The Trouble With Love: New York Times Bestselling Author

by Contreras, Claire

  I shrug. “I don’t care. I’m not going to let her rain on my parade and I’m definitely not going to let her dictate our relationship. Fuck her.”

  He grins. “Do these new responsibilities come with the opportunity to work remotely?”

  “Remote . . . oh, you want to take me home before lunch?” I raise an eyebrow.

  “I sure do.” He leans in and kisses my forehead, my cheek, the side of my mouth. By the time he reaches my neck I feel a little breathless. “You think your boss will mind?”

  “I don’t know. Why don’t you ask?” I whisper.

  “He’s your boss, not mine.”

  “He’s your dad, not mine.”

  “Hm.” He nips my earlobe. “Maybe he won’t notice.”

  I laugh. “I’m not taking my chances. I just got a promotion. I don’t want to risk getting fired over sex with his son.”

  “It’s kind of crazy because technically I’m his boss.”

  “Don’t even joke, Bennett.” I pull back.

  He presses the back of his hand to my forehead. “You feel warm.”

  “Oh, my God.” I lift the flowers and smack his arm. “You’re seriously going to get us both in trouble. Let’s stay till lunch.”

  “That’s like a million hours away,” he groans.

  “Three.” I start walking toward our offices.

  “You should’ve stayed over last night,” he says.

  “I can’t stay over every night.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because that sounds a lot like moving in with you.” I shoot him a pointed look.

  “That doesn’t sound like a terrible concept.”

  I shake my head, smiling, as we walk through the doors. This time, nobody stops me and everyone is working. I brace myself for them to notice me and give me strange looks, but if anything, the few people who look up from their desks and spot me only smile at me and get back to it. I let out a deep breath.

  “I’m going to find somewhere to put these,” I say, walking toward the break room. “You get to work. I’ll see you at twelve.”

  “Eleven fifty-five.”

  “Twelve, Bennett.”

  “Fine.” He leans in but thinks better of it and just walks away with a wink.

  I, on the other hand, cannot stop smiling. Wesley is in the break room with Ashley from accounting. I recognize her only because he’s shown me, like, thirty-five pictures of her. They met on the app and apparently really hit it off. I smile at them.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “I’ll catch you later,” she says to him, smiling and waving as she walks by me.

  “She’s really pretty,” I say once she’s out of the room.

  “She is.” His smile drops after a moment. “I don’t know what you heard—”

  “Bennett told me his ex came by. What did she say?”

  “Nothing much. She knew your full name though. She said you’re dating Bennett and that if any of us are friends with you we should warn you that he’s bad news and a cheater.”

  “Wow. She called him a cheater?” I blink, shaking my head. “She really is crazy.”

  “Absolutely. She had this look in her eyes that I’ve only seen on really crazy people,” Wesley says.

  “So that was it?”

  “Well, she started kicking at everything when security tried to escort her out.”

  “Paola did?” My eyes widen. “I can’t picture her doing that.”

  “You’ve met her?”

  “Yeah, and I didn’t know she was crazy. I just thought she was a royal bitch.” I adjust the plastic cup I put my flowers in to make sure it doesn’t spill over before facing Wesley. “She called me a whore, so I went off on her in front of a group of people she was with.”

  Wesley laughs. “Well, now the outburst makes a little more sense.”

  “She’s a loser.” I shrug. “Anyway, tell me about Ashley.”

  He blushes. “She’s a keeper.”

  “Oh, my God you found love on my app.” I smile. “I feel like a fairy godmother.”

  “Or Cupid.”

  “Stop.” I groan. He laughs. We walk out of the break room. Just as we reach my office, I turn to him again. “I’m selling the workplace app to SEVEN.”

  His mouth falls open. “That’s amazing.”

  “I know.”

  “Are you taking your money and quitting?”

  “Not unless I want to live out of my car in a few years,” I say. “It’s good money, but not enough to survive on in this city.”

  “You can always get a couple of roommates.”

  “No, thank you. I’d rather stay here and continue learning.”

  “I’ll give you private lessons, for a fee.”

  I laugh. “Now it sounds like you’re offering me other kinds of services.”

  “I can offer those too,” he says, then frowns. “Actually, no way in hell am I offering those. Bennett has been looking for a reason to kill me.”

  I laugh. “And you have Ashley.”

  “And I have Ashley.” He nods. “Lunch today?”

  “I’ll have to take a rain check.”

  “Got it.” Wesley looks around for a beat before meeting my gaze again. “Has Charlie mentioned anything about maybe working with us on a couple of things?”

  “He just did actually. I’m going to be out for the next two weeks taking some classes on gaming.”

  He smiles. “You’re doing it.”

  “I am.” I smile back. “Thanks for mentioning my name.”

  “Are you kidding? We make a good team.” He taps the glass outside of my door. “’Kay. I’ll let you get to it. Let me know if you need help. Your job is a lot more interesting than mine as of late.”

