Page 69 of This

My cousin nods, but I get it now. I find the crazy beautiful and irresistible, too.

I keep my distance for a while, not pushing Keaton, and one day, we re-sync.

She pops her head into my office, an irritated look in her eye. “I’m pissed at Liam. Take me to lunch?”

And I do. Like Bennett and I never happened.

It’s the same day I stop checking my phone, but Bennett finds a new way to haunt me.

My mother died suddenly. Tome anyway. She’d known the cancer was back for months. She’d kissed my forehead on her way to bed one night, and I’d found her unresponsive in the morning, her breathing shallow. She never woke up again.

I was furious with her for not warning me, for abandoning me and stealing my rights to a goodbye. I think the brain has trouble accepting losses like those—when someone’s there and then they’re not. Especially with people we love so deeply. We can’t understand a world without them in existence. Just gone. So, the mind fills in the disjointed reality with something understandable. At least, that’s what the dreams feel like.

Every now and then, I’ll have one about her walking in with a bag of groceries or showing up at the office with a Cheshire cat grin and the latest carpentry bill for Greg. She’ll sort through mail at the counter or roll her eyes at Aubrey. Neither of us acknowledges that she’s been gone for seven years. I just know she’s back with no concern for where she’s been or how she came back.

I’m used to her invading my dreams, but then one night, it’s Bennett throwing open my office door. She sits in the chair across from my desk, her wild laugh distracting me from whatever task I’m failing to complete. Then, just as fast as she appeared, she’s gone, and I’m awake.

“Witchcraft,” I mutter, reaching for my phone again, re-kick-starting the whole cycle.

My grandfather was elated tohear I’d be sticking around. My father, the opposite, but that was to be expected. He has the idea in his head that Miles is using me to nudge him out of the company. A complete possibility, given how the old man shoved the Willis portfolio my way and the furious reaction to my plans to leave. I’ve seen disappointment ooze from my grandfather on many occasions, but I’ve never been the reason.

The weeks creep by with minimal drama in the office, a rarity as of late. Of course everyone behaves now that I need the distraction. But when Miles drags me out to the golf course, midday in August, I know something is going down. For one, my grandfather has been under strict instructions to stay out of the heat. The big giveaway, though, is his sons and Liam aren’t invited. No clients, just the two of us and the caddies.

I watch him, trying to suss out what the old man is up to while his caddy sets his ball. He stays seated in the shade of the golf cart until he’s ready to tee off and strides over, driver in hand.

“So,” he says, bringing the club back, “I’m cutting Greg out of the will.” He swings while I choke on my beer.

“The fuck you say?” I wipe my chin, convinced the ten minutes in the heat have done him in. “You can’t just—”

“I can.” He lowers his arm once he sees where the ball lands and turns. “And I have. The minute you told me you were staying on, I replaced every instance of his name with yours.”

I’m shaking my head on my way over to him. “What about Liam? We were supposed to take over together when Greg and Shane retired.”

Circumstances have changed since last month when I planned on leaving to be with Bennett. Walking away from thefamily legacy for a chance at happiness, I could justify. Choosing love over business. But bailing simply because the thought of working behind a desk and schmoozing at the club for the next forty years makes me restless, I can’t.

Waving me off, Miles hands the club to Richie—the kid has caddied for him since I was in high school, but he still calls him Ricky. “His turn will come in time. Shane has enough squirreled away. I’d be surprised if he doesn’t take an early retirement within the next ten years.”

“You gonna hold out that long?” My tone is light, but the question is serious.

He claims he’ll die at his overpriced executive desk, but after the close call at Christmas and traipsing around for conspiratorial rounds of golf in hundred-degree heat, his wish might come true. I could deal with the fallout of taking Greg’s place in the will. A final nail in the father-son coffin would be closure if nothing else. It’s the possibility of owning half the business before my uncle Shane retires that worries me. I couldn’t handle being Liam’s boss, even in title alone. It wouldn’t feel right. He’s always wanted the business, and at this point, I’m only along for the ride.

“You’ll be begging me to step down before I do.”

My grandfather claps a hand on my back, heading toward the golf cart and effectively ending the conversation. I follow him and cast a glance at the green, the trees with the club in the background. I thought I was waiting to get back to my real life with Bennett. Turns out, it’s been here all along, ready for me to wake up from yet another dream.

By the time I showerand get back to the office, only a few stragglers remain. I have an afternoon’s worth of work to catch up on. At least, that’s the excuse I use when Liam asks why I’m still hanging around. The truth is, I’ve been staying at work later, the gym longer. At the end of the day, everyone goes home, but I don’t have one. Home is warm and inviting, the place you want to be above all else. The house I live in is someone else’s revenge incarnate. Nothing welcoming about wood floors placed after Greg flaunted around a twenty-year-old at the Christmas party. No heartfelt memories attached to the marble overnighted from France when she gave him a second chance and he screwed his secretary a week later.

I should have sold it years ago. The only reason I’ve held off is the flash of joy it will bring Greg and Aubrey. My mother taught me well in that regard.

If I wanted to, I could be out in under an hour. In a completely furnished house with every drawer and closet full, my belongings could fit in fewer boxes than Bennett used to move to Colorado. Drifters know drifters; drifters fall for drifters.

When I run out of shit to do, I flip off lights on my way out and set the alarm. My phone lights up as I walk to my truck. I stop and stare at the screen. It’s a reminder I set months ago. Bennett and I had planned a trip for my birthday next weekend. Well,planmight not be the right word. We’d agreed to find the cheapest plane tickets available at the last minute and go wherever they took us, so long as neither of us had been there. I scheduled the reminder, so I could have extra time to talk to her into extending the trip. Four days instead of two.

I dismiss the notification and say, “Fuck you,” to my phone for the taunting, but once I start my truck, I look at the calendar again.

The day celebrating my birth will also be an exact month since the wedding. One month since Bennett. Since the last time I saw her blue eyes blinking up at me, heard her sigh out my name, touched her skin—tasted it too—and fuck, she always smelled like candy. The five senses of Bennett, and I miss them all as much as I did the other times she was gone. Only now, there’s no next time to push toward.

On my way to the house, I stop to buy a six-pack. I recline on my couch, thinking about where we might have ended up. If it was just somewhere she hadn’t been, it could have been almost anywhere. She’s only lived in four places. But I covered a lot of ground in my two years without a leash. I would pick up whenever, drive until I stopped, and figure out shit when I got there.

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