FULL NOVELXO Chapter 27
Norah
Today, without a shadow of a doubt, has been the longest, hardest day of my life.
I thought finding out everything I did on the day of my wedding was the worst thing I would experience in my lifetime, but this—watching Bennett’s agony and Summer’s pain—has surpassed everything that day was and more ten times over.
After we arrived at the local hospital just outside of Red Bridge and they managed to stabilize Summer’s breathing, a Life Flight helicopter arrived to take her to Burlington where her normal staff of doctors practices. Bennett had to talk fast, but they let him on the helicopter with her. I have a feeling the combination of his desperation and the underlying sense that he would literally kill anyone who stood in his way played a large role in getting him on board. I procured his keys to follow with his truck.
Now, after a day of tests and hushed conversations between doctors in the hall, Summer is finally resting comfortably, while Bennett sits at her bedside. She looks so small here, in the harsh lighting of the hospital, and I’m still fighting with everything I have not to break down and cry.
As soon as I’m out of here, though, my face will be the newest hot spot on Niagara Falls.
“Bennett,” I call softly, barely rapping my knuckles on the wood door as I do.
He looks up, and I can’t help but notice the red rimming his eyes. I want to apologize, to make myself small in this really huge moment, but I don’t. He wouldn’t want me to. “Can I talk to you in the hall for a second?”
He nods, leaning down to kiss the back of Summer’s hand before he releases it. I turn and head for the hallway, knowing that the biting hold my teeth have on the inside of my cheek isn’t going to stave off my tears much longer.
I wait patiently in the fluorescent light, leaning my back against the wall for support. Bennett comes out a minute later, and I do my best not to falter when I see him.
“I just wanted to take a minute to see if you need anything before I head out.” The emotion in my voice makes my words come out all choppy. I clear my throat and force the tears to stay behind my eyes. “I can get you food or clothes or call someone for you? Anything at all, I’d be happy to do it.”
“You’re leaving?”
Temporarily stunned, I open my mouth and close it again before finding some semblance of words. “Only when you’re ready for me to. But I don’t want to intrude, so I thought I could take an Uber home for the night and come back in the morning if you need.”
“An Uber? Where’s your car?”
I take no offense that he’s discombobulated right now. Frankly, I’d be shattered pieces of hysteria if I were him.
“At the entrance to the Happy Trail, actually. The start of my sheep-ish adventure.” My anecdote should be funny, but nothing feels funny right now.
“I’ll take you to it.”
“No, Bennett. It’s okay, really. I’ll find a way home. Take a cab or an Uber or something. You can stay with Summer, and—”
“I’m not letting you ride all the way home from Burlington with some stranger in a cab, Norah. Summer’s sleeping, and with the meds they gave her, the doctors think she will be for a while. I’ll take you to your car and then come back.”
I nod instead of fighting it. For just tonight, I refuse to be a pain in this man’s ass.
After letting the nurse know he’s leaving and stopping in to give Summer one last kiss—from each of us—we weave our way through the hospital to the parking garage, climb into his truck, and head off for Red Bridge in comfortable silence.
It’s not until we’re completely out of Burlington that Bennett says something that renders me speechless. “I was happy you were there today. For Summer.”
Wow. Just…wow. My heart races, and it takes me a hot minute to get my bearings. I have so many questions I want to ask him about Summer and her well-being and how often emergent situations like that happen. But I know now isn’t the right time.
So, I simply go with honesty when I get my tongue to work. “I was happy I was there, too.”
Besides Charlie and the other nurses who help take care of Summer, Bennett is usually doing it alone. Being a single parent is hard enough, but being a single parent with a daughter as sick as Summer? I can’t even imagine. I hate that that’s his reality.
“And I owe you an apology,” he declares, and I look toward him while trying to hide the disbelief that wants to make itself known on my face. “I was out of line on Friday night, and I owe you an apology for it. I’m sorry.”
First, he thanks me, and now he’s apologizing. What in the hell has gotten into Bennett Bishop tonight?