  With that, he walks away and I walk into my office.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  I decide that because it’s only Tuesday and I won’t start the game development class until next week, I need to take advantage of being in the office today. Bennett is out all day with meetings, so he dropped me off this morning with the promise that I’d meet him back at his place tonight. He keeps bringing up the “moving in together” thing and I’m seriously torn. On one hand, I would love to do it, but I also fear it may be too soon. Jamie moved in with Travis a month after she met him and look where that led them—destruction and dysfunction. I can’t say the thought doesn’t excite me though. And he’s right, we really have been spending every waking moment together. With Devon’s team not making the playoffs, I imagine he’ll want to come back here and stay in the apartment, which was fine last year when I wasn’t living there, but that could get awkward fast now. If it happens, I can get my own place . . . or I can take Bennett up on his offer and move in with him. I’m still mulling this over as I walk out of the building, taking out my phone to text him and let him know that I’m going home to get clothes before heading to his place, when I run into someone.

  “Sorry,” I say absentmindedly. I run into people every day walking in and out of this building, and I’ve stopped looking up when I do so.

  “Not as sorry as you’re going to be.”

  I snap my attention in the direction of the voice because I know it’s Paola. I’d know her voice anywhere after all of the phone calls and running into her that one time.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “A little birdy told me things are getting serious between you and my husband.”

  “Ex-husband.” I raise an eyebrow. “Don’t be petty.”

  “Ex-husband,” she says, shrugging. “I told you I’d be watching you.”

  “You already wreaked havoc in there last week. I’m pretty sure you made your point.” I take a step back because I truly don’t know what this woman is capable of, though she doesn’t seem like the type to get physical. My eyes drop to her hands, but she only seems to be holding papers, or pictures, something glossy.

  “And what point would that be?” She raises an eyebrow.

  “I don’t know. You
tell me. You’re the one who’s clearly disturbed by the idea of Bennett being happy.”

  “I’m disturbed by the idea of him being happy with you,” she shouts. “You, who waltzed into our lives and destroyed it in a single night, after we’d been married for nearly four years.”

  I blink. “You’re delusional. You cheated on him. You got pregnant with another man’s baby, for God’s sake!”

  “He cheated on me with you,” she shouts, tossing the contents in her hands at me. On instinct, I press a hand to my chest, securing the pictures. “I made mistakes, yes, but the baby was his. We were working on our marriage until you came along.”

  Her words make me freeze. The baby was his? Is she lying? Is he lying? I groan. I shouldn’t even be giving her the time of day. “Get out of my face.”

  “Not until you see the photos,” she says. “I had him followed, you know. We were working out our differences, but I knew if things went south I needed proof of his deception. I knew you looked familiar when I saw you at that restaurant, but it didn’t hit me until I saw your photo in the paper together.”

  Bringing one of the pictures up slowly, I look at it, trying to keep my expression neutral as my hands start to shake. It’s a picture of Bennett and me the first night we met, at the bar, on my birthday nearly two years ago. I shake my head and glare at Paola.

  “You’re full of shit.”

  “Am I?” She raises an eyebrow. “Is that not you? Look at the date. My PI had it dated.”

  “I know the fucking date.”

  “We were still married. We were going to see a therapist the following day and then he decided to give up on me, on us, on our baby.” Her voice breaks, her brown eyes filling with tears. “I lost my baby because of you, because I couldn’t handle the betrayal,” she wails. “I couldn’t handle it and I lost everything. My husband, my pregnancy, everything.”

  “You’re lying,” I whisper, shaking my head. “You’re a liar. You were cheating on him.”

  “And so was he,” she yells, “with you.”

  “I . . .”

  “Nothing more to say,” she says, wiping her face. “What’s done is done. Have a nice life, but remember, if he cheated with you, he’ll cheat on you.”

  She walks away, leaving me standing in the middle of the sidewalk just outside of my workplace, with a dozen photos at my feet. They keep picking up wind and flying off, but I can’t seem to lift my feet to chase them. I fold the one in my hand and try to pick up as many as I can, shoving them in my purse, before finally walking away.

  If he cheated with you, he’ll cheat on you.

  How many times have I said that? How many times have I thought it? Too many, and if what she’s saying is true . . . no, what she’s saying is definitely true. The proof is in everything she’s just given me. I continue to scan the rest of the pictures. She’s documented everything, from the alleged affair Bennett had with me to her positive pregnancy test, ultrasound, and miscarriage date. I think back on everything he’s said. Even as Owl he’d confessed cheating on his wife. I just hadn’t realized it was with me. Bile rises in my throat as I take the stairs down to the train. I broke up a marriage. Even if the marriage was on the rocks when I met him, I still contributed. I’m the exact person I’ve always hated. I’ve turned into my mother.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Growing up in a conflicted household has taught me to shy away from arguments, but my anger propels me forward and drives me to Bennett’s place. I stand on the stoop and pound on the door. He gave me a key but I can’t bring myself to use it, not when my reason for being here is to confront him and get to the bottom of this. His dimpled smile is wide as he opens the door, but it loses its luster as he scans my face. The entire ride here I felt ready for this, but now that I’m standing before him, the task seems impossible. Calling him out for being a liar, a cheat, a no-good asshole, when he’s looking at me with such affection.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You lied to me.”

