Need Me

by Tessa Bailey

He turned without missing a beat, heading back in the right direction. “So, if I’m officially your boyfriend, does that mean you’re dropping my class until I switch jobs?” He laid a kiss on her thigh. “I want to be with you in the open now, please. No waiting.”

  Thank God he couldn’t see the dopey grin on her face. “Yes, Ben. I want that, too.”

  They walked like that for a while, Honey more than content to be carried like a sack of potatoes. It gave her one hell of a view. Two cars passed in a row, honking at Ben, who simply waved back, as if walking down the road with a girl over his shoulder was the most natural thing in the world. She finally convinced him to let her down and they walked side by side, holding hands the rest of the way.

  This. Right there at that moment stood everything she’d hoped for, all in one place. Ben. The town she’d been missing so much. It couldn’t last, she knew that. Ben didn’t go with this place, they were just her two favorite ships passing in the night. But she could savor it while it lasted. She would return to New York in a few days and have the memories of Bloomfield to content her while she and Ben made their own. Maybe someday soon, they could even come back. Together.

  When the farm came into view, their steps slowed simultaneously. How odd. Two extra cars were parked outside the house, one of them Elmer’s truck, the other a taxicab. Why would either be there so early in the morning? Or at all, for that matter. Honey felt a tiny pinch of foreboding in her midsection, but she immediately shook it off. Worst-case scenario, her father had overreacted and called in a search party to go find them.

  “Uh-oh.” Ben put an arm around her shoulders. “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know,” she murmured. “Let’s go find out.”

  The first thing Honey saw when they started up the driveway was her mother. She was sitting on the porch. Crying. It caused Honey’s stomach to plummet right down to her knees. Her mother cried about as often as she did, which was never. It meant something bad. Very bad. Her father was leaning up against the side of the truck with Elmer, their arms crossed over their chests as they watched her and Ben close the distance to the house. Silence. So much silence.

  Ben’s grip on her hand tightened, and he angled his body in front of hers. She didn’t need or want him to fight her battles for her. After all, she was a grown woman who lived on her own in a major city. If she wanted to spend a night with her boyfriend, same as her parents had done at her age, she damn well had the right. But it felt cruel to let Elmer see her like this. Very obviously coming home from a night out, engaging in all manner of naughty with her new boyfriend. So she let Ben take the lead for now. “Sir, I’m sorry we worried you. I can explain. We—”

  “Which part are you going to explain first?” her father interrupted, pushing himself off Elmer’s truck. “The fact that you’re my daughter’s teacher? Or the fact that you got her kicked out of school?”

  Ben froze, as did Honey. Her gaze shot to her mother’s questioningly, but her mother only swiped away more tears. Every inch of Honey’s skin started to prickle, all the way to her scalp. What the hell was going on here?

  “Kicked out of school?” Ben’s voice cracked like a whip. “What are you talking about?”

  Honey’s mother stood and came toward the four of them. “He wrote a letter to the dean at Columbia. Said you’d been harassing him. Pursuing him relentlessly with no encouragement.” She gave their joined hands a sharp look. “Forgive me if I find that hard to believe.”

  “Your financial aid has been rescinded,” her father added, a hint of shame showing in his face. He’d always hated not being able to pay her entire way.

  She might have voiced a denial, because in what fucking world did something like this happen? How could it happen? It got stuck in her throat, however, when Ben dropped her hand and fell back a step. His fingers threaded into his hair slowly and stayed there as he shook his head. Dammit, his eyes were closed, so she couldn’t read him. “No, this isn’t real. This isn’t happening. In my lesson plan. I left it in my lesson plan . . . Peter must have . . .”

  “Ben?” She took a deep breath when she heard her voice waver. “Did you write a letter to Dean Mahoney?”

  He didn’t answer. Just looked at her as though the earth was crumbling underneath her feet but his hands were tied behind his back, preventing him from reaching out to help her. Or maybe the earth really was crumbling beneath her feet. That’s what it felt like. It matched the horrible crumbling taking place inside her. No, please. Why wouldn’t he answer her?

  “Yes or no, Ben?” she whispered.

