HADES Page 4

  “Yeah,” she admitted, looking over at him. “That’s kind of how it feels with my pretend mom—you know, without all the curse words. At least she’s there.”

  Benjamin rolled over to look at her. “You know she’s out of her fucking mind, right? She has no idea who she’s missing out on with you.”

  “No, I didn’t know that.” She turned to look at him too, her gaze soft. “But thanks for saying it. Can we talk about how much you curse, though?”

  “It’s a disease,” he insisted. “One every Boston kid is born with—sorry, nothing I can do about it.”

  Tess laughed, and she opened her mouth, probably to make a suggestion or two about how he could totally curb his foul language if he put some effort into it, but he kissed her before she could.

  Yes, best summer ever.

  And after that night, Benjamin was partially to blame for the sudden rise in the quantity and quality of the secret after-hours lake parties.

  Tess let him borrow the mission van, no questions asked, whenever he wanted. And Donovan managed to land a summer friend with benefits with some Ohio University girl he met when they snuck into town and crashed an off-campus party. Not only that, but he also convinced her to buy him enough beer to host parties by the lake.

  Thanks to Benjamin’s access to the van, Donovan became a camp hero. And for that he was immensely grateful.

  “Anything you want when we get back to school, Brady, you ask me for it,” he told Benjamin, calling him by the middle name he was known by at Boston Glen.

  Their team didn’t use first names—Benjamin couldn’t have told anybody Donovan’s if he tried. But Benjamin’s older brother had basically peed all over their last name, Keane, when he got drafted as a starter for the Boston Hawks. So Brady it was.

  Just a few weeks ago, that invitation would’ve thrilled him. Back in Boston, Donovan barely gave him the time of day. Probably because, unlike most of the rich guys on the team, Brady attended the school on full scholarship. And unlike his big brother, Keane, there was no chance of him going all the way to the NHL. With limited talent, Benjamin struggled to fit in with his much wealthier teammates. So, his unintentional stumble into Donovan’s good graces meant his junior year would be lit.

  However, after he and Tess started kissing, Donovan’s sudden about-face on their friendship became an inconvenience.

  “Where were you?” he asked when Benjamin tried to sneak back into their cabin after his secret meet-up with Tess under the half-moon.

  He thought running Donovan into town whenever he asked might keep him distracted. But Donovan always seemed to notice when he disappeared too long at the invite-only parties beside the lake.

  Tess was never invited. She was just the girl they thought Benjamin was only flirting with for access to the van. They had no idea how hard and fast Benjamin was falling. And he liked it that way.

  His relationship with Tess was for them only. They kissed a lot, but they also talked. About their schools. About their dreams. About all the secrets they’d never told anyone but each other.

  They also laughed a lot and kissed even more. Honestly, it didn’t matter what his little brain was begging him to do anytime he got near her. He didn’t need more than kissing for it to be the best summer of his life.

  Which was why he was shocked when she told him not to stop the next time he found himself having to pull away from one of their make out sessions.

  They were lying on a blanket underneath the night sky again. But this time, the moon was full, and Nickelback‘s latest album was playing loudly on the other side of the lake where Donovan was throwing his most massive party yet. Because it was the last night of camp.

  When she’d dared to lay the blanket down again, this time in a hidden copse of trees, his stomach filled with dread. She was assuming he could keep his cool now after three whole weeks of make out sessions. But if anything, it was just the opposite. Their kiss only lasted two, maybe three minutes before he had to pull away.

  Or maybe she’d known exactly what she was doing.

  “Don’t stop,” she breathed out. And instead of letting him pull away and cool off like last time, she held on, and said it again. “Don’t stop.”

  He thought he knew what desire was. Beer in a solo cup after a game. Some skinny blonde batting her eyes at him and asking if he’d like to see her room, which may or may not have been roommate-free.

  He’d had sex before and assumed it was something he wanted. But what he felt when Tess pushed down her shorts, peeled off her God’s Work tee, and removed her bra—that was something new.

  “I love you,” he breathed out, looking down at her big, beautiful body. It didn’t matter that it had only been three weeks since their first kiss, he loved her. “So fucking much.”

  Foul, foul language. But to his shock, she whispered back, “I love you too.”

  Four words. Just four words. But they hit him like a hockey puck shot straight at his heart. Goal!

  A fire he wasn’t prepared for consumed him whole as he began kissing her again. And a new eagerness coursed through him as he knocked her on her back and fumbled to unzip his shorts.

  Yes, he loved her. He loved the feel of her underneath him, so soft and yielding. She was a bed waiting for him at the end of a rough day—a rough life. No, better than that.

  Home… She felt like the kind of home he’d never had. Could never even imagine. Not before Tess.

  He kissed his summer love, and he didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop.

  “Tess,” he groaned against her mouth. “You feel so good. I love you, baby.”