  “What?” He frowns. “When? What are you talking about?”

  “When we spoke on the workplace app, you said you cheated on your wife.” I swallow, hoping the knot in my throat dissipates. “At the time, I wrote you off. We decided to be friends, just friends, but that was before.” I pause again, taking a shaky breath. God, why does it feel like my chest is being ripped open? “You . . . did you cheat on her with me?”

  He blinks, staring at me for one beat, then two. He licks his lips before speaking. “Why don’t you come inside?”

  “Answer the question, Bennett.”

  He rips his gaze from mine and looks around, probably not wanting me to cause a scene in front of his stupid, rich neighbors. Fuck him. Fuck them all. I grip the photos in my hand and throw them at his face with all my might, which is enough for some of them to hit him. He steps back.

  “What the hell, Morgan?”

  “What the hell you,” I shout. “You know how I feel about cheating. You know it’s a deal breaker for me. You know this, yet you lied to me. You used me!”

  “I didn’t know you back then,” he shouts back.

  “So you admit it.” I reach out to hold the handrail beside me.

  “We weren’t supposed to see each other again,” he says. “It was a one-night stand. It wasn’t supposed to . . . you weren’t supposed to walk into my father’s office. You weren’t supposed to turn out to be my best friend’s little sister. You weren’t—” He stops talking suddenly, as if catching himself, but I already know where he’s going with this.

  “Supposed to find out?” I cross my arms. “I wasn’t supposed to find out and call you out on your shit? I wasn’t supposed to discover just what a liar and an asshole and a cheater you truly are?” I uncross my arms and turn around to walk away. “You disgust me.”

  “It was over,” he says to my back. “It was over between me and Paola when we hooked up.”

  I stop at the bottom of the steps and face him. He’s barefoot and it’s freezing out here, the forecast set to snow, but he’s on the second step now looking like he may just chase me down the block. Let him try and lose all his toes for all I care.

  “Were you married?”

  “Yes, but it was—”

  “Was she trying to work things out? Salvage your marriage?”

  His frown deepens. “Yeah, but—”

  “Was she pregnant?”

  “With another man’s—”

  “Do you know for certain it was another man’s baby or did you just assume?”

  “She told me it was.” He throws his arms up. “What the hell, Morgan? What happened to not paying attention to crazy people?”

  “I’m beginning to think I was listening to a crazy person when I agreed to that.” I turn again and start walking away from his house. He follows.

  “God damn it, please come inside. Let me explain. Let’s talk about this.” He grabs my arm.

  “You go inside. There’s nothing to talk about. This is over.” I jerk away. “Go inside before you blame me for the hypothermia you’re about to catch.”

  He doesn’t continue following me.

  Somehow, I manage to keep my head held high and my expression neutral until I reach the subway, the adrenaline pumping in my veins holding me together as a million things run through my mind. Paola’s words come back to haunt me and keep me hostage as I walk to my apartment. I can’t seem to shake them off. I can’t seem to forget the way Bennett looked when I confronted him, as if he’d been attacked. I guess that’s what a liar looks like when he’s slapped with the truth. Walking into my apartment, I feel like a zombie. Thankfully, I don’t have to go into work at all next week, since I have the game development classes to attend. Instead of calling my friends, or worrying about dinner, I head to the shower, strip myself of this day’s clothing, and go to bed early.

  It’s midnight when I wake up, and after my initial cloudy state, I remember what happened today and start to cry, really cry, even though I’m
still in disbelief. I can’t believe he lied to me, after everything we shared. I can rationalize the one-night stand for what it was, but why didn’t he tell me up front? Why keep it from me? The only explanation I can come up with is that he knew I’d leave him. He knew I’d call this entire thing off, even if it meant breaking my own heart, because I cannot stand the thought of being with a cheater, and a liar. I just hate that he turned out to be both. I hate that I fell as hard as I did for him. I hate that I’m obviously in love with him and didn’t fully admit it to myself until this moment, during the worst imaginable time. The worst part is I don’t feel like I hate him. I’m not sure I can. I hate what he did, and when I think about him I want to claw his eyes out, but I don’t hate him. I will myself back to sleep, but it’s no use. I glance at my phone and switch it back on. I’d put it on airplane mode when I left his place because I didn’t want to deal with his calls or texts. As suspected, it vibrates uncontrollably the second it finds service. His name floods my phone screen. I clear it and ignore it. I may be confused and not know what’ll happen next, but I know I never want to feel like this again.

  Chapter Forty

  Bennett

  I brought flowers. I didn’t really stop to think that maybe these tropical-looking flowers aren’t the right kind for this occasion, but what type of flowers say I’m sorry in a million different ways? I’m not sure. I’m also not sure it even fucking matters. If I’m lucky, she opens the door, but she may take them and stomp on them, for all I know. When she finally comes to the door, she doesn’t open it fully, just enough to let me see a part of her. That alone rips me apart a little bit. I put the flowers a bit higher, so she can see them better. She stares at them, stares at me, and sighs.