Chapter Twenty-Four
“Ben, Robert McKinnon is on the line for you.”
Ben closed his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose where a dull headache had begun several hours ago, and had gradually spread to what felt like his entire body. He’d been expecting this call from Lauren’s family, had in fact picked up the phone three different times to call them first, but had been interrupted on each attempt.
“Put him through, Kym. Thanks.”
He had already spoken to both of George’s parents – two times each – both demanding answers and having hysterics each time; to Tamsyn, who’d nearly broken his heart when she had asked tearfully “Does this mean my baby is never going to know its father?”; and to Chris’s father, who’d been backpacking somewhere in Colorado and had either had a terrible connection or been half-stoned.
This call from Lauren’s father, therefore, was both expected and at least a couple of hours overdo.
“Robert.” Ben greeted him somberly. “I imagine you’ve heard the same news reports we have. How are you and your wife holding up?”
The older man’s voice sounded hoarse, as though he’d been crying. “Not terribly well, Ben, as you might expect. Natalie is – not doing well at all. Julia and Nathan just arrived a few minutes ago, and they’re doing their best to comfort her. But I need to know everything you do at this point. Is there any chance that my little girl is still alive?”
Ben had anticipated this question, had answered it several times already this morning, and wished again that he had more reliable information to share.
“There’s a chance, yes,” he replied gravely. “Lauren and the others were on a flight from Port Blair to Chennai, and their departure was delayed by nearly half an hour. The flight also encountered some serious turbulence en route, which delayed its arrival by a few more minutes. If the flight from Port Blair had left on time, then they would have had barely thirty minutes to make the next flight from Chennai to Delhi – the flight that crashed on takeoff. Based on what we know, they would have had less than five minutes to make the connection, given that the two gates were in different terminals.”
Robert’s voice sounded a bit steadier at this news. “So it’s quite possible that they weren’t on that flight? When will we know for certain?”
That was a question Ben had been asked – and had asked himself – multiple times so far today. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “Apparently, when the plane exploded on takeoff, it took out power and telephone lines, and no one’s had any luck getting much information. We have people here at the magazine in constant contact with both the FAA and the State Department trying to get updates, but until the passenger lists are released, or we hear from one of the crew, we won’t know anything definite.”
“Yes. I understand. I’ve been watching the coverage on television, what little there is, and it sounds like the crash not only disrupted the communications systems but that the debris is blocking the main highway into the city.”
“There hasn’t been a whole lot of news,” agreed Ben. “And I’m sure the priority is to tend to the victims of the crash. Plus, all incoming and outgoing flights have been grounded, which is to be expected. We haven’t even been able to reach them on the satellite phone, but I’m told that’s not unusual in these sorts of disasters, that communications can be blocked in order to give priority to emergency services. But we’ll keep trying to reach them, as well as utilize all of our contacts to get more news.”
Robert blew out a frustrated breath. “I suppose under the circumstances that’s all you can do. Except to hope. And pray.”
Ben shut his eyes again, rubbing his temple. “Believe me, Robert, I’ve been doing plenty of both since I first heard the news early this morning. We have to remain positive, have to assume that they didn’t make it onto that flight. The odds aren’t great that they did.”
“With most anyone else I’d agree,” retorted Robert. “But with Lauren – well, you’ve seen her in action. She’d think nothing of badgering a gate agent or pitching a fit until they called the plane back to the gate.”
“Even Lauren can’t control everything,” Ben assured him gently. “And given how tight security is at airports nowadays, I doubt she would have been able to pull something like that off.”
“I suppose you’re right.” There was a pause for several seconds before Robert murmured in hushed tones, “God, if something happens to my girl I don’t know what we’ll do, Ben. My wife is holding on by a thread right now.”
“I know exactly how she feels,” whispered Ben. “Lauren is – well, she’s a very special woman, isn’t she? And, well - ”
“You’re in love with my daughter,” finished Robert. “Yes, I’ve been aware of that for quite some time. And I trust that if she makes it out of this that you plan on telling her exactly how you feel. Now, please. Call us the moment you have any news. No matter the time or no matter what the news.”
Robert hung up before Ben could even start to think up a reply, and he was left staring dumbly at the receiver.
