I felt fuzzy-headed and strangely exhausted by the time we got back to the cabin.
"Why don't you head off to bed?" Ben suggested, rubbing my neck lightly. "I've got a little bit of work to go over. I'll be up soon."
I took his advice, wondering what on earth could be so important that he'd let me go to bed alone.
***
When I woke up, the room was completely dark. At first, my arm reached out to feel for Ben beside me. He was still absent, so I reached for my phone and squinted at the time.
It was almost three in the morning. Way too late for a woman on a supposedly romantic getaway with her supposed fiancé to be sleeping alone.
What could possibly be so important? Of course this was all for show, but at least I was taking the opportunity to really go on vacation. I supposed Ben didn't have that luxury, but something told me he'd probably passed out on the living room sofa with his face in some extremely boring spreadsheets.
I should rescue him. I owed him that, at least.
Padding down the stairs, I soon heard the slow, steady sound of his breathing that indicated I was at least partially right. The papers were spread out on the coffee table, along with an assortment of beer bottles and candy wrappers, and he was sprawled across the cushions just as I'd suspected. Smiling, I knelt down to shake him gently awake.
He blinked sleepily at me, then scrunched his face up and yawned.
"You're gonna have a hell of a crick in your neck," I murmured. "Come to bed. Nothing you're looking at here is more important than getting some decent sleep."
"Sleep?" He was a little more awake now, but his voice still sounded rough and lazy. Warmth spread through my chest. "You're trying to lure me back to bed with the promise of sleep? You're gonna have to do better than that."
I laughed, grabbing his hands and pulling him to his feet as he stood. "Right now, what you need is sleep. We'll get to the other stuff later, when you're well-rested enough to enjoy it."
He mumbled a protest, raking his hands through his hair and stumbling his way up the stairs. "And you're not coming?" he groused, pausing halfway up. "How is that fair?"
"I'm just going to clean up your mess and turn off the lights," I called after him. "Go to sleep, Mr. Chase."
After I'd picked up the garbage, I paused to look at the papers. They didn't seem to be in any particular order, and one of them had already wrinkled slightly when it picked up condensation from a beer bottle.
I didn't mean to snoop. I was done snooping. But he'd left it out in the open, and I couldn't help but notice some of the words.
They had something to do with clinical trials. That wasn't surprising, but there was something that gave me pause. I certainly didn't understand enough about clinical trials to grasp all of the intricacies of it, but there were some words I recognized: Huntington's disease. I was certainly no expert, but I knew it was a serious degenerative disorder.
I also knew enough from the references to previous trials that Chase Pharmaceuticals must have been pouring a lot of money into this research. As I paged through the report, I tried to understand why. It was devastating, but as far as I knew, pretty rare. I wouldn't have expected a profit-focused business to put so much into it.
Unless, of course, there was a personal connection.
Once again, I was struck by how little I really knew about Ben. If this was a passion project of his, he must have known someone with the disease. I knew that both of his parents had passed away, but I didn't know how.
And Huntington's was genetic. If one of his parents had it, there was a fifty percent chance he had it too.
My mind was racing. It was all speculation, and wild speculation at that. But the fact that he was keeping it so quiet... I'd Googled Chase Pharmaceuticals before and found no mention of it. This wasn't corporate altruism. It was personal. He didn't want anyone to know, because he wasn't doing it for publicity.
Suddenly, I felt a rush of guilt. I shoved the papers into the briefcase and went back upstairs, fighting to put the paperwork out of my mind.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Jenna
The next morning, he wanted to go to the beach.
Well, first, he wanted to give me something that he called a good girl spanking. I didn't know what that meant, but I had to admit I liked the sound of it.
"It's just a little gentler," he told me. "I won't say it doesn't hurt, but it doesn't sting. You get a nice warm-up first, and then, when you're good and ready, whatever reward you choose."
"I have to choose just one?" I pouted.
He grinned. "Don't be greedy."
I managed to put aside the memories of what I'd discovered last night, letting it fade so that it seemed like nothing more than a bad dream.
In the end, the little noises I made as he "warmed me up" proved to be too much to resist, and he let me have my reward a little early. Taking me hard and fast, bent over the bathroom counter, he smacked my bottom with every other thrust, groaning at the way I clenched tight inside with every impact. When he gripped my hair by the roots and pulled my head up, making me meet his eyes in the mirror, I came so hard I saw stars.
After that, I shouldn't have been embarrassed by the way he looked at me in my bikini. Maybe embarrassed wasn't the right word, but I was a little afraid we'd get carried away in public if he didn't stop.
In the end, he managed to control himself, and we staked out little outpost at the beach without incident. He wanted to go into the water, but I was content to stay by the sidelines and watch him. This turned out to be a pretty good choice. The only thing better than Benjamin Chase in low-slung swimming trunks was Benjamin Chase in low-slung swimming trunks, and soaking wet.
After a while, he returned, glancing around him like he was suspicious of something.
"I feel like someone's watching me," he said. "As as much as I'd like to blame it on my rockin' bod, I think it's very possible I'm actually being watched for some other purpose."
