know what to say. If he knew I wasn't Lilly, then did that mean Ben knew too? Heat burned my cheeks. Pressure squeezed my chest. Anxiety rushed through my body.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
“We are cleaning. And fast,” he told me. He swung open the fridge and started tossing stuff into his trash bag. I stood there, stunned, watching him dispose of all my food.
After a moment, he paused and turned around. “Get moving because Ben is on his way over here with the real fucking Lilly Davenport.”
A mini-scream left my lips. So Ben knew. “He knows?” I asked stupidly.
I swallowed hard, barely able to breathe.
“He knows.”
Oh, God. I left Noah and rushed for my room. I grabbed everything I could find that was my own and dumped it into my trash bag. Then I made the bed at record speed. I did the same in the bathroom. Then I rushed for the room I'd slept in last night with Ben. I made that bed too. When I finished, I hurried back in the kitchen.
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