But current circumstances didn’t allow for him to spend time pondering why Robert McKinnon had sounded so sure of himself just now, why he had very matter-of-factly stated that Ben was in love with Lauren. Had Lauren in fact confided in her father, or was Robert simply making an educated guess based on what he had observed?
As the morning became afternoon and then began to approach early evening, the mood in the office began to darken along with the sky. At some point during the day, Ben’s office had become ground control, and there were always at least half a dozen people clustered around, searching for news online, trying to call the crew’s cell phones or the satellite number every few minutes. People had been bringing food in all day, and he was vaguely nauseous as he looked it all over – donuts and bagels, the remnants of a foot-long sandwich, Chinese takeout containers, half a pizza, a tray of assorted cookies and cupcakes. He hadn’t been able to eat a thing all day, just coffee and water, had no appetite whatsoever.
“Ben, you should really eat something,” chided Nadine. She was red-eyed from crying, her voice barely above a croak. She felt responsible for what had happened, deeply regretted not having booked the crew on the direct flight from Port Blair to Delhi, but Ben hadn’t been able to summon up the energy to console her much, or to continually assure her that none of this was her fault.
Needless to say, no one had been in the mood to actually work today. The staff was like a big family, after all, most of them having worked together for years. None of them wanted to go home, and while Ben appreciated their support, what he really wanted was an hour or two of privacy so that he could try and make some sense of this mess. A nap wouldn’t hurt, either, except that he was so pumped full of caffeine and anxiety at this point that he didn’t know if he’d ever be able to sleep again.
His cell phone buzzed, and he snatched it up from his desk, only to heave a little sigh when he saw Elle’s name in the caller ID. Again.
“Any news?” she asked as he picked up the call.
“Not yet, no.”
This was at least the fifth call from Elle since he had told her about the plane crash, and while he appreciated her concern, the frequent calls were a distraction he could do without at the moment. Elle had offered to bring food over, to keep him company, and he knew her feelings had been hurt each time he had gently refused. But right now he simply couldn’t worry about Elle – not when the only woman he’d ever loved might very well be dead.
Ben shook his head, trying valiantly not to let himself sink into despair. He had to stay positive, had to hold on to whatever fragile threads of hope might still exist. The very thought that someone as young and bright and beautiful as Lauren could be dead was so unbelievable that it sounded like a bad dream. Maybe that’s all this was, he mused. Except that it had been the longest nightmare he’d ever had, one that had gone on for far too long. And if it was just a bad dream, then he was desperate to wake up from it any second now – to wake up and discover that Lauren and the others were just fine, that all the worry and panic and despair had been for nothing.
And when she arrived back in New York, he wasn’t going to waste even one more hour without telling her how he felt – explaining why he had left her, telling her how much he had always regretted his actions, and how he had never once stopped loving her. He was going to do all of that and more – provided he got the chance.
It was early evening by now, and somehow all of the food had been consumed. Nadine and a few of the others went out to grab burgers and shakes, and Ben humored them by asking for a mushroom Swiss burger and a vanilla shake, even though he doubted he could eat a single bite.
He was alone for the first time since very early this morning, when he’d picked up the call from Nadine that had caused his blood to run cold. As a way to distract himself, Ben checked his email, the first actual bit of work he’d attempted all day. He clicked automatically through two dozen or more messages, deleting some, replying to a few others, forwarding the rest to Kym.
And then he spied the message that had been marked as Personal and Confidential, specially flagged so that only he would be able to open it. But it was the sender’s name that really caught his attention, and he did a quick time and date conversion to determine when it had been sent. If his calculations were correct, then Lauren had sent this email roughly three hours before her flight had left Port Blair.
His fingers were trembling as he opened the email and began to read what could very well be the final communication that Lauren had sent to anyone.
Dear Ben,
You have no idea how many times I almost deleted this email. Or how many times I’ve edited it over the past couple of weeks. I didn’t know if I would ever have the guts to actually send it, until someone told me last night that life’s too short and that I should stop wasting even one more minute of it. And I decided he was right.
