Five Ways to Fall (Ten Tiny Breaths #4)(12)
Author: K.A. Tucker

Awesome. I’m not at all surprised. Not for one minute did I think I was anything except his night’s target. Puking all over this guy was probably my saving grace. “You must have been awfully tired after that,” I say with mock concern.

He flashes those devil dimples at me. “Two of them were best friends, so . . . I was after that night.”

I struggle to keep my jaw from dropping, because I have a gut feeling that Ben couldn’t be bothered to make things like that up. I may consider myself adventurous—Jared certainly thought so—but I don’t think I’d have the first clue about keeping up with a guy like Ben. He worked in a strip club, after all. “Have you always loved yourself this much?”

“I had an awkward year in ’ninety-nine, but I got over it quick,” he offers with a chuckle, turning his attention back to his computer screen. It’s been hours since we came back from that disastrous run-in with Jared and Caroline, and Ben and I have sat in his office the entire time. I’ve kept myself busy going through the caseload, making notes on next steps and important dates, things I can knock off quickly, paperwork we can hand off to June and the other paralegals that don’t require much thought or interaction to complete. Between that and the light conversation, I’ve managed not to feel too down about Jared after all.

Ben hasn’t cracked a single margarita or crawling joke. He hasn’t mentioned the public fondling he did of me on the street corner—thank God Jack wasn’t looking out his office window at that particular moment.

It’s as if it didn’t even happen.

I study his tanned, handsome face. That chest-constricting smile. After sitting in here with him for this long, as much as I hate to admit it, Ben’s not the bad guy I convinced myself that he’d be. Yes, he’s still cocky, obnoxious, and downright infuriating sometimes, but he works hard, he seems to genuinely respect Jack, and he’s nice to everyone. Even my nerdy stepbrother.

So, maybe Jack forcing us together was a good thing. I have enough to be on edge about, without playing Mission Avoid Ben at Work. And now I won’t have to sit in Nelson’s office, thinking of ways to shank him and get away with it.

“I was right.” I reach over and pick up the picture of a much younger Ben on a field, in his football uniform. A tiny brunette woman—his mother, I presume, though he looks nothing like her—stands beside him, a proud smile on her face. “How old were you here?”

“Fourteen.”

Really? I would have guessed at least sixteen. “You were a big kid.” And gorgeous. Even at that age, I can see that Ben would have had all the little girls batting their lashes. “You said you were injured, right?” I think I remember Ben saying something about that in Cancún. When he nods, I ask, “What made you become a lawyer?”

“Honestly?” He pauses, tapping his pen against the pad. “I was going pro. There was no other way about it. Then some jackass plowed into my knee. Everything about the hit was dirty. The ball was out of my hand a good five seconds before that. The guy wanted me out for good. It wasn’t the first time he had done something like that. He shouldn’t have even been on the field.” He leans back in his chair, and a rare morose expression passes over his face. “The NCAA got involved, suspended the guy for one f**king game. I was pissed, but there wasn’t much I could do. Once the NCAA rules, they won’t change it. Still, I had to try. So I built a case against the guy myself—with specific names and dates and witnesses. His history.” I can see the spark of passion in Ben’s eyes. “I appealed the suspension. It didn’t change anything for me, exactly like I had expected. But when the idiot took another player out the next year, the case I’d built made sure he was out for the year.” Ben shrugs. “I couldn’t play anymore, but I figured sports law was something I might be good at. I know the ins and outs of this profession, beyond just the game—how to spot future talent, all the top schools, standard contract requirements and terms, and all that bureaucratic bullshit. I figured with some luck, I could do well.”

“But Warner doesn’t have a sports law department, Ben,” I say slowly, not wanting to dampen the sudden excitement in his voice with the obvious.

He grins. “I know it doesn’t, Reese. Not yet, anyway. I was actually offered a job at a sports law firm on the West Coast, but I need to stay in Miami because of my mama for now. And, Jack’s willing to let me try to build one here, after I’ve put my dues in.”

Ben turns his attention once again to his work as I feel the small smile curl over my lips. Jack is always looking for ways to help people out. I wonder if he’s taking a chance on Ben because he’s a good friend of his son’s and Mason doesn’t have a lot of friends. Jack’s the kind of guy who would do just that.

“What else did Mason tell you about me?”

I see the dimples appear, even at this angle. “That you’re certifiable.”

“And?”

Ben’s gaze lifts to me. “And I like certifiable.”

“Well, sorry to disappoint,” I offer with a heavy sigh as I bite into an apple that Jack dropped off earlier, before heading out. “I’m completely sane. He’s just had it out for me since I jumped out of his closet and made him piss his pants.” Of course I leave out the part where I was wearing a clown costume and had a very realistic-looking cleaver in my hand. And I was eight. Because those details actually might make me sound a tad unstable.

Ben bursts out in a roar of laughter; a genuine, chest-warming sound. “Okay, are you going to help me with this work or just sit there and look tempting all day?”

I roll my eyes—though I secretly bask in his words.

I don’t believe it.

Eight hours after that ridiculous public display at the café, I’m straddling my bike outside a Chick-fil-A and inhaling a sandwich, while staring at a private message on my Facebook account from my ex-husband.

Was great seeing you today. You’re more beautiful than ever.

I reread the message at least twenty times as bitter nostalgia consumes my insides. Jared always greeted me with a groggy, “Hey, beautiful,” as soon as my alarm went off. The first time he said it was especially jarring because I hadn’t heard it since I was five years old, when my father was still around. Growing up with a mother that looks like Annabelle—and me looking nothing like her and everything like my father—I know what beautiful is and I know that I am not it. Sure, there’s something about me. Something that sometimes grabs someone’s attention.

