by Lucy Lennox
Xander and I followed him down to the lake so we’d still be in sight of the camp but out of hearing range. Aiden was fuming, and I didn’t blame him in the least.
“You two need to get the fuck over yourselves now. This shit ends, do you hear me?”
“Aiden—”
“Shut the fuck up, Bennett. I’m talking.” His eyes shifted back and forth between me and Xander. “No one wants you guys to get past whatever this”— he motioned between us with his hand— “is more than I do, but not at the cost of the kids!” He took in a breath as if trying to calm himself.
“I called for you three times when the fight started. The fucking dog heard me and came running,” he snapped as he pointed towards Lucky’s tent. “Now, I don’t need to know what you were doing, because I have a damned good idea. The fact is, this shit between the kids has been brewing for days, but you two have had your heads so far up your own asses, that you either didn’t see it or you didn’t care. And you’re both idiots if you think they haven’t noticed that you two can’t say one single goddamned nice thing to each other.”
Aiden focused his attention on me. “Remember what you told me, B?” he said, his voice softening. “You remember what you wanted this trip to be for them?”
I nodded. “A game changer,” I murmured. When I’d asked Aiden to chaperone the trip with me, I’d told him how I wanted each kid to have that one moment in their life where they realized they weren’t resigned to the shitty hand life had dealt them. None of them came from big money and most had some kind of trauma in their lives, whether it was abuse or a crappy home life or whatever… I’d wanted them to know there was a whole world waiting for them if they just had the guts to reach for it.
“You have a few days left to make that happen. Both of you,” Aiden said as he looked sharply at Xander. “This is your life,” he said as he motioned to the wilderness around us. “But most of those kids will never see this place or anything like it ever again. You really want them to remember it as the Bennett and Xander Ripping Each Other to Shreds show?”
Xander didn’t answer. Neither did I. And Aiden clearly wasn’t expecting one because he quietly said, “Work it the fuck out” before calmly walking away.
Leaving Xander and me to figure out how the hell we were supposed to do just that.
Chapter 15
Xander
I felt like a complete ass. Because of me and my selfish pity party, Bennett and I hadn’t given our full attention to the kids. The trip’s entire focus was supposed to be on those kids, but what had I done instead?
Fucked a man I thought was someone else’s boyfriend— in the woods. Like a damn animal.
I blew out a breath and sat down on one of the logs around the fire ring. “Have a seat,” I said to Bennett. “As much as I hate to admit it— he’s right.”
“Yeah,” he murmured, sitting stiffly next to me.
We faced the fire and I threw a nearby branch into the flames to build it up a bit before speaking.
“I’m sorry,” I began.
Bennett’s head snapped up in surprise. “What for?”
I took a minute to think about what I wanted to say before speaking. I didn’t want to say the wrong thing and accidentally make things weirder between us.
“For giving you so much hell these past few days. For not letting you even talk to me about it.” I rubbed my hands over my face and finally had the guts to look him in the eyes. “But, Bennett… I don’t want to talk about that night, okay? I just… I can’t.”
Bennett studied me for a moment before responding. “Okay. Then we won’t talk about it.”
We sat together in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes while the campfire popped and the sounds of sleeping bags rustling were fewer and farther between.
Suddenly, Bennett blew out a laugh and shook his head.
“What?” I asked. “What’s so funny?”
“This whole thing reminds me of that time your dad was going to take us to a Yankees game, remember?”
He turned to me with a wide grin and twinkling eyes. God, he was so damned cute when he had that look on his face. Like humor and mischief all rolled into one.
“Which one? We went to like a million of them.”
“The one with the fight over the jersey,” Bennett said with a raised eyebrow.
I snorted. “Oh my god, you’re right. Roger Clemens. Jesus, why couldn’t my dad have had two Clemens jerseys?”
“He did. That’s just it, remember? He was wearing one and he said one of us could wear the other.”
“Dude, you totally knew it was my turn with the Clemens one,” I accused. “You could have easily worn the Jeter jersey and been fine.”
“Fuck you. Take it back,” Bennett said, pretending to glare at me until we both burst out laughing.
“What I don’t get is why my dad didn’t just throw up his hands and offer for us each to wear a Clemens one and he could wear the Jeter one himself. It was his, after all. Not like he didn’t support the guy— he loved Jeter.”
Bennett shifted to stretch out his legs. I noticed his grin had turned into a nostalgic smile.
“He was trying to teach us a lesson,” he said. “About compromise.”
I watched the golden glow from the fire dance across his features and felt my stomach flip around. That face I’d seen in the light of a hundred campfires growing up. Eyes I’d looked into more times than I could count. And now lips I’d had the singular pleasure of feeling against my own.
Bennett Crawford was beautiful.
“Well,” I said just as softly. “I guess we never learned the lesson, did we?”
He looked up at me, eyes bright with unshed tears. “You must miss him. I know I do, Xander, so I can’t imagine how—”
“No,” I said swiftly, but firmly. “You agreed. No talking about that night and that includes what happened to my dad.”
