THE PHYSICAL LABOR hadn’t helped a damned thing.
It was hours since he had returned home from the cleanup day, hours since his fight with Dallas. Dallas, who was now in bed. Presumably. Unless the kid had finally decided to bust out a window and run for freedom.
After that fight at Get Out of Dodge, Bennett wasn’t really sure which it would be.
Except the kid wasn’t going to run off. He knew that with a strange kind of certainty. Maybe it was a misguided certainty.
Because who hadn’t listened to a proud parent talk about their kid in glowing and delusional terms? He had stood around and listened to countless people talk about how their kids were the best, kindest, most well-behaved angels on the planet. All the while Bennett knew that they had been caught drinking or screwing in the back of a car.
Yeah.
There was some kind of heavy denial that took over when you were a parent. He had seen it from the outside. But whether or not this was that, he felt confident in the fact that Dallas wanted to be here.
Now, he also might be angry that he was here, but he had a feeling that Dallas suffered from being angry wherever he was.
Then there was that kiss.
He was putting off thinking about that. Really, the fight with his son was less uncomfortable to go over.
He hadn’t known what the hell was happening.
He’d been out there by himself, trying to figure out what the hell the way forward was, and Kaylee had appeared.
He had looked up from where he was sitting on the bench to see her coming down the path, her red hair fluttering in the breeze, her T-shirt molded over her slight curves, and he had wondered if her bra always showed like that through those soft-looking T-shirts, and if he had just never noticed before because...
Because he was an idiot?
He didn’t know.
Then she’d hugged him. All those curves had been pressed up against him.
He had the thought earlier today that he might be able to blot out the eternal stream of unsettled stuff running through his brain if he just punished his body with enough labor. But in that moment he wondered if it was something else that he needed. Something he hadn’t indulged in for a long damn time.
The reason Bennett had gotten so angry at Olivia when he had first found out she had slept with Luke right after their breakup was that he had been celibate for more than a year. For his part, he had respected what Olivia had asked of him.
She had wanted to wait. Wait till they were engaged.
Hell, she’d been a virgin. And then, she’d gone and given it to Luke Hollister. A man who wasn’t going to offer a commitment to her at all.
Except that he had.
But it had still left Bennett in the middle of the world’s most profound dry spell.
Which was catching up with him, apparently. Because his best friend’s curves had felt like a branding iron against his body, and had left his stomach hollowed out. Worst of all, he’d had to fight against his hardening body as she had shifted those slender hips and fitted them against his.
He did not get hard-ons over Kaylee. He didn’t. He never had. He wouldn’t.
Then she had looked up at him, and something in her expression had suddenly seemed so raw. So unguarded, that it had made him feel like an ax had split him in two. Revealing all kinds of stuff at the center he hadn’t known was there.
Before he could react to that, her lips had pressed against his.
It had been platonic. He would have called it sisterly if he hadn’t felt so decidedly unbrotherly at every point at which their bodies were touching.
The kiss had been nothing. A simple meeting of lips. Barely a breath. A blink.
Except she had jumped back like a scalded cat a moment later. Except that she had run away. Which all spoke to it being something. No matter how much of a nothing it should have been.
Was it something he had done? A reaction that he had that had made Kaylee run the opposite direction?
Probably the hard-on in your jeans, asshole.
It hadn’t been a full-on erection. He was thirty-two years old, he had a little bit more control than that. However, if the physical contact had gone on any longer...
Well, there was self-control and then there was being able to perform miracles. And he couldn’t do the miracle thing.
He had lied to Kaylee when he’d told her that she was the one unchanged part of his life. From that brief fantasy he’d had of her in the shower, down to this, there was something changing there too. And he hated it. He felt out of control, and he hated that more than anything.
It made him feel like that little kid he’d been on the day he found out his mother had died after giving birth to his little sister.
It hadn’t been expected. Not at all. And then, it had just been. She was dead. There was no arguing with that. No coming back from it. No fixing it.
His father had been broken, left with a squalling infant who hadn’t been able to be comforted. His oldest brother had gone into a kind of hard, serious mode. Being the man of the house. Grant, for his part, had tried to emulate that. But they were both older.