So, here it is, Ben. You asked me a couple of weeks ago to send you an email about what was on my mind, and while I was pretty pissed off at you for suggesting it, I decided that maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
Here’s the thing. I fell in love with you six years ago, and I’ve never really stopped feeling that way. Even when you left me and broke my heart in a million pieces (you bastard), I still couldn’t stop loving you. And I know it’s probably not cool to tell you that when you’re with Elle and practically engaged and all that, but I can’t keep my feelings bottled up anymore.
Okay, there. I’ve said it. Got it off my chest. Whew! That being said, I have no idea what happens from here, no idea how you feel about me or if you’re really going to ask Elle to marry you or not. I’m pretty sure you’re still attracted to me, given what happened at my aunt’s apartment, but beyond that I don’t have a clue.
I’m telling you all this now, putting it in an email, because I don’t know if I’d have the guts to tell you face to face. I’m sorry I never let you explain before, but I was so angry and hurt when you left me, and then when you just showed up at the magazine last year I was still so mad that I swore I’d never believe anything you told me ever again. I admit that I’m stubborn and proud and that I can hold a grudge like nobody else can. But I can also admit when I’ve been wrong – difficult as that might be to believe. And while I still don’t understand why you left me six years ago, I’m finally ready to hear you out.
I hope I haven’t made this all kinds of awkward, but if I didn’t tell you how I really felt now I might never have done it. So when I get back in a couple of days I’ll be ready to listen.
And if it turns out that Elle is the one you really want to be with, then I promise that will be cool. I won’t interfere or bother you, and I’m prepared to resign from the magazine and walk away – for my sake as well as yours. Because as tough as I’ve always been, even I have my limits. And seeing you married to someone else is way more than I could bear.
Love,
Lauren
His eyes were wet as he finished reading her somewhat rambling but nonetheless touching email. Ben buried his face in his hands, the sobs causing his entire body to shake as he prayed silently, fervently, for all of them to be safe and whole and well. He’d never been a spiritual man, hadn’t gone to church or even prayed since he’d been a young boy, but he prayed now, appealing repeatedly to some nameless higher power to answer his pleas.
It was the buzzing of his cell phone that jolted him out of his grieving, and he reached for it automatically, hoping that it wouldn’t be yet another call from Elle, And he knew it wouldn’t be George’s parents or Tamsyn or Robert McKinnon, because they had all been calling on his office number.
There was no caller ID visible, but Ben accepted the call anyway. The reception was poor, and he had to struggle to make out what the caller was saying. But when he recognized the voice on the other end, he nearly dropped to his knees in relief.
“Karl.” Ben shuddered. “Jesus, man. Tell me that all of you are okay.”
“We’re okay, Ben.” Karl’s voice sounded tinny, and there was so much interference with the connection that Ben had to struggle to understand every word. “We weren’t on the flight to Delhi. The plane was already on the runway by the time we got to the gate. And – Christ, Ben – we saw it all happen – the explosion, the fires, the chaos. It was – the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Ben attempted to stand, to walk over to his office window in the hopes of getting a clearer signal from the satellite phone Karl was calling on. But he quickly found that his legs were shaking much too hard to support him, and he sank back down onto his desk chair.
“Thank God you’re all okay,” he told Karl fervently. “You have no idea how worried everyone has been. How are the others holding up?”
“Chris and Lauren have been troupers. George has been sick as a dog, poor kid. In fact, we sort of have him to thank for us missing that flight. Our flight from Port Blair was like a roller coaster ride, and he had such bad motion sickness that he had to duck into the bathroom three different times to puke before we could make it to the gate. I thought Lauren was going to dismember him for a few minutes when we realized we’d missed the flight. And now – well, she’s been taking care of him, acting like a little mother hen.”
Ben couldn’t help himself from smiling a little at the image that popped into his head. “You’ve got to take a photo of that because nobody will believe you otherwise.”
Karl chuckled. “Yeah, maybe so. Speaking of which, Chris took a bunch of video and Lauren’s got tons of shots from the scene here. I’ve been trying to do some interviews and writing up an eyewitness account. Not our usual kind of stuff, for sure, but we thought under the circumstances – well, we are journalists, after all. It’s also helped to keep our minds off of how close we came to being on that flight ourselves.”
“I get it. And I’m sure it will make an incredible article. Now, fill me in on the current situation there, and when we can expect all of you back home.”
