Craving Him

16

Ben

Emmy’s brow was crinkled in deep concentration, her laptop balanced on her knees as she sat next to me on the sofa. I loved her work ethic and dedication to my career but I wouldn’t have minded her taking a break now and again, either.

We’d been discussing options for my charity and whether it made more sense to start something of my own or join up with an established organization. We’d considered building orphanages for AIDS victims in Africa, setting up freshwater wells in Central America, and sponsoring early childhood education programs here in the United States..

“Thank you for staying over,” I said, leaning down to breath in against her neck. Emmy had been staying over more and more, and though she hadn’t officially agreed to move in yet, she’d brought a duffle bag and left it in my closet. She knew I needed her here to sleep. Her toiletries and some spare clothes were inside, not yet unpacked, but I knew it was only a matter of time. A step this big should scare me, but instead it made me ridiculously fucking happy.

It was hard for me to admit it but I needed her. I’d never needed anyone, but this sweet southern girl was different. She had been from day one. Her refreshingly real attitude had knocked me on my ass—floored me right from the get-go.

I still remembered meeting her for the first time in Fiona’s office and chuckled out loud.

“What?” Emmy asked, her eyes lighting up with a smile.

I knew she loved seeing me lighthearted like this. And early memories of her did that to me. “I was just thinking about the first time we met at the Status headquarters.”

Her smile faded ever so slightly. “Oh, God.” She buried her face in her hands. “When I spilled that tea all over the floor? I was a nervous wreck around you.”

Interesting. At the time, I’d assumed it was just Fiona that made her so nervous and unsure.

“I can’t even imagine what you must have thought of me,” she continued.

“I thought you were stunning,” I said, brushing the back of my knuckles along her cheekbone. “You didn’t fit the mold of Fiona’s typical assistant and I couldn’t take my eyes off you. You looked so sweet and innocent. I wanted to corrupt you.”

“I thought you barely noticed me,” she said, glancing down.

“I noticed everything. How erratically your pulse fluttered in your neck when you looked directly at me.” I trailed a fingertip down the column of her throat. “How your eyes peered straight into mine. I knew you saw the real me, and I was intrigued. But I also knew I should leave you alone. I knew Fiona wouldn’t take the news well that I wanted to fuck her assistant.”

Her quick inhalation of breath told me I’d hidden that fact well. That, or my choice of language surprised her.

“I thought you were out of my league,” she admitted softly.

I laughed. “No. The other way around, sweetheart. You were real and genuine. I knew my mountains of baggage would likely scare you away. But everything in me wanted to devour you.”

“I picked up on that once you started texting me.” She smiled widely. “But I knew right from the beginning you’d be dangerous for me—that it wouldn’t be just about sex. I knew I could fall hard for you.”

“The feeling was mutual, trust me. Scared the shit out of me, too. I’d never needed anyone before. But after that first night we spent together you were a magic cure for my insomnia; I knew you were special. That you and I had something special.”

Her little hand found mine and squeezed.

“And the fact that you cared enough to convince me to stop relying on those pills and always wanted to take care of me . . . I’d never been treated like that by a woman. Most were more concerned with getting my autograph, finding out if the shit they’d seen in the tabloids about my mother was true, or posing for a picture with me to post to their Instagram. It was all about saying they’d met me. You didn’t care about any of that.”

She met my eyes. “Not a bit. The nurturer in me just wanted to feed you.”

I truly couldn’t imagine my life without her in it. I’d never been one for commitment, but I needed to make sure she stuck by my side no matter what the future held. I couldn’t fuck this up.

Emmy was in my bathroom drying her hair while I prepared a light breakfast of poached eggs and fruit for us. It turned out having her here made me want to cook. I transferred a bowl of blueberries and sliced pineapple to the breakfast bar just as my phone began to ring.

I padded into the living room and found it on the console table. Damn. It was Fiona.

“Hello?

“Hi, love,” she cooed in her sharp British accent that I used to think was sexy.

