Page 69 of Dirty Puck

“Jesus, I’m a brilliant man,” he replied, and when I narrowed my eyes at him in confusion, he went on. “For making this agreement with you. After the first couple times of fucking you, I knew you’d be perfect. But hearing that I won’t ever have to worry about seeing some guy balls-deep in you spread over the internet—I’m ecstatic.”

“You’re an idiot, but you’re my favorite idiot. Let’s get our food before you’re demoted back down to just an idiot.”

He threw his head back laughing and grabbed my hand to pull me into the kitchen. Plates and drinks in hand, we walked to the den. While I got comfortable, he turned on thatNosferatumovie. I’d never seen it, but I loved vampires and using him as my shield during the scary parts didn’t exactly suck.

After cleaning up, he shut off the TV and we went upstairs to bed. He joined me in the shower and I began to question whether to have my talk with him, but no. I had to. I really cared about Reece, but Benny was my life. I had to protect him at all costs, right?

We settled into bed and I rolled over on my side to face him, propping my head up on my hand.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“There’s something I need to talk with you about. Today was such a good day, but?—”

“But? That sounds ominous.”

I sighed. “It hit me today, when I saw Benny leaning his head against your shoulder while you read to the kids. He’s getting attached to you.”

“And that’s bad?”

Okay, Bree, you can do this.“It is. When this thing ends, he won’t understand why he can’t see you any longer.”

Reece narrowed his eyes on me. “What are you saying?”

“I’m going to gradually start pulling him back from spending time with you. This way he won’t notice as much when you’re no longer in his life.”

“What does that mean?”

“I think I need to take him back to our apartment a few nights a week. Then I’ll add another day, and another until we’re at our place full-time.”

His body went rigid, but his face looked stricken. He pushed up out of bed to begin pacing in a line in front of the bed. I sat up, watching him, not brave enough to speak. It went on that way for too long.

“Say something,” I demanded.

He rushed the bed. “You want me to say something, fine.” The man sounded so hurt and angry that I flinched when he dropped down to his knees next to me. “You agreed to be my girlfriend and I’d pay for Benny’s therapies. I could be a real dick about this—and to be honest, that was my first inclination, to hold our agreement over your head. But I can’t do that to you and Iwon’tdo it to Benny. So I’m asking you, please don’t pull Benny back. My mom adores him. And to be honest, I love hanging with the little guy. You have my promise I won’t just disappear because you and me, we’re friends now. What if he wants to skate someday? Somebody has to teach him.”

“I don’t know that he’ll ever skate, Reece.”

“But you don’t know he won’t.”

“It’s easy to make those promises now and then totally forget about us when your life goes back to how it used to be.”

“Have I broken a promise to you yet?”

“No.”

“And I’m not going to start with this.”

“It’s early. We only have a few months under our belts.”

“Please, Bree, trust me. Give me this.”

For being a fake relationship, at times like these, it seemedawfully real. But I really liked his mom and Claudia seemed happy here. “You swear to me, Reece. You swear you won’t abandon Benny?”

“First. It’s Baker. This is far too serious to use last names. And I fucking swear I won’t abandon him. Just don’t go. I need you here. My mom needs you here.”

His voice came out choked at the end and I knew I couldn’t leave him. Too many men had let me down in my life, but Reece wasn’t my father and he wasn’t Dane. Truth be told, he’d already way surpassed Dane in the short time we’d pretended to be together.

It wasn’t fair to judge him on someone else’s mistakes.

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