“I appreciate that, Bennett, I really do, but I wouldn’t say Friday night showcased my best self. I wasn’t exactly in line either,” I admit. “I’m sorry for slapping you.”
“I deserved it,” he admits, and half of his mouth quirks up. “Well, at least the first one. The second might’ve been a little overkill.”
“Yeah.” I cringe, and one puff of humor escapes my nose. “I’d have to agree with you on that.”
“How late did you end up staying at the bar and hanging out with that farmer?”
“Who? Tad?” I nearly laugh. “Lord, I thought I was chatty, but that man just about talked my ear off. And I didn’t stay long. Left right after you did, actually.”
“You’re not interested in him?” he questions then, almost reshaping my spine, it snaps so straight.
“Um, no.” This time, I do laugh. “I mean, Josie was right to call him hot and all, but no, I am not interested in him. Plus, I’ve got a whole cargo ship of relationship drama. I don’t need to be jumping into anything right now.”
“Ah, yes. Thomas Conrad Michael King III. How in the hell did you end up with a pretentious prick like him anyway?”
Bennett takes the ramp onto the bypass around the only small town between us and Red Bridge, and I shuffle in my seat to find the words.
“Put simply? My mother. She’s been orchestrating every detail of my life since the day my dad died. And Thomas was a means to an end. The success, the wealth, being in the right circle of people.”
“And what? You just woke up one day and got tired of the whole deal?”
I shake my head as tears sting my eyes, my whole body feeling instantly like I’m standing at the bathroom sink of St. Patrick’s Cathedral all over again. “No. I woke up on my wedding day and got ready to marry the man I thought I loved. And then a woman handed me a letter that changed everything.”
“A letter?”
The truth will set you free.
“A letter. Turns out, Thomas Conrad Michael King III isn’t just a self-important asshole. He’s way, way worse. I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with the information ever since.”
When I realize I’ve just told him more than I’ve told my own sister, I wait for the shock to fill my gut. But it never comes. For some reason, it just feels right. It feels like I can trust him.
“Is it illegal?” Bennett asks, eyeing me out of his periphery. “Because if it is, you should turn that shit over to the cops. Let him rot.”
I shake my head. “It’s so much more complicated than that. I…I can’t believe I ever thought he was a good person.”
The car is silent for a minute as I gather my thoughts. Surprisingly, Bennett is the one to break it.
“I used to burn shit down for fun when I was younger. Did you know that?”
“You mean…like, arson?”
He nods, his face illuminated by a warm mix of moon and streetlight. “My brother Logan and I were firebugs, and just like Thomas Fuckwad the Third, we had more money than we knew what to do with. We spent every night drunk or high, tangled in women, and partying until we couldn’t stand up. Previously, we’d only burned shit our father owned, which was twisted in itself, but at least legally loopholed. But one night, after some rich asshole had been hammering me to get one of my paintings on his wall because he was obsessed with buying and selling art, I decided I wanted to fuck him over, and Logan was more than happy to join in. We ended up burning his car.”
“Oh shit.”
“Yeah.” He actually chuckles. “A Lamborghini, of all things.”
I gasp. “Oh my God, Bennett.”
“I know.”
“How the hell did you get out of that? Out of going to jail?”
“My brother Logan took the fall, and Breezy told me to get the fuck out of New York and keep my shit out of trouble.”
“Wow. Your brother Logan sounds—”
“No, whatever you’re about to say, don’t say it. My brother is no fucking martyr. He took the fall for the price of ten million dollars from my father, only spent thirty days in jail, and then helped himself to my girlfriend as a bonus.”
“What? Why the hell would your dad pay him to take the fall instead of both of you? You said you did it together.”
His laugh is bitter. “Because I’m a commodity for Bishop Galleries, Norah. My going to prison wouldn’t make financial sense, of course. But my point is that you’re not a bad person for not recognizing how shitty someone else was. You got fucked over, plain and simple. I am a bad person. At least, I was.”