But, Jared always made me feel beautiful.

My appetite has suddenly vanished. Wrapping up the rest of my dinner and sticking it back in the bag for later, I type out with shaky hands:

Great seeing you, too.

Simple.

And highly untruthful. Was it “great” to see Jared today? Was it even remotely pleasant? No, it wasn’t. Yet I feel a spark of something inside me that convinces me otherwise. And as much as I want to be a bitch, as much as I want to lay into him with my litany of “whys”—Why did you leave me? Why did you lie to me? Why did you break my heart?—I find myself staring at my screen, waiting for the little “read” indicator to pop up, hoping for a response.

I’m still staring at it when I hear a woman’s heels clicking behind me. “Do you have a light?”

I turn to find espresso brown eyes drifting over my frame, probably in the same way I’m now assessing her. She’s beautiful in a very seductive way, her long black hair poker-straight and sleek, her lips full and pouty. Her br**sts way too swollen and round to be real.

“Sorry, don’t smoke.”

She lets out a loud sigh of exasperation as her hands drop to her sides, a cigarette perched between two fingers. “Why does no one f**king smoke anymore?”

“Because it’s highly uncool. Plus I already have a black heart. Black lungs would just be overkill.”

“You and me both,” she mutters under her breath, studying my bike. “Yours?”

“What gave it away?”

She dissects me through narrowed eyes for a long moment before jutting her chin toward the Harley next to mine, the one with the red and yellow flames on the body that I was admiring earlier. “My boyfriend’s. He’s on his way out soon. Hey!” She waves down a guy walking by on his way in, holding up her unlit cigarette. He seems only too happy to dig into his pocket for a lighter, his eyes trained on this woman’s cle**age as she pulls a flame from it. “Thanks, babe,” she says in a low, husky voice, giving him a wink as she blows a puff of smoke directly in his face. “Now keep moving before my man comes out here.”

What a bitch. I kind of like her.

My phone chirps again and, unable to stop myself, I check the message.

Seeing you with that guy today was hard. Is it serious?

“Are you f**king kidding me?” I mutter, my eyes widening with shock. Really? Him seeing me with someone else was hard on him? And why is he asking about Ben, anyway? Is he . . .

Holy shit. Maybe Ben was right.

“Bad news?” the woman asks between inhales.

I feel the scowl creep over my face. “No. I don’t think so.” I pause to process this turn of events, as a strange, giddy urge rises up. “I think I made my ex-husband jealous today.”

If it was hard on him, then . . . he still cares.

And I had worked so hard to convince myself that he didn’t.

Those first two weeks after I found them together in the shower, I was delusional. At first I thought there must be some sort of misunderstanding, that I didn’t see what I thought I saw, that I didn’t hear what I thought I heard. And then one morning I woke up from the haze—puffy-eyed and emotionally exhausted—and accepted that it was real. From that point, my thoughts morphed into a desperate hope that Jared would quickly realize his mistake, that he was simply confused, that it was just the one time, that maybe he had been drinking. Heavily. At eleven a.m. on a Tuesday. I wanted so badly to believe anything that resulted in him crawling back to me, begging me to forgive him.

And I knew that, if he did, I would take him back. As strong and independent and stubborn as I am, I would have caved in a second. Because that was the only way to stem the agony coursing through my heart all conscious hours of the day.

When Lina found a note from him tucked in her mail slot asking for a divorce, denying my delusions, proving to me what a fool I was, a toxic bitterness took over to stanch the vacuous hole left. That was it. It was over.

I’ve clung on to that bitterness for months, allowing it to morph into indifference. It has been a motivation of sorts, to prove that while Jared doesn’t want or need me, I don’t want or need him either. That I wasn’t humiliated by him, too blind to see what was going on under my nose.

But now he’s given me this new feeling to hold onto—a sick sort of satisfaction, knowing that there may still be a shred of something left in his heart for me. Like hope rekindled. Or maybe it’s just my battered ego getting a steroid shot. Whatever it is, it’s altogether intoxicating.

“You’re trying to win him back?” she purrs through an exhale, watching me carefully.

“No . . . he’s married. To the woman he cheated on me with.” Win him back? Could that even happen?

“Why are you even talking to him then?” she asks, putting her cigarette out with her heel, having finished it in record time.

“I don’t know.” I don’t know this woman and don’t care if she judges me. Maybe that’s why I admit out loud, without giving it too much thought, “Maybe I still do want him back.” I pause and then add, “After I hurt him.” After I make his heart ache, let him feel lost, make him regret his choices. And then, when he has cried and groveled and suffered . . . maybe I’d take him back.

Get back what we once had.

“And then you could live happily ever after.” I can’t tell if she’s being sarcastic or not. But then her sour mask slips for just a moment, revealing a kind of sympathy behind it that tells me she knows something of my pain. “I spent years waiting around for someone, hoping he just needed time. It was stupid.”

“I haven’t been waiting around for him,” I argue.

She shrugs as a tall guy wearing a leather jacket, torn jeans, and heavy black boots exits the restaurant, heading our way.

“Yours?” I ask, nodding toward him.

A soft smile flitters across her hard face and I can tell it’s rare to come by. “Me and Fin have been friends for years. He’s always been there for me. I just finally noticed how much he means to me.”

When he reaches us, he wastes no time swooping in for a quick kiss, which she grants, tugging on his beard playfully. To be honest, he’s not at all what I’d expect a girl that looks like this—who could be stripper or an escort—to be attracted to. But, to each her own.