“Did you need something?” The last thing I needed was Emmy finding me on the phone with Fiona, though I could still hear the blow-dryer running.

“Yes, I actually wanted to tell you that I’ve decided to go through with the paternity testing after all. It’s driving me mad not knowing.”

“Uh . . . okay. I’m happy to pay for it.”

She huffed. “You know that’s not why I’m telling you. I don’t need your money, love.”

No, I supposed she didn’t. She had plenty of her own. She ran a top modeling agency in New York. She made 15 percent commission on everything I made, and I did quite well. “When will you know?”

“The test is on Tuesday, so about a week or ten days after that. I’ll be sure to call you.”

“Okay.” I didn’t quite know how I felt about all this. Emmy and I seemed strong right now . . . but if the baby turned out to be mine . . . I didn’t know.

“Is Emmy there now?”

I could still hear the blow-dryer running. “Yes.”

Fiona paused for a long moment, the sound of her breathing soft yet distinct. “Ben, does she know your past like I do? Does she know everything, including your little indiscretion from years ago?”

My mind reeled to follow her line of thinking. Then it came roaring back to me. My mistake two years ago. Of course I’d told Fiona about it at the time—as my manager it was possible she’d need to keep it from leaking to the public. I didn’t know why she was bringing it up now, however. My stomach dropped. Unless she planned to use it against me with Emmy. “Don’t fucking wreck this for me. I will walk away from your agency so fast.”

“Ben, I’d never do anything to hurt you. You should know that. I’m just asking a simple question. Does she know?”

“No. And I hope she never will. Now drop it,” I growled and hung up, resisting the urge to hurl my phone against the wall. Instead I let it fall from my open hand and onto the carpet with a soft thud. Fuck. I felt like punching something.

“Who was that?” Emmy asked, looking concerned and standing in the doorway.

I hadn’t heard her there. “Ah. Nobody, baby.” Nice lie, asshole. God, what was wrong with me? She frowned. “Come here.” Emmy walked into my outstretched arms and laid her head against my chest. My heart was pounding like crazy. I couldn’t have anything ruin us. “It was Fiona, actually.”

“Oh?” She stepped back out of my arms.

“Yeah, she wanted to tell me she decided to have the paternity testing done after all.”

“Okay.” She visibly swallowed, her hands clenching at her sides. “So we’ll know something soon.”

“Yes, in one to two weeks.”

Emmy took two more steps backward. “Why is she doing it now? She said . . .”

“I know.”

Her arms crossed over her chest in a defensive stance. “If this is some angle to try and get you back. I mean, if you turn out to be the father . . .”

I tugged her close again, stroking her hair. “Hey, I’m not going anywhere. It’s me and you, babe.” I only hoped it stayed that way.

Watching Emmy move around my apartment, the striking force of realization that hit me was almost too much. I couldn’t lose her. I knew with certainty I would marry her tomorrow if she’d have me; I’d move to Tennessee if that’s what she wanted. Christ, it’d put us farther away from all the drama in my life and give us peace to just enjoy each other. I imagined us owning a country home that she could fill with beautiful things and delicious foods. I imagined watching her belly grow round with the life we created. It made me weak in the knees to realize how badly I needed something I didn’t even know I wanted.

I felt something powerful surge in my chest. As soon as Fiona’s test came back, I could have Emmy like I wanted. Like she wanted—marriage, a real commitment, a home we built together, and children in our future. Just us. No more drama. No more Fiona. I couldn’t fucking wait.

“Shit, man, I never thought I’d see the day.” Braydon shook his head, the beer bottle suspended halfway to his mouth all but forgotten. He stared at me, a look of surprise etched into his features, like I’d grown a second head. But I guess that’s what happened when you told your best friend you were thinking of popping the question.