Karl gave him a quick update on the conditions at Chennai Airport. The power had finally been restored to the terminal, where all of the passengers had been stranded for almost twenty hours now without air conditioning or lights. Cell phone and internet service still weren’t easily available, and Karl had just now been able to get the satellite phone to connect. The airlines, who had their own back-up servers, were scrambling to re-book all the stranded passengers on new flights. Flights were expected to resume on the one functioning airstrip within the next eight to ten hours.
“They were able to get all of us on a direct flight from Chennai to London,” said Karl. “Though it won’t leave for more than twelve hours yet. And they weren’t able to make arrangements for us from London to New York, said we’d have to take care of that when we get to Heathrow.”
“Never mind that. Give me your flight info and I’ll have Nadine handle it for you,” declared Ben. “She and a bunch of the staff have been here all day, and should be back in a few minutes. I’m sure under the circumstances she’ll be thrilled to book flights for you. You might even get to fly business class.”
Karl gave a weary chuckle. “I think we’d settle for the cargo hold on a FedEx plane right about now. Here’s the flight info.”
Ben jotted down the flight number and its arrival time in London. “I’ll have Nadine jump right on it the minute she gets back with dinner. I’m guessing everyone will feel like celebrating when they hear the good news. I’ll text you the flight info as soon as it’s confirmed.”
“Thanks, man. I don’t know if we’ll get email service back up here before we leave, so I may not see your text until we get to London. Have – have you talked to Tamsyn at all?” asked Karl tentatively.
“Three times,” assured Ben. “She’s holding it together, but this has been tough on everyone. I think her parents are with her right now. You haven’t called her yet?”
“No. We decided the first call should be to you, just in case the satellites got blocked again. Figured that way at least one person would have the news and could pass it on to our families.”
“Good thinking. And you guys go ahead and call your families now. I’ll do the same, just in case you can’t get through,” instructed Ben.
“Are you sure?” asked Karl uncertainly. “I mean, it’s expensive to use these suckers.”
“Fuck the expense,” Ben replied flatly. “And considering how worried everyone here has been about you guys, nobody will have the balls to bitch about the cost.”
“Okay. Thanks, Ben. Look, I’d better sign off then so we can all make those calls. This has been a real ordeal, I must say. Though I feel guilty for even thinking about complaining, given the circumstances. I’d much rather be sweaty, tired, and hungry than dead.”
Ben closed his eyes for a few seconds, offering up a silent thanks that his prayers had been answered. “You got that right. And let’s plan on having a party when you guys get back here – dinner and drinks on me. Karl - ” he hesitated before asking his next question. “How – how is she?”
Karl’s voice was reassuringly gentle. “She’s fine, Ben. Physically, at least, though she’s about ready to drop just like the rest of us. Emotionally, well – it shook her up bad. I think that’s why she’s been fussing over George so much, as a way to keep her mind off of what could have happened.”
“I get it. I’ll let you go now, Karl, so you can get started on those phone calls. And I’ll contact everyone’s family, too, just in case you don’t get through. And Karl - ” Ben’s voice cracked a little, despite his best efforts to remain strong. “Take care of her for me, okay? Just don’t let her know you’re doing it or she’ll be pissed.”
Karl chuckled. “I’ve been doing just that for five years now, and she’s never caught on yet. I’m not going to stop now.”
Ben was grinning broadly as he set his phone down, feeling like a huge weight had just been lifted off his chest. Not to mention the hunger pains that he was feeling for the first time all day. Hoping that Nadine and the others would be back any minute, he was relieved to notice a handful of cookies still sitting on one of the platters. He devoured three of them before calling the first name on his list.
“Robert? It’s Ben Rafferty. And I’ve got some very good news for you.”
***
It was close to eleven p.m. by the time he arrived at the brownstone, both mentally and physically exhausted. Today had definitely been one in which he’d experienced both the lowest lows – fearful that his beloved Lauren and the rest of the crew had perished in the plane crash – and also the highest highs – after hearing from Karl that everyone was all right and would be home again in a couple of days.
Nadine and the others had been overjoyed upon their return to hear the good news, and there had been a lot of hugs, tears, and cheers as they’d consumed the burgers and shakes, this time with a real appetite.
