Chapter Seventeen

“YOU’VE GOT him where you want him,” Nolan crowed. He lifted his glass of champagne, and Scarlett mirrored the gesture. They were having post-dinner drinks, Liam had told them what was going on at the office, and they seemed genuinely excited for him. Secretly strategizing and figuring out ways to turn the situation to their advantage? Probably. They’d worked together at the same firm fresh out of school and had always been competitive with each other. But they were excited as well.

“Don’t get ahead of yourselves,” Liam warned. “I wouldn’t even have told you if I thought anyone at the office would be able to keep it a secret.”

“Anna sounded thrilled,” Scarlett said with a warm smile. Anna had worked at Scarlett’s firm before moving over to Tristan’s, and the two women had stayed friends. Mostly. “She said she was really worried when you left—thought the well was going to dry right up. And she likes you, of course. She’s looking forward to having a boss who isn’t staring at her ass all the time.”

“Do not make me start worrying about sexual harassment lawsuits. I’m supposed to be celebrating.”

“Ah, the burden of command.” Nolan lifted the champagne bottle out of the ice bucket and refilled their glasses. “You gonna pull Allison off the Taybec Briggs project?”

Liam didn’t remember having discussed the Taybec Briggs project with Nolan or Scarlett. Well, maybe while he’d been working on the proposal—shit, yeah, while he’d been working on the proposal. They knew he’d wanted it, knew he hadn’t gotten it…. “No,” he said. “I won’t really have time to give it the attention it deserves. And I can still have input, obviously—Allison has a lot to learn, and I can mentor her through this.”

“You’ve just got it all put together, don’t you?” Scarlett raised her refilled glass. “To Liam—first of us to claw his way to the top.”

“Make room, though,” Nolan said, “because we’re right behind you.”

They drank that toast, and a few more, and Liam tried to relax and enjoy the moment. This was something special. He’d worked for it. Sure, he’d also capitalized on an old man’s heart attack, but—well, opportunity had knocked. He’d just answered the door.

Of course, that wasn’t exactly how Ben would see it. Ben’s moral compass had always spun a little less freely than Liam’s, and he’d never really been too ambitious. Would he even be proud of Liam’s current accomplishments?

And why the hell did Liam care?

He drained his glass and stood up. “Thanks for this,” he told the others. “I really appreciate it. But I’ve got to get home now—lots of work to do tomorrow.”

“Yup, that’s the future,” Nolan said sagely. “You think you were working a lot of hours before this? Just wait. Tristan’s gonna expect even more from you now. And you’ll be more in demand for social stuff, promo opportunities—damn. We’d better say goodbye now, because we may never see you again!”

Just like Ben might never see him again. But at least Nolan was kind enough to look sorry about it.

Ben hadn’t cared at all.

Liam pasted a smile on his face, got his kiss from Scarlett and back slap from Nolan, and made his way out onto the street. He was far enough from home that he could easily justify a cab, but he started walking anyway.

Everything had worked out. The people at the office had seemed genuinely excited by the change, and things were going smoothly. Allison had been satisfyingly unsure of herself before he’d pulled her aside and offered a little reassurance. He’d been vindicated, and he’d celebrated with his friends. It was good. Everything was good.

And his goddamn face was wet again. Crying? Seriously?

“No,” he muttered, and he brushed impatiently at his eyes. He needed to make a doctor’s appointment or something—maybe his tear ducts were blocked, or overproducing—he didn’t really know how tears worked. Because he’d damn well never had to know, because he didn’t cry!

“Everything’s good,” he told himself, and he walked a little faster. If his cheeks got wet again, he refused to acknowledge it. Everything was fine. Better than fine. He was incredibly lucky. He was absolutely not crying.

BEN MADE it through the week. Two more dinner dates with Kevin both ended with kisses and thinly veiled preaching about not rushing into anything or making anyone nervous. The dinners themselves were fairly pleasant, and it wasn’t as if Kevin didn’t have a pretty good reason to be cautious of Ben’s level of commitment, so Ben tried to put up with the irritation at the end of the night.

And he tried not to think about how things had been different with Liam. Petty irritation? Hell no. Ben would have told Liam to stop being such a prissy pain in the ass, Liam would have told Ben it took one to know one, and they would have had a quick fight followed by scorching makeup sex.

Well, that’s how they would have done it when they were kids. But, Ben reminded himself again, the way they’d done it when they were kids hadn’t worked. Liam had cheated. Ben had—well, Ben still wasn’t quite sure how to classify his own behavior, but it certainly hadn’t been mature. It certainly wasn’t the way he wanted to behave now.

And it wasn’t really that important for him to understand the details of it because it was all in the past, and he was focused on the future. Yup, the future. He was spending time with Kevin, not thinking about Liam—well, hardly thinking about him at all—well, yeah, he was working through some issues, possibly, that were somewhat related to Liam, but—

It wasn’t a good sign that when his phone rang on Friday afternoon, his first thought was that it must be Liam calling. There was absolutely no reason for it to be Liam. Liam was gone, he was done. But when the display showed an unfamiliar number with a Manhattan area code, there was no surprise. It all felt fated, somehow.

