Chapter 44
Annalise
I held him tight.
His shoulders shook for so long, I knew I needed to brace for the sound when it finally came. It was an ear-splitting, heart-breaking, soul-crushing noise when it did. I had no idea what could possibly cause so much pain. But I knew I wanted to take some of it away for him.
I rubbed his back, stroked his hair, assured him with tender words that everything was going to be okay. Whatever it was, this was pain that had built for a long time. It wasn’t new, not the type that happens when you lose someone unexpectedly or suddenly find out the man you thought you knew wasn’t the man you fell in love with. The pain that emanated from Bennett was the kind that had spent years bottled up—like a volcano that erupts after a hundred years of being dormant and suddenly its fire is shooting three-hundred feet into the air.
I started to cry with him, even though I had no idea what we were crying about. It was just too emotional to watch and not be moved to tears of my own. We held each other for such a long time.
“It’s going to be okay,” I whispered. “It’s going to be okay.”
Eventually Bennett’s shudders started to slow. I wasn’t sure if it was because I’d brought him comfort or he just had no more tears to cry. He took a few long, deep, shaky breaths in and out, and his grip on me loosened.
His face had been buried in my neck. I wanted to look at him, to see his face, but I was half afraid that once I pulled back and saw the pain in his eyes, I’d lose it all over again, even if he was okay.
When both our breathing had returned to normal and neither of us was crying anymore, I cleared my hoarse throat. “Do you want me to get you something to drink? A water or something?”
Bennett shook his head, keeping it down so I couldn’t see him, but one of his hands lifted to my face.
He pressed his palm to my cheek and whispered, “Thank you.”
“Anytime.” I smiled sadly, taking his hand from my face and bringing it to my lips. “Anytime.”
He lifted his head and leaned his forehead to mine. His eyes were swollen and red, but the half smile he managed was real. “Thanks for the offer. But I’m hoping that was the first and last time you’ll be seeing that.”
He sounded more like Bennett already.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
He looked up. “Not yet.”
“Okay. Well, you know where to find me if you do.”
He grinned sadly. “In Texas?”
I started to laugh. “Boy, that didn’t take you long. And here I was thinking you’d be nice to me after how nice I was to you. I should’ve known better.”
Bennett scooped me up and surprised me by swinging me up to the top of the bed near the headboard. He climbed on top of me. “Are you saying I owe you one?”
I nodded with a giant, ear-to-ear grin. “Maybe more than one.”
He chuckled. “Well, I’d better get started on that right away.”
His face moved to my neck once more, only this time he definitely wasn’t crying. We wrapped ourselves around one another. Not ten minutes ago, we’d both been emotional wrecks, and now those feelings had transformed into want and need.
Bennett kissed me passionately, with so much tenderness and worship. Our desire for one another had never been an issue, but this moment felt different for some reason. When he broke the kiss to slip off my clothes, he looked down at me as if no one else in the world existed. The smile he wore when he pushed inside of me touched me deeply. I knew in my heart that something had changed. Then he solidified that feeling by making love to me for the very first time.
***
“I told Lucas the truth about me tonight.”
The room was pitch dark. I’d just started to doze off and couldn’t be sure if I’d heard him right. “The truth?”
I felt him nod, even if I couldn’t see it. My head was tucked into the crook of his shoulder, and he continued to stroke my hair gently as he spoke.
“Sophie was my best friend. People thought it was weird that we spent so much time together but weren’t hooking up. She was like the little sister I never had, even though we were the same age. We were nineteen when she got pregnant with some loser’s baby. Her mother kicked her out, and she came to stay with me in my dorm room for a while and then went back home. It went like that off and on for years. But after I graduated, she couldn’t take it at home with Fanny anymore. We got an apartment together so we could share expenses and I could help out with Lucas while she went to cosmetology school at night.”
He paused, and I waited in silence until he was ready to continue.