Each of the crew’s families that Ben had called had been incredibly grateful to hear from him, none more so than Robert and Natalie. Both of Lauren’s parents had come on the line, thanking him profusely for the good news.
Robert had told him just before hanging up, “You need to come out here to the coast very soon, young man. I think we all have a great deal to talk about. And I have one of Lauren’s photos to show you, one that I think will be of great interest to you. Take good care of my girl when you see her, Ben, and send her back home to us as soon as possible, you hear?”
“Yes, sir,” Ben had replied rather meekly. He’d been too emotionally spent, and had had too many other things to get done, to be able to quiz Robert further on his somewhat cryptic comments.
Nadine hadn’t been able to find a flight from London to New York for the crew until the day after they arrived in from India, so Ben had given her the go-ahead to book them into a hotel for the night. She had also reserved a flight for him to London, as well as a room at the same hotel. There was no possible way he could wait even one extra day to hold Lauren in his arms again, and he planned to be waiting for her and the others at Heathrow. And if Nadine had thought his request a bit unusual, she’d been too wrung out from the day’s events to question him.
He had sent Elle a text to let her know that the crew was safe and well, but that he wasn’t sure when he would be able to leave the office. He walked up the stairs of the brownstone quietly to the second floor, not wanting to wake her if she was already asleep. Elle lived by the old adage “early to bed, early to rise”, and he knew she usually attended a early morning Pilates class.
Her rooms were dark when he reached the landing, so he took extra care to be quiet as he entered his own rooms. Despite his exhaustion, he was still too wound up to even think of falling asleep just yet, so he set his alarm, grabbed a duffle bag from the closet, and began to gather up the clothing and shoes he’d need for the quick trip across the Atlantic.
It was only when he walked inside his bathroom to assemble a few toiletries for the trip that he noticed a dim light coming from his office. Ben frowned, because he hadn’t even been inside that room for over a week. He poked his head around the doorway and almost recoiled in surprise.
“Elle. What are you doing in here?”
She was sitting at his desk and staring blankly at his computer monitor, which he sure as hell hadn’t left on this morning. And she looked as though a ghost had just flown through the room – pale and clearly upset. Her eyes were wide with some unnamed emotion as she slowly lifted her gaze to his.
“You lied to me, Ben,” she whispered. “Over and over again. She lied, too. Both of you have done nothing but lie to me from the very beginning.”
He walked into the room, momentarily ignoring the fact that she had chosen to invade his privacy by using his computer – an agreement that she had actually been the one to instigate right after he’d moved in. Elle was intensely private about her work, had both her laptop and desktop password protected, and they had both agreed never to use the other’s computers unless specifically agreed to by the other party.
And yet here she was, having rather flagrantly ignored that agreement, staring at something she’d found on his PC.
“What are you talking about, Elle?” he asked impatiently, definitely not in the mood tonight for one of her scenes. “And why are you using my computer? I thought we agreed - ”
Ben stopped in mid-stride and in mid-sentence as Elle abruptly turned the monitor around so he could see exactly what she’d been staring at in near-horror – row upon row upon row of photos of Lauren. His very personal, very private collection – the one he had quite intentionally placed into a folder with a very cryptic file name. The vast majority of the photos had been taken six years ago in Big Sur, but there were others that had been added far more recently – last December’s holiday party, the photos he’d copied from her Facebook page of Julia’s wedding, another of Lauren on her motorcycle, a candid shot that Chris had taken of her in profile on one of their recent trips.
“How could you?” asked Elle brokenly, tears beginning to well up in her eyes. “How could you lie to me that way, Ben, cheat on me - ”
“I haven’t cheated on you,” he interrupted. “I told you more than once that I wasn’t having an affair with Lauren and that’s the truth. Those photos – most of them, anyway – are six years old. I knew her back then, met her one summer in Big Sur. But I left and we didn’t see or hear from each other again until I took the job at National Geographic Travel.”
“That’s why you took the job, isn’t it?” she accused. “So you could be near her again. So you could start your dirty little affair back up.”
“No.” Ben shook his head firmly. “When I accepted the job I had no idea she already worked there. I hadn’t looked her up at all over the years, had no idea where she was living or working at the time. And what we had, Elle, was about as far from a dirty little affair as you could possibly imagine, so stop calling it that.”