Ben answered calmly, and the jolt through his belly when he heard Liam’s voice? It would have been nice to pretend that it was surprise, but Ben wasn’t quite that good at self-deception. Or at least not that quick.

Still he managed to keep his cool as he said, “Why are you calling, Liam? I thought we agreed that we wouldn’t be seeing each other.”

“Agreed?” Liam snorted. “If that’s what you want to call it. But actually that is why I’m calling.”

Ben braced himself. He needed to be strong. Whatever Liam was about to say, Ben would just be cool and controlled and deal with it. “What do you mean?”

“Calvin called me. Thanked me for my nursing care, so I think he must have been pretty delirious while he was sick. But whatever, he sounds back to normal and I guess he’s having a baby shower for Seth and his wife tomorrow? He invited me to come. I said I didn’t think it would be a good idea since you and I aren’t—well, I think I said something lame, like that we aren’t on great terms or something like that. Anyway, he said he was sure you’d be fine with it. But Calvin isn’t known for his tight relationship with either reality or the truth, so I thought I should give you a call and make sure. You know, because of the ‘wouldn’t be seeing each other’ thing.”

Uncle Calvin. Was it possible for the man to be Ben’s savior and his nemesis? “Why would you want to drive all the way from the city just for some baby shower?”

Liam was still polite but several degrees cooler. “I don’t think my motivations are actually any of your business, are they? I mean, unless they involve you, which they don’t.”

“But you’re asking my permission to attend?”

“’Permission’ is probably a little strong. But I don’t want you to throw a scene at Seth’s big day, so I thought I’d better check in. If you’re not going to be able to control yourself—I don’t know what the baby-shower equivalent of ramming a cop car would be, maybe passing out and falling on the cake or something—then I guess I’ll have to stay away. But if you can control yourself? If you’ve moved on with your new-old guy and are totally over me in every way? Then there shouldn’t be a problem with me coming to the party. Right?”

Ben found himself suddenly yearning for Kevin’s little tidbits of cattiness. So much more subtle, so much easier to ignore. “What’s Seth’s wife’s name, Liam? What about his current kid? Name would be nice, but do you even know gender? Age? Are you honestly pretending you give a shit about Seth? Really?”

“We spent some time together at the building site, remember? And Seth and I were friends before either of us knew who the hell the geeky little kid with all the books even was. I let that friendship get messed up—let my shit with you affect how he and I got along—but that was a mistake. I’d like to see what I can do about fixing it. Although, again, none of that is any of your damn business.”

“You seriously don’t think you’re taking this stroll down memory lane a little too far? Your parents are getting divorced. I guess you’re finding that traumatic. But you know you can’t actually transport yourself into the past, right? You can’t travel back to a magical, simple time when everyone’s parents still—”

“What are you even talking about? My parents? I was—surprised, I think. That’s the best word. It shook me up a little, for, like, four hours, and then I was over it. None of this—My parents? Seriously? How the hell are you connecting this to my parents?”

“Four hours? You came up here the day of Terry’s funeral, you were upset at the graveyard, you hung around for days, came back for the build, you were thinking about them the night we—you know. Sunday night. How is that four hours?”

There was a pause before Liam said, “I only found out about my parents on Sunday. The earlier stuff—why did you think my parents were involved?”

Ben fought to bring order to his thoughts. “I—well, why else would you have been up here?” Then he remembered Liam’s words on that first day. You never saw me any of the other times. How many other times had there been? And why had Liam made the trip, ever?

“Hey, Ben?” Liam asked, his voice soft. It stayed gentle—deceptively gentle—as he said, “You’re not interested in me, remember? We wrapped things up, left it all on a positive note. Right?”

Ben wanted to rage, to scream, to hurl insults or challenges or demands. But he was an adult now. He was mature and had self-control. At the very least he wouldn’t let Liam’s little trap do its job. He swallowed hard, then said, “You’re right. This is none of my business. And it’s none of my business if you want to go to Seth’s baby shower. His wife’s name is Dinah and their daughter is Tamara. They’re both pretty wonderful. I think you’ll really like them.”

And those final few words were enough to bring him back to a calmer place, at least temporarily. “Thanks for calling to check on this—I guess I wouldn’t have had the right to object even if I’d wanted to, but I appreciate the chance to avoid the surprise. I think the cake would have been safe, but you can never be sure.”

“Okay. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

And that was all.

Or at least it should have been. But instead of settling down to get some grading done as he’d been planning, Ben changed into running clothes and set out along the river. He tried to find peace in the flowing of the water, the singing of the birds. He gave up on that and tried to fall into the rhythm of his strides, the slap of his footfalls along the path. He had no thoughts, no emotions. He was a machine. A running machine, working effectively, efficiently, mindlessly.

Liam? There was no Liam. There was only the pounding of his feet, and of his heart. The burning in his legs, the sweat soaking his shirt. He was physical, not mental. He was at peace.

At least temporarily.