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I can’t pull my eyes away from his, caught under his spell. He doesn’t say anything more, so I take it as my chance to confess the same thing. “I want to know what’s inside you, too, Ben. Other than this … softer side that you don’t let anyone see.”
“Oh, I let a couple see it.”
I smirk playfully at him. “Your dog doesn’t count.”
Ben tilts his head. “But don’t you?”
The way he stares at me right now, a sharp pang of thrill and mystery surges through me—the same electric sensation I had the night his eyes caught mine across that smokey nightclub. Was I defeated then? Did he conquer me, slamming through all my walls that first night? And have I been helpless to his power ever since?
Ben’s fingers surprise me when they tease into my hair, his hand hanging off the back of my seat. It feels so good, sending chills down my neck. “Let’s get on my plane,” he suggests, “maybe join the mile-high club, then head back to my place to get to know each other some more. How does that sound?”
I bite my lip as he plays with my hair. Sounds like heaven.
25
Benjamin doesn’t smile this much.
Normally, when I walk into my office, I feel the cold rush of winter enter with me. Chatter dies a quick death. Ties straighten upon their masters’ necks. Keyboards click and clack a bit louder.
Today, I hear none of it. Today, I wear a smile.
“Morning, Dana,” I say to the front receptionist, whose wide-eyed stare of shock tells me I neither greet her nor refer to her by name enough.
Rebekah has ten reports to give me, but instead, I turn to her and ask, “When’s the last time you took a vacation with little Jax?”
She blinks. Maybe she’s shocked that I remembered her son’s name. “I … I’m, um …”
“That long?”
“I’m trying to remember the year,” she confesses.
The year?? I sigh. “That needs to be remedied posthaste. Get your calendar. Next report I want on my desk is when you’re taking your vacation. It better be before the end of the summer.”
She gapes. “B-But Hawk the Jersey boy … the interns … the—”
“It’ll all be covered. How’s Disneyworld sound? My treat. You work too damned much, and for as sheltered as that poor Jax is, he’ll probably think Mickey Mouse is a Pokémon.”
“He probably already does,” Rebekah agrees sadly.
Across the room, I catch sight of the interns gathered around their table. They all look the same to me except for the one bright-eyed exception with the dirty blond hair, perpetually flushed face, and determined look about him: Trevor. He seems to be in the middle of talking excitedly with three others. I can’t imagine what exactly he’s discussing, but a humored part of my brain pretends he’s bragging to the others about the amazing night he just had, how he got to ride on the boss’s private jet, soar across the country, and stop a client’s life from exploding. The thought is enough to make my smile deepen despite myself.
“I knew you’d like them,” murmurs Rebekah, giving me a tiny nudge of her elbow.
I’m pulled from my little dream. “Sorry?”
“The interns.” She gives a nod in their direction. “Best batch I’ve concocted in years. You don’t have to thank me,” she adds quickly, lifting a hand. “I know. I’m brilliant.”
I want to play off my staring and say something dismissive at once, but it occurs to me without question that, had Rebekah not hired Trevor, he likely would never have crossed my path. He’d be spending his whole summer filing papers in some tiny office somewhere else, or taking orders from a tired thirty-something retail store manager, or dunking baskets of fries in his hometown.
The outlook of my summer might be marginally different, too. I might have brought some tough, boring contact along last night, or gone totally alone, not following my own advice. I might have taken someone else home that Friday night at the club, probably some guy who, like, says “like” every other word and makes the porn face whenever I fuck him. You know the face—it’s when a guy can’t close his mouth because of the “unfathomable ecstasy” he’s supposedly feeling as he’s being fucked, appearing like he’s about to bite down on something, but never actually closes his mouth for a solid hour. The face intensifies when he nears orgasm, of course, and the sound he emits is what you hear in every porno ever: a cross between a ship horn and a donkey being inseminated.
Instead, Rebekah hired Trevor. And Trevor is in my life.
A twenty-year-old with an old soul.
Maybe I’m a thirty-three-year-old with a young soul. I give a considerable amount of thought to how out-of-the-loop I’ve been in the dating world since my early twenties. I’ve had a lot of ass and a number of hook-ups, even ones that didn’t go all the way, but nothing substantial and nothing that stuck. I always saw the men who go to clubs as slippery, like fish. You catch them, you delight in them briefly—snap a duck-lipped selfie—then watch as they slip right through your fingers, crash back into the lake, and vanish. You never seem to see them again either, no matter the clubs you frequent. It’s like gay magic, how they disappear.
