Learning to Love the Heat by Everly Lucas

Author:Everly Lucas [Lucas, Everly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-01-08T18:30:00+00:00

Sixteen

Ben

All of my guests, Andy included, left a while ago. Except Claire. She stayed behind, insisting on helping with the cleanup. No way was I letting her lift a finger, so I sat her on the couch with a glass of wine while I washed the few dishes I couldn’t fit in the dishwasher. Too much time later, I’m still at the sink, scrubbing a plate that was spotless five minutes ago.

I need her to know we’re okay, and, knowing Claire, she’s stuck around for that same reason.

I pushed her too far tonight. She wasn’t ready to meet my entire family, and I knew that. I knew it before I even invited her. It was pure selfishness on my part, and I couldn’t feel like a bigger asshole for it. But I got my payback, and then some.

It feels the same as when a car crashed into my driver’s side door back in college. There was the initial shock of the impact, and in the aftermath, I’m left with a residual ache all throughout my body. The analogy sounds dramatic, but my brain can’t tell the difference between that crash and hearing Claire and Andy’s conversation.

What’s worse is that I didn’t just hear it—I saw it.

I was hoping to catch Claire upstairs, to apologize for, I don’t know, everything. But when I reached the top step, it was just in time to hear her response to Andy’s question about her feelings for me. “Ben’s amazing. How could I not like him?” I don’t care what she meant by that—if she likes me only as a friend or as something more. In that moment, those words were branded on my skin, my heart, and my soul.

I wanted to barge in and tell her the feeling is mutual, but their conversation took an unexpected turn, so I stayed back, out of sight. That is until I heard cold anger in Andy’s voice. It doesn’t matter what Claire said—or was trying to say—there was no way he was getting away with talking to her like that.

And that’s when I saw it. I saw him touch her.

Rage was a blazing fire inside me, and I swear, I was going to kill the man I think of as a brother. But that fire was doused as soon as I realized…she let him. She let Andy touch her. She let him hold her fucking hand—something I’ve wanted to do since the moment I laid eyes on her. And there she was, letting down that wall for him, not me.

They didn’t see me. She was looking at their joined hands and he couldn’t take his eyes off her face, and I may as well have been invisible. My best friend and the woman I’m falling for were shredding my heart, and they had no clue.

Claire was supposed to be the One. Since coming into my life, she’s been the woman I picture as my wife when I imagine my future family. Our kids have her red hair, and her belly is swollen with my child.

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