  When he nodded a single time, a rushing sound started in her ears, as if she’d been pulled under a tidal wave. It wasn’t just the knowledge that Ben had written a letter to the dean about her, had written down those terrible lies on paper. That alone would have been enough to kick her in the teeth. It was more, though. Her parents had worked so hard to send her to New York, to pay what they could while she pursued her dreams. She’d let them down. Oh God, she could face almost anything except that.

  Vaguely, she registered Elmer coming to stand behind her. Ben bared his teeth at her oldest friend. All hell broke loose then. Elmer laid a comforting hand on her shoulder that she immediately wanted to fling off. She didn’t want comfort. She wanted the pain to kill her on the spot so she wouldn’t have to deal with it.

  “If you don’t take your fucking hands off her,” Ben grated, “I will rip them off.”

  “You’re not in a position to be issuing demands, bro,” Elmer returned. “I’ll be here to pick up the pieces when you leave. In fact, we already called you a cab.”

  Words still hanging in the air, Ben moved. It happened so fast that Honey was snapped out of her stupor. One minute Elmer was standing beside her, the next he was lying on the ground, clutching his jaw. The boy who’d never hurt her a day in her life felled by the man who’d just shattered her heart? Unacceptable. Honey held up a hand to stay her approaching father and rounded on Ben, who looked as if he was considering going for round two with Elmer. When she blocked Ben’s view of Elmer, he looked up at her, his eyes clouding over.

  “Get in that cab. Get on an airplane. And get the hell out of Kentucky.” She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t. Not in front of him. Or anyone. “God, I hope I never see you again.”

  He took a step toward her, shaking his head. “I’m going to make this right. You don’t understand—”

  “Looks like you wrote me something after all for my birthday.” She skirted past him and opened the cab door. “Wasn’t really what I had in mind, but that’ll teach me to be careful what I wish for.”

  His hand clutched at his stomach a moment before he straightened. “Once I fix this, you’ll have to listen to me. It’s not what you think.”

  When a tiny part of her hoped that was true, Honey knew she had to end this once and for all. No more hope. No more maybes. Since meeting Ben, she’d had enough of those to last her a lifetime. She got right in his face. “There is nothing you can say, nothing you can fix, to make this better. You’ve embarrassed me in front of my family. You’ve hurt me, Ben. So bad that it’s not repairable. Every time I think of you, I’ll think of the words you wrote. I’ll never see anything else. Give up.”

  He looked hollow, but she didn’t have it in her to care. Not when she was hollow, too. He swept a glance over her before falling heavily into the backseat of the cab, wincing when Honey slammed the door. His eyes were solemn as they watched her through the glass, like he wanted to communicate something to her, but she turned away and allowed her father to toss Ben’s carry-on sized suitcase unceremoniously into the trunk. As the cab reversed down her driveway, she refused to look back.

  Chapter 19

  BEN HATED THE fact that it was sunny when he landed in New York. He wanted thunder, hail, and darkness. Fuck light and warmth, he wanted ice on the sidewalks. Gloom. Weather that signaled the Apocalypse. Wasn’t that what this was? Too much. He’d been feeling far too much to sit in the tiny air
plane seat for three hours. Rage, self-disgust, loss . . . so much loss. It didn’t seem possible that he was leaving Honey one place and going to another. The girl he’d slept beside last night, feeling each of her breaths, smelling her hair . . . she should be with him always. She wasn’t, though. She was so far from being with him that last night seemed like a dream. A perfect, golden-edged dream that one stupid action had burned to a cinder.

  The second his flight landed, people around him began chatting excitedly into their cell phones. Making plans. He had no plans beyond getting to the school. After that, he had nothing. There was nothing beyond the meeting he had with Dean Mahoney one hour from now. Needing the situation handled immediately, he’d called the man from the airport to schedule it. And he just needed to get there and repair what he’d done so he could breathe. Until he knew he hadn’t ruined her future with his past insecurities, he would just move on autopilot. Otherwise he might bum-rush the nearest ticket counter and buy a return ticket to Kentucky.

