Page 77 of His
“Ben!” she hissed. “That’s PreP! In your name!”
“Wow, a woman of culture,” Liam said. “Anyway… about telling her the truth?”
Eden looked between them, wide awake and flushed in the cheeks. “You mean…?”
Benson opened his mouth to speak, his hand sweaty around the pill bottle, but no words came out of his mouth.No, no, here we go again.
Just his luck, someone else was there to speak on his behalf. “Yup,” Liam said, back toward them. “I’m not the only big ol’ bisexual around here.”
“Huh?” Eden lowered her voice. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Benson was so embarrassed that he had to put the bottle on the table before he dropped it. “It’s nobody’s business until it is.”
“We’ve been dating for weeks. We were talking about exclusivity before…” Eden pursed her lips before slowly turning toward Liam. “Him.”
Liam glared at them from the corners of his eyes.
“Oh, my God…”
“Eden. I can explain…”
She slowly pivoted, hands in her hair before they gestured toward Liam. “Him!Him!Your ex-fiancé!”
Liam cleared his throat. “Make sure there’s only one ‘e’ in that, please.” He put a hand on his heart. “I am a man, after all, and the correct spelling is one ‘e.’”
Eden’s mouth dropped; Benson’s twisted into a snarl.
“Yeah, Ben. Can we go ahead and tell her about us?” Liam did not come closer. He did not have to. Not with such vehemency in his eyes. “It’s been a long time since I got to tell someone that you and I were engaged to be married.”
The gasp echoing in the room almost knocked Eden down to the floor. But she gathered her decorum at the last second and shoved a finger in Benson’s chest. “You didn’t tell me!”
“He didn’t either!”
“Sounds like something you should have told me! I was dating youboth!”
“Was?” they both asked at once.
“I mean… am. I think.” Eden rubbed her head. “I am so confused. And hungry.” She eyed the food going cold on the table. “All right! The both of you, sit the fuck down andtell me the truth! All of it!” She squeezed the back of the chair, looking older than Benson for a hot second. “No games. No dancing around the facts. Tell me how you met, what you got up to, and about this whole business with other women!”
Liam sat down quickly enough that it was like his homeroom teacher had told him to get his ass in the chair before he got a year’s worth of detention. Benson slowly followed, before realizing that he and his ex-fiancé were sitting in front of the wrong dishes.
Eden yanked out the chair across from them. Liam took the opportunity to swap the plates so Benson got his eggs the way he liked them.
Sunny-side-up. The very thing he used to call his ex-wife in the morning, when she came out of their bedroom with her hair up in a towel and a raggedy robe wrapped around her body.
Benson’s marriage and every subsequent relationship flashed before his eyes. Not just the women. But the man who had been there for most of them, from the moment they first met up on La Mariposa and made a weekend of exploring things Benson had been too uptight to indulge in before.
Such as feeling free enough to be who he truly was. Something his ex-wife had not appreciated.
Eden wasn’t mad about that. But, Benson knew, he no longer had a relationship with her after this if he didn’t start talking. It was almost eight in the morning, the night after he shared this wonderful woman with his ex, and he was about to spill every ounce of truth that bound him asBenson Smith.
“Want me to hold your hand?” Liam hissed at him. “I think she might kill us.”
Benson’s hands were busy, though. They were helping him bury his face so he didn’t have to admit he had been too nervous about revealing the innermost parts of him from the woman he was falling in love with.
Let alone in front of the man he had once loved with all his might.
And now he’s here, wearing my damn shirt!
There was too much love in the room. Benson was about to choke on it.
But… what a way to go.
TO BE CONTINUED