Bennett sat up straight again and put his hand on my shoulder. The little hairs on my skin seemed to turn toward his touch like flowers to the sun. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
I pretended like he’d never brought it up. “So instead of just handling the jersey thing like adults, we ended up in a fistfight on the fucking lawn,” I reminded him.
He chuckled. “And didn’t see your dad walk up to intervene until it was too late.”
“You gotta admit— you’re lucky my right hook landed on him instead of you,” I said.
He shoved my shoulder. “Shut up, asshole. I could have taken that punch. You were like twelve years old and scrawny as shit.”
“Wanna prove it?” I teased. “Let’s go right now.”
Bennett laughed and shook his head, but not before eyeballing my body from top to toes. The once-over made my cock fill, and I stifled a groan. No way was I going to consider a repeat of our earlier dalliance.
When he spoke, his voice carried a husky quality. “Maybe tomorrow when we’re fresh, big guy. I had a little too much action already for one night.”
And there were the twinkling eyes again. I felt my face heat up at his reminder of the action we’d shared earlier.
“So you and Aiden…” I began.
“Me and Aiden…” Bennett said with a small smile.
“You, ah, aren’t really together?”
God, why did I sound like such a freak?
“Nope. I told you that. In fact, I’ve tried to tell you several times, but you either wouldn’t listen or you refused to believe me.” Bennett looked over at me and straightened again before continuing. “Why did you think we were together?”
I rolled my eyes at him, forcing a laugh out of him until he held his hands up. “Okay, okay. He made some personal comments. But really, is that the only reason?” Bennett asked.
“He touches you,” I said, feeling my jaw tighten. “I don’t like it.”
The minute the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to take them back, especially when Bennett’s eyes went wide, and he opened
his lips to respond.
“Why the kids?” I quickly said before he could say anything.
“What?”
“What got you into working with these kids?”
I watched as he leaned forward for a bit and studied the ground in front of him. He picked up a small stick and began drawing little patterns in the dirt. It was a typical Bennett move. Whenever the focus was put back on him or he had to talk about himself, he would start playing with whatever inanimate object was around. If he couldn’t find something to self-soothe himself with, he’d play with his fingers in some way, whether it was tapping them together in a kind of pattern or using them to toy with his hair or another part of his body. The habit had never bothered me when we were kids, but I was surprised he still did it as an adult. I figured it was a coping mechanism brought on by stress.
“Not really sure,” Bennett said. “One of my friends in college was part of the Big Brothers Big Sisters program so I got to meet the kid he was mentoring. The kid was real quiet and withdrawn with everyone else, but sometimes I’d see him talking to my roommate while he was helping the kid with his homework or playing video games with him and the kid just… lit up. My friend said the program was always looking for more participants, so I signed up.”
“Where did you end up going to college?” I asked.
“Harvard,” he said quietly, almost like he was reluctant to tell me. Maybe it was a reminder of how very different our stations in life were.
“Did you get one… a little brother, I mean?”
Bennett nodded. He’d started drawing an infinity symbol in the dirt. “His name was Colin. He was twelve. He lived in Boston with his mom; his dad had died a few years earlier in Iraq.” Bennett’s eyes lifted to meet mine. “A soldier.”
I nodded in understanding.
“Colin hadn’t wanted to be in the program— his mom had signed him up when his teachers had commented that his grades had started slipping after his dad died. He’d already been to therapy, but he was still struggling and pulled away from the kids who used to be his friends. He didn’t really have anyone besides his mom, so she thought the program would help.”
“That must have been tough,” I said.
Bennett was quiet for a long time and then his gaze shifted to mine again. “He reminded me of you.”
I stiffened at that.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t say that to upset you, Xander,” Bennett began, but I shook my head to stop him.
“No, it’s okay,” I said. “What happened with Colin?”
“It took me a long time to get through to him, and there were a lot of times where I wanted to give up. But I kept remembering that he’d lost everything… that he was… lost. It was a year before I finally found something that helped us connect.”
“What was it?”
“Legos.”
“What?” I asked in surprise.
Bennett smiled. “Legos. He was obsessed with them. Well, not just Legos, but anything he could use to build things.”
I laughed at that and wondered how the hell Bennett had managed to figure that out. But he continued before I could ask.
“Anyway, once I had that connection with him, he started talking more. He was a really bright kid, but losing his dad… he’d understood that he was gone, but he hadn’t accepted it.”
I ignored the tension that began running through me as Bennett’s story started to hit too close to home. I could tell Bennett knew how his words were affecting me, because he’d stopped playing with the stick and his attention was focused solely on me.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Do you want me to stop?”
I shook my head. “No, tell me what happened to him.”
“I spent years being his big brother, even after he was too old for the program. I was in my final year of graduate school when he graduated from high school. Guess what I gave him for his graduation present.”
Bennett’s smile did crazy things to my insides and my earlier tension drained away. “What?” I asked.
“A trip to Legoland in California.”
