Benny sharing touched me…deep.

Digging in there…deeper.

“Ben,” I whispered.

“Should have my ass kicked, not givin’ this emotion to him at the time. But I didn’t. So, not only did it mean I f**ked up and hurt you, it feels like I lost him all over again.”

I held on tighter and got up on my toes to get close and kept whispering when I said, “Honey. Stop.”

“How?” he asked.

I didn’t have a clue.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But there’s no purpose to you being pissed, Benny. He’s gone. You can’t change anything.”

“I know that, babe, and it doesn’t help.”

“Then how’s this?” I went on. “You get it. You get what’s in that picture is everything in life you need. And Vinnie making that lesson clear, you’ll never forget it. It sucks how he gave you that lesson, Ben, but at least he gave you something and you cannot deny it was important.”

He held my eyes as his hand at my waist slid up and he started idly stroking my side.

It felt nice. Casual. Natural. Benny.

And the ground under my feet continued to rock.

I just didn’t care.

“She’s sweet, spicy, and smart,” he muttered, his lips tipping up slightly, his words and the lip tip telling me he was letting go of the heavy.

I gave a slight shrug.

“That was a great Christmas,” he said quietly.

“Yeah,” I agreed just as quietly.

“Miss those cookies you make, the ones with the dough around the Hershey’s Kisses.”

“Chocolate-filled snowballs.”

“Yeah.”

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

I knew he liked them. I knew this because, if he heard word I was making them, he was over, sitting on a stool at the bar, shooting the shit with me while I made them. And he’d also eat them warm, the second I finished rolling them in powdered sugar and putting them in the tin.

And I knew right then this was why I made them every year.

Two batches.

Sometimes three.

I was so going to hell.

“We’re connected,” he pointed out the obvious.

“I know.”

“I want us more connected, baby.”

“I know,” I repeated softly.

“Can you kiss me like that and then think you can convince me you don’t wanna go there with me?”

I closed my eyes and dropped my chin again to put my forehead to his chest.

Benny kept at me.

“I know I’m pushin’, cara, but seriously.”

“Can we talk about it at dinner tomorrow?”

He was silent and he was that way awhile.

So I breathed a sigh of relief when he gave me a squeeze and said, “Yeah.”

I tipped my head back and, again, slid my hands down to his chest. “They’ll be here soon and we need Fanta.”

“Babe, they’re comin’ up from Brownsburg with two teenaged girls. Teenagers don’t get out of bed on a Sunday at the crack of dawn and it’s a four-hour drive. They won’t be here until noon, earliest. We got an hour and a half, at least.”

I felt my brows draw together. “Cal didn’t text you to let you know when they’d left?”

My question made him smile huge. It was white. It was gorgeous. And it made his eyes warm with humor in that way I liked so much.

Witnessing that up close and personal for the first time, I had no choice but to wrap my arms around his middle and hold on.

“I’m not sure Cal does the text thing, Frankie. More, I’m not sure it’s humanly possible for Cal to check in with anybody about any of his activities.”

“He’ll have to learn. He has a woman in his life.”

His smile stayed white and gorgeous, and even as I felt the ground quake beneath me, I kept right on enjoying it up close and personal.

“Strike that,” he stated. “I’m not sure it’s humanly possible for Cal to check in with anybody about any of his activities unless that anybody is in his bed and he likes what she gives him there.”

My eyes drifted to his ear. “This is probably true.”

Ben gave me a squeeze and regained my attention.

“You got everything you need in that bag?” he asked.

“Yep,” I answered.

“Now’s the time to stock up, babe. We’re here.”

“I’m stocked up.”

“Right,” he said, then bent in and went deep. I held my breath and kept holding it when he brushed his lips against my neck.

I also kept holding on because I had to in order to stay standing.

Then I had to let him go because he let me go. He moved away but caught my hand, the handle of my bag, and he pulled me to the door, rolling my bag with us, saying, “We get home, I’ll clean out a drawer in the bathroom.”

My eyes hit the ceiling.

Lord, I hope you’re paying attention, I silently prayed. That was Benny’s idea.

Ben kept speaking.

“And in the dresser in the bedroom.”

My hand spasmed in his.

He ignored it and pulled me out the door.

* * * * *

Likely speeding up my trip to hell, an hour and a half later, I was curled on my side on Benny’s couch, head to his thigh. Benny was sitting on the couch, feet up on the coffee table, eyes to a game on the TV.

Incidentally, a TV that was eighty inches.

Eighty.

The thing was so huge, it took up nearly the whole side wall of his living room.

And the surround sound rivaled those found in cinemas.

Even so, Theresa could be heard over the surround sound, banging around in the kitchen.

I had learned when I was with Vinnie that Theresa didn’t do this because she was making a point that she wanted you to get off your ass and help her. She didn’t. She wanted you nowhere near her when she was cooking or cleaning up after. She wanted no disruptions or distractions because only she could do whatever she was doing in a way she liked. If you tried to help, it only messed with her mojo and put her in a bad mood.

Theresa in a bad mood was not good.

So, even if I hadn’t been shot in a forest a couple of weeks earlier and Theresa was banging around in the kitchen, I would have stayed in the living room.

Though how I got in my current position, I was still hoping God was paying attention because I didn’t put me in it. Benny did. And when I’d protested, he muttered, “Quiet.”

I didn’t think it was the right thing to do, lying with my head on his thigh, not ever. But with his parents in his house, and after I had participated fully in the kiss he laid on me, definitely not then.