He was right, I’d never wanted to commit, never wanted to have someone in my life—until now. I used to love my life—coming and going as I pleased, jetting off to exotic cities, adding stamps to my passport, and not having to answer to anyone, except maybe Fiona. Now it all seemed so incredibly empty. And dull. And meaningless. I wanted more. And having Emmy by my side provided a certain comfort, a feeling of being loved and cared for that I had never known was missing. God, I sounded pathetic. If I actually said these things out loud, Braydon would probably tell me to grow a pair. And rightly so. I needed to have my man card checked. But shit, love made a person do crazy things. And I wanted to put a big old diamond on my baby’s finger, see her eyes light up, and take her to the bedroom to make love to her slowly, to make her understand that she was mine forever.

He took a slug from his beer. “Ben mother-fuckin’ Shaw settling down, committing to one woman, just one pussy to sink into for all of eternity. Damn, bro.”

I shot him an angry scowl. His words were meant to scare me but they had the opposite effect. Knowing Emmy would be mine for the rest of forever sounded pretty fucking perfect to me. Although I hated knowing he’d been inside her, too. He knew just how perfect and sweet she was. The thought didn’t sit well with me. I downed the shot of bourbon and held up the empty shot glass, signaling the bartender for another.

“Although it is Emmy. Shit, if she looked at me like she does you, I’d probably be getting down on one knee, too,” Braydon said, looking contemplative.

“Yeah, right.” We both knew Braydon preferred his single life way too much to make a commitment like that. His one serious girlfriend fucked him up pretty royally, too, so I didn’t see him jumping on the relationship train anytime soon.

“Wipe that angry-ass look off your face. I’m happy for you, man.”

“Thanks,” I bit out.

“Can I be best man?”

“You promise not to talk about my future wife’s pussy ever again?”

A lopsided grin lifted his mouth and he chewed on his lip as if deciding whether he could live with my request. I slugged his shoulder and the grin disappeared in a damn hurry. “Ouch. Fuck, man, you’re touchy.” He rubbed his shoulder. “She’s all yours. You have nothing to worry about. That girl is crazy in love with you, too.”

I smiled, knowing he was right. Emmy was perfect. And soon she would be mine. Forever.

It took me a moment to place the voice on the other end of the phone. Her broken sobs made it nearly impossible to make out what she was saying. “Fiona? Is that you?”

“Y-yes,” she cried, heaving a breath inward.

“What happened? Is the baby okay?”

“Fine. The baby’s fine.” She quieted for a moment, seeming to pull herself together, because when she spoke again, her voice was much clearer. “The results came back.”

My stomach sunk like a stone. “Okay . . . that’s a good thing, right?” It was time to face the music.

“I suppose so.”

“What’s it say, Fiona?” I held my breath, waiting, while my heart jackhammered against my ribs.

“It’s not yours, love.” Her voice went whisper soft like she was breaking the news to me gently.

My fist pumped in the air, but I held back the shout of joy I wanted to let trip. “Wow. So your last fertility treatment must have worked, then?”

“Seems so,” she said, her voice full of melancholy.

“How do you feel?”

“Shocked. Surprised. I really thought it was yours. And I’d gotten over thinking that you and I were going to be together, but I thought I’d always have this little piece of you. . . .”

We each remained quiet for a few moments, letting the weight of this information sink in.

“Fiona?”

“Yes, love?”

“I need to ask something of you.”

“Anything.”

“I need you to let me go, to release me from my contract early. I’m leaving Status to work for myself.”

She hesitated briefly, releasing a heavy sigh. “If that’s what you want.”

“It is,” I confirmed.

“Then I’ll tear up the contract. Consider it my gift to you for five loyal years.”

“Thank you.” The tension in my entire body went lax at once.

“I’ll always love you, Ben.”

“I know.”

“If anything ever changes between you and Emmy . . .”

“It won’t. Good-bye Fiona.”

“Bye,” she murmured.

I wasn’t going to be a father. A sense of relief washed over me. Fiona was out of my life and I was free.

I dialed Emmy the moment I pulled myself together.

“Baby!” I couldn’t contain the excitement in my voice.