  Leaving her standing there with tears in her eyes had been the shittiest thing he’d ever experienced, followed closely by the betrayal on her face when he’d walked into the Longshoreman with another woman. Jesus, how many times had he hurt her? Enough. Enough times that he knew she’d meant what she’d said before slamming the door of the cab. Honey was done. Wanted him out of her life. Fuck, he didn’t blame her. Maybe he didn’t know how to be with someone without inflicting pain on them. You certainly are your father’s son. A chip off the old block. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. On and on the clichés went in his head, until he wanted to slam it against the tray table attached to the seat in front of him.

  The passengers around him started to deplane and he followed suit, taking his carry-on out of the overhead compartment and moving down the slim aisle with a serious effort. Self-disgust billowed off to the side and let rage take its turn. That fucker. She was crying to that fucker about something he did, and it was unbearable. It was goddamn unbearable knowing that. Only that guy wasn’t the fucker. Same with Johnny Jerk Off who’d taken her to the poetry reading. It had been him all along.

  When one of the flight attendants gave him a concerned look, he reined in the thoughts that were obviously showing on his face. He needed to focus. Just focus on getting to the dean’s office and making sure his screw-up didn’t have a lifelong consequence for Honey. Then he would go home. And that was all he had. Did something exist beyond today if he didn’t have her to look forward to? No more of her thoughts. No more of those golden eyes to devastate him, or burying himself in her body. What did it matter what he did or where he went if he couldn’t have those things? If he couldn’t have Honey.

  Ben walked through the airport, feeling as though some cosmic Fast Forward button had been hit, affecting everyone but him. He was in slow motion while people zipped past and announcements came from overhead that were impossible to focus on. A low buzz had started in the back of his head, growing louder as he reached the exit. He saw Russell waiting at the curb, leaning against his company truck, complete with the Hart Brothers Construction logo, but Ben couldn’t lift his hand in greeting or even acknowledge him. Russell didn’t make his usual joke, thankfully, simply giving Ben a nod and returning to the driver’s side. Ben stowed his carry-on in the backseat and got into the car, painfully aware that leaving the airport meant he was going even further from Honey. Severing one more connection.

  “Where we headed?” Russell asked, starting up the truck.

  Ben hadn’t told Russell the full story of what happened with Honey. He wasn’t ready to say the words out loud yet. Maybe ever. Anyway, he suspected the news had already reached Russell through the supergroup pipeline. Thankfully, his friend left it alone, simply taking the directions Ben gave him to the administration building at Columbia. As they got closer, something inside him started to coil tight. His skin felt stretched, his muscles strained. The buzzing in the back of his head moved to the front, and no amount of ordering himself to relax helped.

  “We need to make a stop first,” he said to Russell. At his direction, Russell drove past the administration building and pulled up outside the English department building. “Wait here.”

  “You sure you don’t want some company?” Russell scratched the back of his neck. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you look like the poster for every revenge movie ever released.”

  Ben gripped the door handle. “That’s not completely inaccurate, but I’m going alone.”

  “They always say that in revenge movies.” Russell sighed when Ben responded by pushing open the truck door. “I’ll wait here. Like the fifth-billed lackey in the film.”

  Before he shut the door, Ben paused. “Why aren’t you giving me a hard time? You know what happened. How much of a shit swamp I’ve landed her in. Otherwise, you’d have asked me.”

  Russell looked away. “You’re giving yourself a hard enough time for the both of us.” He cleared his throat, fingers drumming on the steering wheel. “And anyway, fuck you for thinking I’d leave you hanging because of what happened with a girl. Louis wanted to be here, too, but the community center he was fighting to keep open had to close.”

  Ben absorbed that information, feeling a flash of sympathy for Louis and the kids that would have nowhere to go. But he didn’t have the strength to carry anything else just then. “She’s not just a girl.”

  “I get that.” Russell looked thoughtful a moment. “Shit, I wish I didn’t get that.”