I suck on my lips for a long moment to work up the courage and then finally ask, “So…how did you—the you you are now, I mean—and Summer come out of all of this? Your life now is completely different, and Summer is…”
My voice crawls to a stop. He knows what Summer is—the absolute best of us.
He grunts a little as he clears his throat, and I do him the courtesy of pretending not to notice. “The girlfriend I mentioned?”
I nod.
“She was pregnant with Summer, though I didn’t know it. I only found out when she put me on the birth certificate and took off right after she was born.”
“She took off?” I nearly shout.
“She said she couldn’t handle a ‘broken baby.’ That’s what she called her when she was born with osteogenesis imperfecta.”
A broken baby. A mother saying that about her own child hits me straight in the gut. It’s callous. It’s cruel. It’s…pure evil. My eyes make a bid to climb right out of my head as anger burns the lining of my throat.
“And that’s the only time I’ve been back to New York—to get Summer and bring her here,” he adds. “It’s been the two of us ever since.”
Bennett pulls to a stop in the Happy Trail parking lot, right next to Josie’s old Civic, with a crunch of gravel and a small squeal from his brakes. And I sit in the seat, unmoving, for what has to be an entire minute.
“Bennett—”
“Norah—”
When we finally speak, we do it at the same time.
I laugh, prepared to focus on our faux pas, but Bennett grabs me by the waist of his sweatpants I’m still wearing and pulls me toward him, sealing our lips in a kiss.
Soft but still eager, his mouth works at mine until a small gasp creates an opening for his tongue. I moan and scoot my body toward him more, going so far as to climb onto his lap to straddle him when his tongue flicks at the tip of mine.
Bennett presses his fingertips into the skin of my hips just beneath my waistband, and I roll my torso toward him involuntarily.
I gasp again when my hair tie disappears unexpectedly, releasing a forest of wild curls around my face. Bennett shoves his hands in both sides and tugs—just slightly.
Holy shit. This might be the hottest moment of my entire life.
Forehead to forehead, Bennett and I breathe hard as he pulls back just enough to whisper, “Fuck, Norah.”
“Bennett, what are we doing?” I ask, my voice shaking with adrenaline.
“I don’t know. But I’m tired of fighting everything all the time. Tired of fighting whatever this is between us.”
“I am too,” I whisper, and he kisses me deep again, his lips and tongue persistent against mine to the point of madness. I swear, I’m nearly three sheets to the wind, drunk off this kiss.
“I want you,” he says, and he slides his big hands to my chest, gripping my breasts through the material of my shirt. “Fuck, do I want you.”
God, I want him too. Badly.
My breathing is ragged, and my body is already primed and ready for whatever action he can give. And I’m so close to giving in to the craving I have for him. So close to finally learning what it feels like to have his cock inside me.
But somewhere in the deep recesses of my brain, I’m reminded of what he’s been through today. If there’s any place he should be right now, it’s back at the hospital with Summer.
Plus, I went off birth control right after the wedding to save money—figuring the next dick I saw would be at the age of eighty-five—I don’t have a condom, and little Norwegian boy is hardly my sexiest look.
“I want you too, Ben. But…”
“Ah, fuck.” He leans his forehead against mine again. “Trust me, I know.”
“Bookmark this so we can resume it another time?” I ask, offering a little smile as I do. “I swear, I’ll remember what page we’re on.”
“I won’t forget what page we’re on either.” Bennett gives me a soft, nearly delicate kiss. One that starts at my lips but doesn’t finish making me tingle until it reaches my toes.
Carefully, he helps me climb off his lap and out of the truck, and then tucks me into the driver’s seat of the Civic with the utmost care. We kiss again, this time in goodbye, and I remind him to call me if he and Summer need anything at all.
He’s still standing there when I drive away, and as I look at his tall, muscular frame in the rearview, I can’t help but think…
This might be the end of a long, horrible day and night, but it sure feels like the start of something else.