“Hi there. What’s going on?” she chuckled softly at my enthusiasm.

“I have some news.”

“Oh yeah? Everything okay?”

“Everything is better than okay. It’s fan-fucking-tastic, actually.”

She giggled. “Okay, so now I’m intrigued. What is it?”

“Two things actually.” I knew I was drawing this out, torturing her, but Christ, we’d waited so long to hear this news, I didn’t know how to just blurt it out. “I just talked to Fiona. I’m not the father.”

Silence.

“Emmy? Did you hear me?”

“Yes,” she whispered. I could imagine she was shaky and breathless, just like I’d been when I’d heard. “Oh my God, you don’t know what a relief this is.”

“Trust me, babe. I do.”

“Ben . . .”

“I know, baby. I know. We can finally be together.”

“I love you,” she said. I could hear the smile in her voice.

“I love you more.”

“Wait, you said you had something else to tell me.”

“Yeah, I told Fiona that I was leaving Status. As of today, it’s you and me, babe.”

“That’s wonderful, Ben. I’m proud of you.”

Hearing her say those words meant everything. After all I’d done to jeopardize things with her, apparently I was doing something right, too.

“I have news, too,” she said, her voice teasing.

“Spill it, Tennessee.”

“Guess what I’m doing right now?”

“What, baby?”

“Packing. I decided to move in.”

Damn. This day was getting better and better. “You won’t regret it. I’ll be your love slave and take care of your every need.”

“Hmm . . . I like that. Will you even go to the pharmacy and buy me tampons when I need them?”

If that’s all it took to make her happy, I’d gladly do that and more. “You know it, baby.”

I wished I’d been there to tell her in person, but she and Ellie were having a girls night tonight, and I wanted to be respectful of her time with her friend. “Can I take you out this weekend to celebrate?”

“That sounds perfect.”

Emmy

My life had turned into a damn episode of Maury. But Fiona’s plan backfired in the best way possible. Ben was not the father. After he’d called and told me, I’d collapsed into a heap on the floor, sucking in deep breaths like they were my first after being underwater too long. I hadn’t realized how tense the whole situation had made me.

I felt as though a weight had been lifted from my shoulders, from our relationship, and it was terrific. And the happiness in Ben’s voice was unmistakable, too. Thank God. Now we could finally move forward. And the icing on the cake was that he’d decided to separate from Status Models, from Fiona, and to work as a free agent. I would help him book jobs and he’d no longer be represented by her. He thought it was for the best, given all the drama over the past several months, and I couldn’t agree more.

Everything was falling into place. I felt happy and secure with my job, our relationship, and even though I felt a little bad about moving out on Ellie, she understood and was happy for me.

Just as I was stuffing the last of my clothes into a suitcase, Ellie entered my bedroom. Her face was masked in a frown. I knew she’d been upset about guys lately, but I’d never seen her so down. “Ells?”

“Honey, you need to come here.” Her tone was deadly serious and I wondered what in the world had happened as I followed her to the living room. She went to her laptop and began loading some type of video.

“What’s this?” I asked completely dumbfounded about what we were doing watching some random video.

“You might want to sit down,” she said.

I smiled uncertainly but lowered myself into a chair. “Ellie?”

Ellie pressed a button and the video began to play. My eyes struggled to comprehend the grainy images I was seeing.

I watched everything come into focus and . . . Holy Fuck! A naked couple was on the screen. He was going down on her and she was grinding against his face and moaning. The muscular back. His dark hair. There was something so familiar about it.

And then all at once I recognized him. Ben.

And the girl he was with was startlingly familiar, too.

Oh God. London.

He inserted two fingers inside her and she promptly came, calling out his name. He slid up her body and positioned himself at her entrance before pushing forward.

This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t real. No.

“It can’t be,” I whispered. He wouldn’t. Would he? I leapt from my seat and began pacing the living room.

Ellie watched me with a worried stare.