  “Are you talking about Abby?” When Russell didn’t answer, Ben didn’t press. Not after the solid Russell had done him by keeping quiet about Honey. Just the thought of her name propelled him from the car toward the English building. He knew where Peter would be at this time of day because he’d just finished covering one of Ben’s lectures. Normally, Ben would be horrified by the idea of walking into this building without wearing his work clothes and jacket, but today he didn’t give a single fuck. His hair was wild on top of his head, his jeans were creased and dusty. His T-shirt smelled like cinnamon and sugar, so he inhaled deeply as students he recognized as his own stopped to gape at him.

  The door of the faculty lounge came into view, and Ben’s pace picked up. He’d managed to lower the dimmer switch on his anger until now, but just knowing he was about to see the son of a bitch’s face sent it into full wattage. Without breaking his stride, Ben yanked the door open and strode inside. Peter stood on the opposite side of the room, sipping coffee and reading through a lesson plan. Ben’s lesson plan.

  Peter turned at Ben’s entrance and lifted an eyebrow. “Hey, Ben. You’re back? What’s up with the outfit—”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  The other three professors in the room stood and left. Ben briefly wondered if they’d thought he’d meant they should go fuck themselves, but he flicked the thought aside. He had more important things to worry about, namely Peter, who was staring at him as if he’d just sprouted horns. “What’s going on with you, Ben? You take off unexpectedly. Now you show up looking like you just woke up after a bender.”

  Funny, that was exactly how he felt. Like he’d woken up from the best damn dream of his life and had no way of falling back to sleep to finish it. “Why did you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  Ben ground his molars together. “You sent my letter to Dean Mahoney. About Hon—Ms. Perribow.” He pointed to the notebook lying on the counter, way too close to the coffeemaker. “You’re the only one who had access to it. I want to know why.”

  “I thought you wanted me to.” Peter threw up his hands, cursing when he splashed coffee on his jacket sleeve. “I saw the letter and thought maybe you hadn’t quite worked up the nerve to do it yourself. So I sent it in. I did you a favor.”

  Ben had rounded a lunch table and advanced on Peter before he realized his feet were moving. His blood roared in his ears. No way. No way had he lost Honey over some stupid misunderstanding. Fate couldn’t be that cruel. But no. He’d written the
letter either way, hadn’t he? He was just as much to blame here as Peter. It didn’t lessen the driving need to fix this for her, though. “You didn’t do me a favor, Peter,” Ben grated, barely holding on to the urge to punch the other man. “You did me the opposite of a favor, multiplied by one fucking thousand. Okay? In the process, your taking the matter into your own hands might have cost a brilliant student her education. What the hell is wrong with you?”

  It finally seemed to dawn on Peter that his actions might have had dire consequences. “So, you’re not grateful I sent in the letter?” Or maybe not.

  “No. I’m not grateful.” Ben scrubbed his hands down his face, briefly upsetting his glasses. His chest hurt. Everything hurt. Nothing felt right, and he just wanted to be back, lying in that baseball field, dammit. He swallowed the massive knot in his throat. “I have a meeting with the dean in fifteen minutes. You’re coming with me.”

  ONCE, DURING HIS parents’ messy divorce, Ben had acted out in school. A fellow third-grader had made a comment during recess about his father—his father who’d spent the week being crucified by the media—and Ben had slugged him. He could feel the crunch of nose cartilage under his fist. Could still remember how damn good it had felt to release frustration. Inflict pain on someone or something besides himself or his mother. Even sitting in the principal’s office afterward had been worth it. His bruised knuckles had felt like a badge of honor.

  This? This was nothing like that. Ben and Peter sat across from Dean Mahoney in silence as he read the letter—the fucking letter Ben wanted to burn and stomp on—what appeared to be several times, while not-so-inconspicuously checking out his refelctive head in his computer screen. Time stretched, and Peter began to crack his knuckles, sending Ben a little closer to the edge. How close could he get before he went over?

  Finally, the dean set down the letter and leaned back in his chair. “Professor Dawson, you’re telling me this letter was turned in by mistake, and I understand that.” He nodded at Peter. “Signing a colleague’s name is not a wise practice, either, whether or not you believe you’re helping the situation.” His sharp gaze swung back toward Ben. “But you clearly wrote it, Professor Dawson. Did you not? These accusations are yours.”