Bennett had been a little boy. But not the baby.
He hadn’t been quite old enough to feel like he could be one of the men, but he hadn’t been young enough that he could excuse crying and crawling up into his father’s arms. Anyway, Jamie had needed all of that.
He hadn’t wanted to cause more trouble. He had just wanted to fix it. What he really wanted was a time machine. To go back and stop it all somehow, but that wasn’t possible.
He wished he could have one now too. So that he could go back to before today. Maybe so he could go back months ago, when everything was simpler.
But there was no going back. And all these years of supposed control had only ever been a facade.
He thought he’d made that one mistake in high school and—as sad as it had been—he’d gotten a reprieve. Gotten an opportunity to take all that control back.
But no.
He had never been in control of anything.
And he wasn’t doing any better grabbing hold of it now.
He couldn’t predict Dallas. Couldn’t anticipate where he would put a foot right or wrong. Like climbing a mountain made of loose gravel. Couldn’t tell what would hold and what would send him plunging to his doom.
And then there was this whole thing with Kaylee. He couldn’t pretend that she hadn’t felt whatever weird-ass thing had happened then. Couldn’t pretend that she hadn’t felt it the last few times.
He had to get a grip. She had a dinner date tonight. With Michael. And he should hope it was going well.
He had stuff to work out anyway.
All right, so he couldn’t control Dallas. Dallas was a variable, because he was a person who was going to do what he wanted. Who was going to do what he could to feel in control.
That snapped something into place for Bennett. Dallas was his son. Dallas had done his very best to feel in control of an out-of-control life from the time he was a kid. Right. So he could just assume that his son’s actions came from that. That they both wanted to feel like they were in charge, that they both hated feeling helpless. That might put them at odds with each other sometimes, but at least it was something he could understand.
That made him feel better.
As for Kaylee...
This wasn’t about Kaylee. It was about his celibacy. It was about the fact that it had been more than a year since he’d had sex, and that was unreasonable.
So there was only one thing to do. He had to get laid.
* * *
MICHAEL WAS SO NICE. And he was even trying to be interesting. Maybe he was interesting. Maybe there was just something broken, deep down inside of Kaylee.
It was the Bennett cycle. That point of undeniability. When a featherlight kiss shared between her and her best friend was more exciting than the possibility of going to bed with Michael.
They made it through the entire dinner this time, at least. And when Michael had paid he asked if she wanted to take a walk down Main Street.
She agreed.
They exited the restaurant and he took her hand. It felt warm. Pleasant. Nothing else.
It didn’t feel like being lit on fire inside, a fire that was probably going to burn out of control and bring on her untimely doom, but nonetheless, an exciting one. No, it didn’t feel like that.
It was just fingers entwined with hers. Just skin. It wasn’t that extra layer of magic that came from touching Bennett.
But then, there never had been. Not with anyone else.
It was pitiful.
“Kaylee,” Michael said. “I get the feeling that you’re not with me tonight either.”
She stopped, the streetlight overhead casting a golden glow around them. It practically gave the man a halo. She couldn’t look at him. Not now. She picked a focal point behind him, the redbrick building they were standing in front of. She focused on the shop window. It was an antiques place with furniture stationed about in casual disarray. Old kitchen appliances she couldn’t name. And a taxidermic squirrel looking frozen but feral on a top shelf.
Then she gathered what meager courage she had and looked back at her date. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re not that into me,” he said, treating her to a lopsided smile.
He was cute, dammit. Why couldn’t she want to strip his clothes off him? Why couldn’t she want to kiss him, even a little bit?
“I am,” she protested, extremely unconvincing.
“I get the feeling that you want to be. And when somebody wants something to exist where it doesn’t quite as much as you seem to... I have to assume there’s another man involved.”
That made her feel like crap. It made her feel like a jerk. But there wasn’t any way she could deny it. He knew. He saw through her.
“I don’t want...” She blinked, her throat getting tight. Tighter. It hadn’t stopped aching since earlier today. It was a constant, searing pressure at the base of her neck.
