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“Take off your shirt, lie down. Gonna shave you then we can start. This will probably take . . . I don’t know. An hour?” He looks at me. “You got an hour?” I blink at him and can’t help but smile when I hear the women in the next booth laughing, Lilah’s voice carrying over them.
If I didn’t, I’d find a way to give Lilah another hour of this—time with her sister being free and easy.
“You’ve got an hour,” I confirm, and he nods at the chair for me to lie on.
Ben and Hattie closed the shop once we showed up, what with Lola’s meltdown and immediate tears at the news, and then I said I wanted a piece while we were here. It took about five minutes to convince him that his scheduled 6 o’clock appointment—one I made nearly a month ago—was in fact my appointment. Inevitably, Lilah decided she wanted to one-up me, insisting Hattie give her a piercing and a tattoo.
Now Ben and I are sitting in silence while he prepares the transfer, shaves a spot on my skin, and sets up his station. The tattoo starts in silence, but ten minutes later, Ben finally breaks it.
“I don’t have a sister. I have a brother and he has a fiancée. I’ve got Hattie. But Lola’s got a sister, so that makes her my sister.”
I fight a smile, liking that for my girl.
A brother.
Not that she won’t have an entire family of brothers soon enough, but still.
“I have my issues with your wife,” he says.
Anyone else, I’d sit up and argue, punch the man in the face.
But this is Lola’s man.
And this man holds a needle to my skin.
He also knows who I am and what that means, so I can assume he’s not trying to stir up shit by talking about a woman I called my wife to my face.
I’m not stupid, so I stay quiet, let him speak his peace.
“Barely know the girl. But I know Lola. Know Lola spent years sacrificing, giving everything she had to that shit of a father of hers. Know Lola gave their mother a promise and she worked to keep it, to keep Lilah in the dark so she could live free. But I also know my girl suffered most of her life for that, and that couldn’t have been easy to ignore. So either her sister put on some kind of crazy ass blinders or she didn’t want to bother because she was busy living her happy little life.”
“I think—”
“Let me finish, man. So I can’t say she’s my favorite person on the planet. Gonna take me some time to not see all the trauma Lola has every time I look at her. But all the same, she’s family. I’m gonna marry Lola. That will make Lilah my sister. You fuck shit up with her, I don’t care if you’re the goddamn president of the United fuckin’ States. I’m gonna fuck you up. You have friends, but so do I.”
I wonder what kind of friends Benjamin Coleman has. If he even has friends or if it’s just a bluff.
Either way, I decide then and there that despite his frustration with my wife, I like the man.
I like him a lot.
There aren’t many people who are straight shooters with me, who tell me like it is regardless of any repercussions it might hold.
Marco is one.
Lilah is another.
It seems Ben Coleman is a third.
“We’ll get along just fine, you and me, Ben,” I say, and he smiles, a wide, gleaming grin. “Not my place to tell you but I will anyway. Not even sure how much Lola knows. Knowing Lilah, it’s little to none.” Ben stills the needle. “She’s good now, trust me,” I say, and he continues his work. I sigh before continuing, trying not to move my chest too much as I do.
“Turner . . . It wasn’t just Lola he was fucking with. He did it with Lilah too, just in a different way. Lotta shit coming to light right now about her father, about history between Libby and the Russos and the Carluccios and Turner.” He pauses again, looking at me. “There’s lots to unravel. Not gonna sugar coat it, most of it, you’ll never learn about. But some of it . . . Just know that Lilah didn’t have it as sunshine and rainbows as she wants Lola to think.” Ben’s jaw goes tight and I see a million thoughts behind his eyes, but one resonates deep.
Deep because I feel it too. Daily.
He wants to hurt Turner.
“Turner used Lilah, too. Selling dates with her to politicians and sons, trying to help their image. Had every moment of her life tracked. Her best friend was on his payroll. There was no way for her to know what Lola was going through because she was going through her own shit, keeping that from her sister. And once she found out about everything that happened . . .” I sigh.