Elle gasped, a hand flying to her throat. “My God,” she breathed. “It’s her, isn’t it? Lauren is the girl you were so crazy about when I met you, the one you were so broken up over. Oh, God, how did I never see that, never guess?”
Ben wondered wildly how much shittier this day could possibly get, and ran a hand wearily through his hair. “Yes,” he told her quietly. “Lauren was the one. She’s the woman I told you about, the one I fell in love with.”
Elle was shoving her hands into her hair, pulling strands out haphazardly from its previously tidy knot. “I knew it,” she mumbled, as though to herself. “I knew there was something going on between the pair of you. And both of you lied to my face. You and that bitch.”
Ben’s jaw clenched in annoyance. “When did you speak to Lauren about this? And should I assume you were the one to tell her that we were as good as engaged?”
Elle’s bottom lip trembled as she raised teary eyes to his. “We should be engaged,” she murmured. “We’ve been together long enough, it’s the next logical step in our relationship.”
“Except that I don’t feel the same way, Elle,” he reminded her gently. “I’ve always been honest with you about my feelings, have offered time and again to move out, let you get on with your life, and find someone who can love you the way you deserve. I was never going to be that man, and you know it.”
“Because of her!” she burst out. “You couldn’t let yourself love me because you were still in love with that awful woman! And I don’t believe either of you, Ben. I knew, just knew, that you were sleeping with her for months now, maybe ever since you saw her again.”
“I haven’t,” he denied tiredly. “There was one time – just one – when we kissed. But that’s as far as it went.” He didn’t add that the kiss would, in fact, have gone a whole lot further if Lauren’s queasy stomach hadn’t provided a timely interruption.
Elle shook her head. “I still don’t believe you. If there wasn’t anything going on between you, then why didn’t you tell me you’d known her before? I gave you plenty of opportunities, Ben.”
He sighed. “I know you did. And believe me, I thought about telling you many times. But then you’d get upset when a waitress or a store clerk smiled at me, would become hysterical even. And I couldn’t even imagine how you’d react if I told you about Lauren. But I can see now that I was wrong. Regardless of how upset you might have been, I should have told you about her a long time ago, and for that I apologize. I was just trying to protect you, to spare your feelings.”
“Spare my feelings?” Elle spat out. “Well, if you were so intent on doing that, then why in hell did you keep all these photos of her on your computer? And – oh, God – the ones in the bottom rows. They’re more recent ones, aren’t they? This one here – it was just taken in December at the office party.”
Ben was almost ready to collapse with fatigue by now, too wrung out to have this particular conversation with Elle. But he knew there was no hope for it now, that there was absolutely no way she’d let it go until she had the answers she sought.
“Yes, some are recent,” he acknowledged reluctantly. “Which brings up another point entirely. Why are you even looking at my computer, Elle? Especially since you’re the one who insisted we always respect each other’s privacy and leave the other’s computers alone. And I know I didn’t leave this on this morning. I haven’t even used this computer for almost two weeks.”
Elle had the good graces to look guilty, and she avoided his gaze as she mumbled an excuse. “I was looking for the photos you took in Spain,” she explained sullenly. “I was telling Antonia all about our trip, and since they’re thinking of vacationing there next spring I promised I’d send her our pictures. And I knew you kept all your photos stored on this computer and didn’t think you would mind. But instead of pictures of our lovely vacation, I find this – this pornography.”
Ben shook his head. “Christ sakes, Elle. By no stretch of the imagination are these photos pornographic.”
“Really? What would you call this then?” she demanded, enlarging a photo of Lauren as she lay sleeping, her lush little body completely nude.
His anger and irritation were beginning to reach the boiling point as he snatched the mouse away from her and abruptly powered down his computer. “I’d call it a gross invasion of my privacy and none of your business,” he bit out. “You had no right to go searching through my files that way, Elle. And I know you would have had to dig deep, since that particular file was very intentionally given an obscure name. There was no possible way you could have thought our pictures from Spain were contained there. By the way, I haven’t had the chance to even upload them from my camera yet. You were snooping, quite obviously, something you’ve made a huge deal out of not doing ever since I moved in. Or are the rules different for me?”