“Is it the other veterinarian you work with? I know I haven’t spent a lot of time with you yet, but it seems to me like he’s on your mind a lot.”
Oh, good grief. Was it so bad that a relative stranger could guess? Or maybe that was why he could. He was coming in from the outside with no assumptions.
“He’s my friend,” she said. “Like, from junior high. My best friend.”
“And you’re not in love with him?”
She closed her eyes, wishing she could block everything out. Wishing this wasn’t happening. But that damn streetlight glowed even through her eyelids, and she could hear cars, and people leaving the bar across the street and restaurants all around them. It was definitely happening.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I would like to not be in love with him. Because he’s not in love with me.”
“I had a nice time tonight,” Michael said. “But I’m looking for something serious. And I don’t share.”
“That’s fair,” she responded, nodding.
Every man who had ever had her had been sharing her with Bennett. There was no denying that. Whether she was in love or not.
She liked to think of it as feelings. Generic feelings. Because that sounded a whole lot less serious. Less emotionally terminal. Love sounded like...
Well, it sounded like something permanent and final and much harder to deal with.
She felt like someone was pressing on her windpipe.
“I didn’t do this on purpose,” she said. “I promise. I tried... I tried. Because it’s been a lot of years of being hung up on a guy who isn’t into me. And I’m not going to just sit around. I have to try to...”
“You’re looking for someone to make it go away.”
“Yes,” she said, relieved that he understood, even if he wasn’t entirely happy about it.
“Sitting around and pining after him doesn’t work. And we own a practice together. And I care about him. In a way that means not having him in my life is unthinkable. But I just need to find somebody...”
“But if you don’t want somebody else, then there’s not much you can do with that.”
“That can’t be,” she said. “There can’t be just one person for you. Because what the hell are you supposed to do when you’re not the one for him?”
“I don’t have the answer to that. But I do know that I don’t want to be with you in this scenario.”
Ouch. That made her feel awful. How many guys had she consigned to that position? Men who had liked her, had cared for her and wanted her, but had never really had her. Because she had been obsessing about someone else. Because someone else held half of her heart.
Hell, more than half.
“Yeah. Okay.” She let go of his hand. “I hope I can still see Clarence. Well, I hope Clarence doesn’t get sick, and I don’t have to see him. But he’s a good dog.”
“He is.”
“And you’re a good man. Maybe too good for me.”
“No,” he said. “You’re just not available. It happens. You’re a good vet, and I will definitely bring Clarence back to see you.”
“Thank you.”
“Just maybe no dinner date.”
“Right.”
He took a step back and sighed heavily. “If you ever get that guy out of your system, and then it doesn’t work out... Maybe then. Good luck to you, Kaylee.”
Michael turned and walked away, leaving Kaylee standing there under the light. She felt like she was in one of those old movies where they turn the lamp on and interrogated you. Except she was the one asking the questions.
And she was the one who presumably had some answers somewhere inside of her. No one could answer them for her. She couldn’t cut Bennett out.
Getting him out of her system...that sounded like the world’s most horrible gamble. Because she could put herself out there and get rejected. Because it could only intensify her feelings. Because he might reject her. Might be the one to walk away when he found out that she wanted him.
Unless he wanted her too.
All she had to do was risk her whole world.
But this was the alternative. This loneliness. Having skin-to-skin contact with a man and having it only be skin.
She didn’t know if she could do that anymore either.
She didn’t know what she was supposed to do at all.
It was a turning point. But she didn’t know for sure which way she was going to turn.
She needed to change something. Change herself. She’d been an idiot thinking she could use another person to fix a problem that was in her. If she didn’t sort it out, no other person was ever going to be able to. Her conflicting Bennett issues were on her.
She felt stale. Tired of herself and all of the sameness inside of her she couldn’t seem to sort out.
She needed to go ride her horse. Go for a real ride that tested her endurance and got her out of her rut. She needed...needed new clothes and new furniture. Something to change this...feeling in her. To air out her soul.
Maybe then she could find some clarity.
But right now the only thing she knew was that she was going to bed alone tonight. And would be until she sorted all of this out.