"Typical," I muttered, smiling at him. "Everything's gotta be about you, doesn't it?"
I was just teasing, but it seemed to rattle something inside him. He glanced at me, stretching out on his towel. "You always act like you know rich people so well," he said. "What, did you major in Poli Sci?"
"I grew up in a resort town," I told him. "Working. Cleaning houses. Me and my parents. So I've known plenty of people like you before."
He smiled a little. "All of our dirty little secrets. Did you ever try to blackmail anyone?"
I couldn't help but laugh. "It was tempting, but no. Nothing really all that juicy. Just a lot of random mess, and a lot of pill bottles. All par for the course."
Nodding, he stretched out further, resting his head on the towel. "We used to visit one of those every summer. It was nice. I remember I always annoyed my parents by asking who lived in our house when we were gone."
I snorted. It was funny to imagine little Ben Chase, being just as clueless about things as I was. Not understanding the meaning of money. The influence he automatically held over everyone like me.
"I always wondered what it would be like," I said. "We always had to take our vacations in the off-season, of course. Nothing fancy. Usually we'd go camping. About as far as you can get from a luxurious seaside getaway. But I liked it, because it was different."
Ben nodded. "Not as many boys, though, I imagine."
Grinning at him, I rolled over on my side. "Believe it or not, that wasn't really my primary concern when it came to picking vacation spots."
"You're telling me you never fell in love? Not even for one summer?" Ben shook his head. "That's the saddest story I've ever heard, Ms. Hadley."
In spite of the sun, I could feel my skin tighten with goosebumps. I liked it when he called me that, and I had no inclination to figure out why. "No," I said, simply, trying to ignore the rush of feelings twisting in my stomach. "You really think I would've been allowed to fool around with billionaire's kids?"
"What? Your pa
rents didn't approve?" He looked confused.
"Their parents," I corrected him. Shit, was he really that clueless? "I guess they really didn't want their sons spending time with the cleaning lady's daughter. I can't imagine why."
Rolling my eyes, I flopped down on my back. It was impossible to have a normal conversation with this guy. Our experiences were just too different, despite the odd little ways in which they seemed to cross over.
"Mine wouldn't care," he said, simply. "I'm surprised anyone did. That kind of thing went out of fashion a couple decades ago. Actually, I'm pretty sure my mother had some romantic fantasy that I'd end up with a girl who was below my station. Too much Jane Austen, I think."
Curiosity tickled at the back of my mind. "Well, did you?" I hadn't really asked him any questions about Daria. He didn't seem to like thinking about her, let alone talking about her - but I found myself wondering about the history.
"Not really," he said, shortly. "Well - I think it's a shame you never mingled with the tourist kids. They might've learned something from you."
"I didn't say I never mingled." Memories were coming back, still surprisingly vivid and strong, after all these years. "I did. For a while. But I learned better, pretty quickly."
Almost twenty years, and there was still a hole in my chest. It ached and burned just as badly as it had back then, when I was still so young I didn't understand the difference. I didn't know why some kids were only around during the summer, and why they went away. When we were all playing in the sand, we seemed the same.
Back then, there was a boy. He was older, by a mile, it seemed, back then - but in reality it was probably just a few years. I was of the age where a few years makes all the difference.
"Young love," Ben teased me, gently, bringing me back to the present. "I knew it. Why lie about a thing like that?"
"Gross." My fingers were digging absently into the sand, unearthing a little twig to pick and twist between my fingers. "I was like, six years old or something. It wasn't like that. I just...you know, I thought we were going to be friends. But his parents put a stop to it."
"Maybe they just didn't like their creepy kid hanging around with a six-year-old." He was grinning, propping himself up on his elbow to take a swig from his beer. "Probably did you a favor."
"He couldn't have been much older than eight," I protested. "There was literally no reason to keep us apart, except..."
Ben laid back down, this time, his shoulder a little closer to mine. At first I thought I might be imagining it, but I was certain. I could feel his closeness, even through the baking heat of the sun.
"Did he tell you? Maybe his friends were just making fun of him for having cooties, and he used his parents as excuse." Ben tilted his head back, stretching slightly. "Kids do that. They're surprisingly conniving."
"No." I wanted to stop talking about it, to stop remembering, but at the same time, it almost felt...good. Like picking off a scab that had been left for too long. "My parents told me. Said his dad came and talked to them. I kind of felt guilty, even though I didn't know I was doing anything wrong."
"And you never heard anything from him?"
"Nope. He acted like I'd never existed. Probably forgot about me immediately." I sighed, trying to conceal how much the whole thing still affected me. "I stayed inside for a while, and just avoided everybody as much as I could. I didn't want anyone to get in trouble. Before long, he was gone, and that solved that problem. The next year, I'd figured out how to mingle without being one of them. I just started reading a lot of books, staying away from all their games. I don't think I ever saw him again, but he'd probably changed so much I couldn't recognize him."
"They do grow up fast, at that age." Ben sounded oddly thoughtful. "I don't have a whole lot of clear memories from back then. You must've been unusually sharp."
"I guess so."
He was silent for a while. "Either that, or it hurt you more than you want to admit."