I laughed and shook my head. “God, I’ve missed you, Bennett,” I said softly. I realized my mistake when I heard Bennett let out the tiniest of whimpers. I should have said I’d missed his antics, but in truth, that was just a part of it. My brain had clearly decided this was going to be one of those situations where I was going to say exactly what was on my mind… just like my comment about Aiden touching Bennett so damn much and me not liking it.
I cursed myself, but luckily, Bennett stepped in to pull us back from the quagmire of shit I’d just thrust us both into.
“You would have loved Legoland, Xander,” he said with a smile.
“Oh yeah, why?”
“All those tiny cities made out of Legos… you would have felt like Godzilla, short boy.”
I chuckled. Bennett had teased me mercilessly as kids when he’d had a growth spurt when he was twelve and had grown a couple of inches taller than me within a matter of months. I hadn’t caught up to him until we’d turned fourteen.
“What happened to Colin?” I asked, more to get us back on topic because the thought of our height difference now was reminding me how perfectly we’d fit together against that damn tree.
“I still talk to him every week and try to have dinner with him once a month. He’s studying architectural engineering at MIT.”
“Wow, that’s incredible.”
Bennett smiled and began playing with the stick again. “He’s an amazing kid.”
I wanted to tell Bennett he was amazing, but I managed to hold my tongue. “So is that why you’re working with these kids?” I asked, motioning to the tents behind me.
He nodded. “After I got my MBA, I began working for my dad’s company. They had a foundation that worked with certain charities, but I could tell it was originally only created to help the firm’s public image. The foundation basically just threw money at some of the big-name charities and that was it. After I met Lucky, I saw the potential for the foundation to do some real good… for it to help people in an everyday kind of way. Does that make sense?”
“It does,” I said. “You wanted to see the money doing good.”
“Yeah,” he responded. “And not just the money. But people helping other people. Hands-on stuff. Kids like Lucky don’t just need money handed to them… they need this,” he said as he motioned towards the lake with his stick. “Experiences, education— they need to know there’s more out there. That the lives they were born into aren’t the lives they’re stuck in.”
I studied him for a moment and said, “Like you?”
He jerked his head up. “What?”
“You know what I’m talking about, Benny,” I said softly.
He swallowed hard and then looked away. I moved closer to him and used my hand to force his chin around so he was looking at me. “People always thought I was the one trapped by my circumstances. A gardener’s son. The scholarship kid. But none of them really knew, did they, Benny?”
Bennett shook his head. I let my fingers trail along his jaw as I spoke. “You had every toy and gadget a kid could ever dream of having, but all you really wanted was what I had.”
He closed his eyes and carefully withdrew from my touch, but he didn’t move away from me. “I know we aren’t supposed to talk about him, but you weren’t the only one who lost him, Xander.”
I sighed. “I know.”
I saw Bennett wipe at his eyes, but before I could say anything, he bumped my shoulder with his and said, “So tell me more about this not liking Aiden touching me thing.”
I knew it was his attempt to both change the subject and lighten the mood, so I shook my head and laughed. “Pass.”
But Bennett was Bennett, and I knew he wasn’t going to let it go. And for some reason I didn’t want to examine too closely, I was okay with that.
Chapter 16
Bennett
Xander Reed is jealous. Xander Reed is jealous of a
nother man touching me.
It was too good to be true, so I knew it had to be complete bullshit. But I was sure as hell going to tease him for it anyway.
“You like me,” I said in a slow singsong voice.
“Shut up. Never mind,” he muttered, and then took my stick and did what I’d done— started drawing shapes in the dirt with the tip of it and pretended like I’d ceased to exist.
“You really, really like me,” I persisted.
“Goddammit, I take it back. Let the fucker touch you all he wants. I don’t care,” Xander growled, but there was no real anger in his voice.
I couldn’t resist leaning over until my lips were almost against Xander’s ear. “Liar,” I purred. He was sitting close enough that I could feel his shudder. He glanced at me and then his gaze fell to my mouth, and I was instantly transported back to earlier in the night when he’d kissed me.
Right before he’d fucked me up against that tree.
Even the memory of his cock pushing deep inside of me had me growing hard and I had to tear my eyes from his. I searched out another stick and began to roll it back and forth between my fingers.
To say the sex had been incredible was the understatement of the decade. What Xander had done to me didn’t even qualify as sex. I’d been with a decent number of guys after I’d lost my virginity to Aiden at the age of nineteen. But not once had I felt so… needed. Not just wanted… needed. Aiden had been a great lover, but there’d always been this sense that he was holding a part of himself back from me. Even after dating for months, he’d kept a piece of himself separate from me, both in and out of bed. But with Xander, it had just seemed like so much… more. Like nothing else had existed in that moment for him but me. That if he could have chosen anywhere to be in that instant, and anyone to be with, he still would have picked me.
I knew I was reading too much into it. He’d said as much after he’d pulled out of me. I’d known it just from the sad way he’d said my name. So, I’d beaten him to the punch and told him it was a mistake.