Page 76 of Bene

Vanna cocked a brow at him. “Well?”

“Fine,” he half-heartedly grumbled.

“Are you always like this?” she whispered against his grinning lips.

“Hmm?”

“Fun—wild?”

Bene laughed. “My family would say yes.”

“Oh?”

“Usually, it was Beni and me together, though. Always looking for the next thing to chase after—whatever might get us into trouble, but would be fun, too.”

Vanna’s gaze glittered with amusement. “I have no doubt.”

“I miss my twin all the fucking time.”

There.

He said it out loud; he actually told someone instead of keeping it inside his head where no one would know the truth, and he could keep lying to them, and himself, that everything was okay. It was out there. He couldn’t take it back. Maybe he didn’t even want to.

Vanna stilled in his arms, her smile fading as their stares met. “You don’t see him often?”

“Used to. We lived together—fucking woke up in rooms right next to each other for two decades, and then it just changed. He met a girl, got married, stayed in Chicago, and I had to figure out how to do everything by myself. I wasn’t very good at it.”

“Hey.”

His gaze darted back to hers.

Vanna lifted one shoulder under the blanket. “I don’t really know anything about him—just you, Bene.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“And I think you’re pretty good at being you. I mean, without him, and all.”

Was he?

“With you, maybe.”

Vanna’s brow dipped. “What’s that mean?”

“It’s easier with you maybe because you don’t know him, or my family … any of it, really. I only need to worry about being me with you—you distract me, it’s easy.”

Her pink lips pursed.

Bene let out a heavy breath.

“Or maybe it’s just me,” he muttered. “Everybody keeps saying I need time without him to just be me … but I keep wondering if all they see is us, and I’m busy trying to prove I can be okay, anyway. Fake it until you make it, kind of thing.”

“But are you?”

“Hmm?”

Vanna stood up on her tiptoes, the blanket falling a bit on her shoulders when her lips pressed to his, and those fingernails of hers dug into his chest in the best way. “Are you okay, Bene?”

He didn’t even have to think about it.