His voice was soft, almost understanding. Like he wasn't about to make fun of me for still carrying the wounds from a pre-school shunning.
"It's hard to explain," I admitted, surprised to hear the sound of my own voice. I wasn't planning on telling him, I just...started to talk, and then I couldn't stop. "It was never that easy for me to make friends. And not just because half of the kids I knew were millionaires, and only came for a couple months a year. Even the ones I knew all the time - the other townies, I just couldn't relate to them. Or they couldn't relate to me. I don't know. It was just hard." I sighed. "That boy...I don't even remember what he said to me, just that he made me laugh. He helped me build my sandcastle, and it was like we just understood each other. I don't know. It's stupid."
Ben's voice cut through the fog of memories. "It's not stupid," he said. "It meant something to you."
"We must've spent the whole day together. But when he went to get some more supplies, some tools so we could build taller turrets and really make that thing into the grandest castle that had ever been built - he never came back. My mom came and fetched me. She was so mad that I'd wandered away from the other kids, from where the lifeguard watched. But more than that, she was mad that I'd been spending time with one of the tourist kids. At first I didn't want to believe her. She said he was just...I mean, I didn't understand it at the time. Kids always think everybody is sincere. But when I think back on it now, I guess she was trying to tell me that he was setting me up for a fall. Toying with me. He wanted me to think that he could trust me, so he could tear me down. I have a hard time believing it, even now, but it's like you said - kids are conniving."
"Not like that, they aren't." I could hear the frown in his voice. "Do you think maybe it was just your parents that had the problem?"
I paused.
No. It couldn't be. My parents were the most kind, generous, compassionate people I'd ever met. Sure, they held a little bit of a grudge against the tourists, but who wouldn't? They blew into town and left a mess in their wake, sustaining the economy, but at what cost? It was hard to really appreciate someone when you were scrubbing their spoiled toddler's crayon stains off the lily-white walls of their five million dollar beach house. Especially when they "forgot" to leave a tip.
"I don't think so," I said, turning his words over and over again in my mind.
"You don't sound completely convinced," he said. "And maybe this'll sound particularly asshole-ish, coming from me, but hear me out. Being rich might make most people a tiny bit insufferable, at best - but being poor doesn't make you a saint, either."
I bristled. "My parents weren't poor."
"I didn't say they were." He let out an irritated sigh. "You know what I meant."
"Yeah, I do. But I happen to think the way my parents felt about people like you was pretty damn well justified."
"Maybe it was," he said. "But maybe they owe you an apology for ruining what could have been a really nice friendship."
I lay there next to him, fuming. What gave him the right to try and explain away the past? Of course he wanted the rich kid's parents to be blameless. Just because his mom and dad were apparently so open-minded and tolerant, he found it hard to believe that anyone had those issues.
He could sense my irritation. Satellites orbiting earth could probably sense my irritation. "I'm going to cool off," he said, heading back for the water.
As I watched him walk down the beach, I let my mind wander back to what I'd seen in his paperwork. After a long night of research, scrolling down page after page on my phone and squinting at the tiny text, I'd learned a lot. Very little of it was encouraging. If my suspicions were right, then there was a genetic test available that would tell him whether he had the disease. He wouldn't have to wait for symptoms to show up. But many people with a family history chose not to. They preferred to live their life as normal.
I couldn't imagine it. Every stumble, every tremor, wondering if that was it. The beginning of the end.
No, I'd have to get the test. Even if it meant
knowing the worst.
Which path had Ben chosen?
Was I even barking up the right tree, at all? Or was it all just wild speculation, completely off base from reality?
I couldn't ask him. I couldn't even bring it up. Not today, not when the sun was shining and the lake was shimmering, blindingly bright. Even with my sunglasses on, I could hardly look at it.
What if this was real?
Would it matter?
I hated the thought. I hated wondering. It wasn't real, so it didn't matter. Whether or not he had the disease - it was horrible to think of, I didn't want him to have it, I didn't want anyone to have it. But even if we stayed friends after our little arrangement, by the time it started to affect his life, we would have drifted apart.
But still, I couldn't help but wonder.
Would you let it change the way you felt about him? If you knew he was sick?
Of course not. Of course it wouldn't. If I really loved him -
If.
If I really loved him. Because I didn't. Because this wasn't real.
Ben was walking into the water, letting the little waves lap up past his chest, dunking his head down and shaking off the droplets from his hair as he came back towards me. He flopped down on his towel, sprinkling me with lake water.
Ugh.
"You know that water's like, ninety percent duck poop, right?" I let my mouth twist into a lighthearted scowl, while my mind stayed in the shadows.
"That seems a little high," he said, turning towards me, grinning that lopsided grin. "Do you have the studies on that?"
This wasn't real. It never would be real.
So why did the thought of someone else caring for him - someone else being there for him, at the end -
Why did it make me want to scream?
Chapter Twenty-Four
Jenna
"It's just...this is so different from anything I've ever done." I was frowning at the table, twisting a cocktail napkin between my hands. "Obviously dating is always nerve-wracking at first, but whenever I settle in with somebody, get into a routine, it's...simple. Relaxing."
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