Holy God. I felt like all the oxygen had been vacuumed from the room and my lungs were crying out for air. I curled my arms around my chest and sucked in a deep breath. Tears escaped from my eyes and rolled down my cheeks. No. God, no. This couldn’t be recent. Could it?

“Emmy,” Ellie caught me just as my legs gave out and guided me to the floor. I collapsed into a boneless heap, legs splayed and arms clutching to myself as I slowly began to rock back and forth.

“No, no, nooo . . .” I muttered quietly, snapping my eyes shut. “Turn it off.”

Ellie obeyed, leaving my side only briefly to click the pause button on her laptop.

It didn’t matter, though. The images were burned into my retinas. There’d be no unseeing the way Ben’s hips rocked into her, the way his fingers laced with hers above her head, a move he’d used on me, too. There’d be no unhearing the low growl in his throat when he entered her. Tears freely streamed down my cheeks and a silent sob broke from my chest.

Ellie sunk to the floor next to me and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “I’m sorry. I just thought you needed to know.”

“How did you find it?” I asked, through hiccupping tears.

“It’s the top news story on every celebrity gossip site today.”

I clutched my heart, gasping for air, and prayed it didn’t give out on me completely. All the things we’d been through . . . every hurdle . . . now none of it mattered. Ben had betrayed me.

I realized Ellie was still talking about the video and I wiped away streams of tears and tried to focus on what she was saying.

“I don’t know how it got leaked, or when it’s from, but they’re saying the girl in the video is his ex . . .”

“London. I know her,” I croaked. “She was in Fiji with us . . .”An unwelcome thought slipped into my brain. Had he cheated on me when we were in Fiji?

“Yeah. London Burke. A model, apparently . . .” Ellie gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Hey, you okay?” Her sympathetic look was too much. I saw in her eyes how foolish I’d been to trust Ben all these times. To give him all these second chances.

“No.” Of course I wasn’t okay. I doubted I’d ever be okay again. Ben had ruined me. Ruined me for all other men. For future trusting relationships. And my heart still yearned for him, stupidly enough.

“Vodka? Chocolate? A blowtorch to fry his balls? What do you need?”

“Nothing. I just don’t want to be alone right now.”

“You got it, babe.”

I crawled from the living room floor and onto my bed, sinking into the soft mattress. Somehow I was exhausted. Emotionally and mentally drained.

She pulled the blankets up around me and turned off the lights before crawling in beside me. Just having her weight on the mattress next to me was enough to make me not feel so alone.

“Maybe it wasn’t even him, sweetie. I mean, it looked like him, but you never know. . . .” Ellie said, softly rubbing my back.

“It was him.” I knew it with absolute certainty. I recognized everything about the possessive way he fucked, the way his body moved, his measured strokes, the strong muscles in his back. There was no trying to pretend it wasn’t him. “She called out his name, Ellie. It was him.”

God, the whole world had seen my boyfriend naked and in all his glory. Or was he my ex-boyfriend now? That realization stung more than anything. But what else was I supposed to think? He’d filmed a video with London, and even if it was in the past, he should have told me. Warned me. Prepared me. Not let me stumble across it on the Internet like everyone else.

His profession already ensured I had to share him with the world. Anyone could Google him and see him in his underwear, or in any number of provocative poses, but this was way too much to handle. I wasn’t cut out for this life. I didn’t want a boyfriend who was a celebrity, a media target, or one with so many salacious secrets. It wasn’t healthy.

The niggling feeling in my gut was back in full force. This relationship wasn’t going to work. As much as I’d try to force it, to prove to myself that Ben fit into my life, this was the universe’s way of showing me it wouldn’t ever work. I needed to cut my losses now. But first, I wanted to lose myself in grief. Slamming my eyes closed to force away the images of him with another woman, I curled into a ball and quietly sobbed. I sobbed for what I’d seen, and I sobbed for my poor smashed-up heart. It’d never recover. I knew I’d always live with Ben in there and the realization terrified me.