“Maybe I should have snooped a long time ago,” she retorted. “At least then I would have known the truth.”
He exhaled deeply. “If I had thought for one minute that you’d be able to understand and accept the truth – that you could trust me – I would have told you everything. But you’ve got to admit, Elle, that your reactions in the past haven’t exactly been rational.”
“And apparently I had good cause to react that way!” she cried. “Tell me, Ben. Is she the reason you’ve been avoiding me these last few weeks? Why you’re still sleeping here in your own room?”
He thrust a hand through his hair in abject frustration. “Should I remind you that – once again – it’s been because of your rules that we haven’t shared a room for so long? Because of your parents who’ve been our unofficial roommates for so many weeks? And, yes, I know they’ve been gone for awhile now and that I’ve been spending more time at the office lately. But that has nothing to do with Lauren. It has to do with us. It’s been my way of gradually bringing things to a close, Elle.”
Her skin paled even more noticeably, her mouth hanging open in shock as she shook her head in emphatic denial. “No. You don’t mean that, Ben. How can you even think of breaking up with me? I love you, Ben,” she pleaded tearfully. “I’ve loved you from the start. And I’d do anything to keep you with me.”
He scoffed. “Including spying on me? Breaking your own rule to go searching through my files? But that isn’t even the point right now, Elle. The point is that I should have never moved in here with you, should have never become involved with you. I’ve tried to be honest with you about my feelings, but I can see that hasn’t made any difference. And I wanted to do this slowly, to talk about it with you calmly, and for both of us to agree that it’s better to go our separate ways. This is not the way I wanted all of this to unfold. But, unfortunately, there’s not much else I can say right now except – I’m sorry. I don’t want to hurt you, Elle. I never have. You’ve been a good friend to me, but that’s all it’s ever really been for me. And it’s over now, well and truly over.”
He couldn’t talk about it for even one more minute, badly needed some time to decompress from the hellish day he’d had, and he turned and marched into his bathroom to take a shower. He needed to grab whatever sleep he could manage before his early morning flight, and hoped like hell that Elle wouldn’t insist on continuing with this scene tonight. He quickly toweled off, pulled on a pair of track pants and a T-shirt, and walked into his bedroom – only to find Elle there staring in shock at the duffel bag he’d left on top of his bed.
“You’re leaving already?” she said brokenly, her eyes swimming with tears. “You – you’ve already packed?”
“No. I mean, it’s not what you think,” he clarified. “Yes, I’ve got a bag packed but it’s only for a quick trip to London. My flight leaves in the morning, and I’ll be back in a couple of days.”
She sniffled. “London? Why on earth are you going there? And on such short notice.”
Ben honestly didn’t know how much longer he could remain upright at this point, scrubbing a weary hand over his face. “I’m going there to meet the crew,” he told her, not especially caring at this point how she would take the news. “They’re flying to London from Chennai and staying there overnight until they can get a flight back home the next day. And I’m going to meet them there, make sure everyone is all right after the ordeal they just went through.”
“Why?” asked Elle, looking confused. “You told me everyone was okay. Why do you have to go all the way to London for what sounds like barely a day, and then turn around and fly back here?”
“Because I’m responsible for them,” Ben told her firmly. “They could have died today, Elle, they came within five or ten minutes of being on that flight. And I need to be there for them. For my sake as well as theirs.”
“You mean for Lauren’s sake, don’t you?” asked Elle bitterly. “You’re only flying there to see her, Ben, not the others.”
“I’d be going regardless, Elle, no matter who it was,” he replied tiredly. “Look, I’ve got an early flight and I really need a few hours of sleep. Can we please finish talking about this when I get back?”
Elle straightened her spine, lifted her chin proudly, and gave him a decidedly unpleasant look. “If you go to London tomorrow, Ben, then don’t bother talking to me ever again,” she told him coldly. “You make your choice right now – me or her.”
Ben shook his head sadly, then threw a few more things into his duffle before picking up his laptop bag. “I’m sorry, Elle,” he murmured. “I never meant for it to happen this way. But there’s really no choice to make anymore.”
He placed his keys on the dresser before walking down the stairs and out of her life.