Page 46 of Lacey's Fight

If he hadn’t kept putting off taking out the trash until he forgot and went running off on a mission, then Jemima would be alive.

Selfish.

If he hadn’t learned to put someone else’s needs above his own, he didn’t deserve a second chance at happiness.

Not that he wanted one.

Ugh.

Right now, Ben was sick of being stuck inside his own head. This insane debating about what he wanted and what he didn’t when he knew damn well what he deserved was exhausting as well as irritating.

What he had to do was focus on facts.

Fact, he was the one to set in motion the chain of events that led to Jemima’s death.

Fact, he didn’t see himself ever falling in love again.

Fact, he didn’t want to allow himself to feel pleasure again, even after what he’d just experienced with Lacey upstairs.

Fact, he’d messed up when he left the way he had. He owed Lacey an apology. Because despite the facts he’d just reminded himself of, he did actually like her and was still attracted to her. Maybe because they both had such darkness in their pasts they connected on a different level than he could with most people.

She brought something to his life that he didn’t want to lose. She thought he had saved her life that day in the storm, but perhaps it was really her who had saved him in a way he hadn’t wanted to admit he needed saving.

Ben just hoped she’d hear him out and give him a chance to tell her he was sorry.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

August 7th

2:00 A.M.

Guess he wasn’t coming back.

Lacey hated that it stung so badly.

After all, she had been the one bragging about having sex without strings, that she would willingly offer Ben her body to help him with his issue, and that she would have no trouble separating sex from emotion.

How wrong could she be?

Instead of worrying about Ben handling having sex for the first time since his wife, she should have been worrying about her ability to walk away afterward.

Ben hadn’t seemed to have any trouble walking away, figuratively and literally.

After handing her a wet cloth to clean herself up he’d simply thrown on sweatpants and a T-shirt and disappeared.

That was over an hour ago.

Sure, she could go to the gym and ask him when he was coming back, but that felt a little too desperate for her tastes.

Like she cared.

She should have known Ben would be different.

Not only had he saved her life, but he’d turned her down when she’d offered him sex. Of course, it wasn’t the first time it had happened, but she could count the number of times it had on less than the fingers of one hand. He was a man, men liked sex, that was her experience both with The Master as well as the missions she worked for Prey. It was her experience with the men she crossed paths with as well.

They were all good men, and they took nothing from her that she wasn’t completely willing to give, but all they wanted from her was sex.

Friendship in some cases, yes, but the kind of friendship that was more, let’s hang together at a bar if you have nothing else planned. Not the kind of friend you told secrets to, not even the kind of friend who you’d call in an emergency.

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