“One night she got out of class early. Lucas was already asleep in her room. I’d met a woman in our building, and we’d started hanging out once in a while. Sophie walked in on me and her having sex in my room.” He blew out a deep breath. “I don’t even remember the woman’s name. Anyway, Sophie freaked out, saying Lucas could’ve walked in on us, and we had a big fight. The next night, she dropped Lucas off at her mother’s instead of leaving him home with me when she went to school. Or at least I thought she went to school. A buddy of mine called later that night and said he was at a bar, and Sophie was there, and she was pretty loaded. So I drove to pick her up. It was a shitty night, pouring out, and I found her making out with some dirtbag biker. There was a big scene—the biker wanted to kick my ass, but I got her the hell out of there before she did something stupid.”
He took another deep breath.
“Our fight continued in the car, and Sophie kissed me.”
“She kissed you?”
“I thought she was just drunk at first. I pushed her off me and told her to cut the shit. But she started to cry. Then everything came out. She told me she’d been in love with me for years. Apparently the night before hadn’t been about finding me with another woman while Lucas was sound asleep; it was because she had feelings for me.”
“Oh, wow. And you had no idea?”
“None. Like a fucking blockhead, I didn’t see any of it. Until long afterward. And I didn’t handle it very well. I told her that was ridiculous, and she was like my little sister.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah. That didn’t go over too well. She was pretty upset, so I thought I better take her home.” He paused. “We never made it. I missed a stop sign because of some trees weighed down from the rain, and there was an eighteen-wheeler coming. We skidded, and the car flipped a few times.”
I turned over onto my stomach. “Oh my God, Bennett.”
He shook his head. “I shouldn’t have been driving while I was upset and pissed off, not at night with bad visibility and wet roads.”
I clutched my chest. The story itself was heartbreaking, but then I remembered what he’d said earlier. “I told Lucas the truth tonight.”
“Lucas didn’t know any of this?”
He nodded. “Not until this afternoon. It’s a long story, but Sophie kept these journals, and her mother recently read them. Lucas almost read them, too. The last entry in her journal was written the day before she died and said she was going to tell me about her feelings. Her mother knew we’d had a fight the night Sophie died, but when she read the journals, she realized what we must’ve been fighting about. Fanny never liked me to begin with, and rightly blames me for the accident.”
He sighed. “She only lets me stay in Lucas’s life because I help her out financially. Lucas and I both got a settlement because the tree should’ve been cut back and the trucker was speeding, but his is in a trust, and Fanny only gets a stipend for his living expenses each month. I’ve always known I needed to tell him I was driving. I just thought I could wait until he was a little older.” He shook his head. “Reading those journals stirred up a lot of feelings. For both of us.”
I shut my eyes. “Oh God, Bennett. I’m so sorry. You told him all that today? I’m guessing it didn’t go well?”
“He could have told me never to contact him again. So I guess it could have been worse.”
It didn’t take a shrink to figure out why Bennett didn’t do relationships. A woman he cared for deeply had told him she was in love with him the night she died in a car accident—an accident that happened while he was behind the wheel, an accident he obviously harbored a lot of guilt over.
In an instant, the rest of the missing pieces of Bennett Fox clicked into place. Such a complex man, with scars inside that ran a lot deeper than the one on the outside from the accident.
“He’ll come around. He’s a smart kid, and in the little time I spent with you two, it was clear how much you care about him. I’m sure he was just upset at the shock. It must’ve felt like a big secret kept from him.”
“He thinks I’ve been spending all this time with him out of guilt for what I did. And honestly, I do have a lot of guilt. But that’s never been the reason I stayed involved in Lucas’s life.”
We were quiet for a long time. I needed to wrap my head around everything he’d shared, and Bennett obviously needed space. But first…I needed to ask one more question.
“Bennett?”
“Hmm?”
“Have you ever talked to anyone about this? I mean, the whole story. What Sophie meant to you, what she shared the night she died, and the relationships you’ve had since then—or lack of relationships?”
He shook his head.
“Thank you for telling me. I know it’s been a long day, but I want you to know I’d love to hear all about Sophie. When you’re ready.”
He looked into my eyes. “Why? Why would you want to hear about her?”
“Because she’s obviously very special to you, she’s the mother of the boy you love, and whether you realize it or not, she’s helped make you into the man you are today.”