  He cursed himself for taking so long to tell her exactly how he felt. They could’ve been saying I love you from day one. Now they only had a few hours with the discovery before he had to return to Boston. Why had he wasted so much time?

  “Tess,” he groaned against her lips, both regret and apology rearing inside of him.

  “Don’t stop,” she pleaded. “I like the way you make me feel. And I’m so glad my first time is going to be with you.”

  There was no way to describe what happened in his chest when she said that, when she gave him the gift of her first time. Tess was a dream come true, and she didn’t have to worry about him stopping. He plunged into her, needing her in the most basic of ways. Like water, like food.

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he whispered. He didn’t remember much after that. All coherency disappeared as he claimed the girl he’d wanted from the first moment he saw her.

  He…he lost himself. To his everlasting regret.

  He and his hockey teammates pretended to be men back then. They often bragged about their prowess in bed.

  Benjamin had thought, prior to this, that he was good at sex. Great, in fact.

  But in those moments, he found out he was still a boy. He lost all control as soon as he was inside her. Humping her helplessly and pounding like a jackhammer—all the clichés you hear about with high school boys, even though he was supposed to be some kind of hockey god.

  He exploded after what could’ve only been a minute inside her, at most. First, there was unbelievable pleasure, then…

  Then came the sick realization that he’d come too fast without thought for anyone but himself.

  He raised up on his forearms to look down at Tess. She wore a stunned expression, like someone who’d just been run over by a Boston taxi.

  “I’m sorry,” he rasped out. Regret sloshed around inside of him like dirty ice in need of a Zamboni. “I’m so sorry.”

  Her expression softened. “It’s okay. I probably shouldn’t have expected…I just didn’t think it would be so qui—” She broke off and once again insisted. “It’s okay. I’m fine.”

  Like she’d decided to accept a dubious call from a bad referee.

  And, it wasn’t okay. He’d never done it without a condom before. That was probably why he came so fast. But next time would be better.

  He’d find a way to fly her to Boston, or co
me back here to Ohio so he could visit her. They’d do it again—this time with a condom. And he’d make it up to her.

  He opened his mouth to make her promises he knew he would keep, no matter what it took.

  But before he could, another voice said, “Wow, Brady, we told you to flirt with her a little to get the keys to the van. You didn’t have to take it this far. Man, that was fast. You weren’t even trying to make it last.”

  Like a nightmare, laughter filled the air.

  Donovan…

  Donovan was standing just a few feet away from them with all his rich buddies from Connecticut, who’d come on this mission, not out of any real sense of altruism, but because Mommy and Daddy told them they had to do it if they wanted to keep their five-figure a month allowances.

  And they had all just watched him embarrass himself by coming way to quickly with Tess. “No,” he said. “It’s not what you think. I was just…”

  He trailed off because, really, there was no good explanation for coming that insanely fast with a girl.

  “Well, at least you got it over with,” Donovan said, wiping tears from his eyes. “The half an hour it took to find you was worth it. Man, that was a good laugh! Now get the keys from her, will you? We want to go into town so I can thank my college girl one last time for buying us some kegs.”

  With a sinking heart, Benjamin realized they were talking about two different things. He was trying to explain why he came so fast, and they’d assumed he had only done this to get the keys to some stupid van.

  That wasn’t the case. That wasn’t the case at all. He’d only been using that story as a cover to explain why he was spending so much time with Tess without them giving her a hard time—

  “Let me up!” A pair of hands shoved at his chest.

  Tess! He’d almost forgotten she was there. Still underneath him.

  And he could see from the look on her face that she had completely misinterpreted what happened as well.

  “Tess,” he said, his voice guttural. “It isn’t what you think. I wasn’t…I wasn’t trying to—”

  “Get off of me! Just get off of me!”

  She wanted him off her. Of course, he had to pull out and let her up.

  But he continued trying to explain as he did. “Tess, listen to me. I wasn’t trying to hurt you!”

  She just gathered up her clothes and pulled them on, her face rigid. He could only imagine what she was thinking—what she’d assumed about him, about his intentions.

  “Tess…” he began to say again.

  That was as far as he got before she took off running.

  And by the time he pulled his own shorts up, it was too late. She had disappeared into the woods. And that was how the best summer of his life became the worst one in just a few unthinking minutes.

  That’s what would kill him when he thought back on it. What would keep him up at night long after Tess refused to look at him the next morning before her mother/grandmother drove him to the airport, or answer any of the texts he tried to send her until it became obvious she’d blocked his number.

  He finished up his high school years with the knowledge that he’d finally been given a break in life, a gift from the Catholic God he only half worshiped at required Thursday services. And he’d blown it. He blown it more spectacularly than he’d ever blown anything in his life or ever would.

  He figured he’d never hear from Tess again.

  But over a decade later, he got a call that changed his entire life.

  CHAPTER 5

  TESS

  “Have you ever heard of a guy named Galen Fairgood?” Tess asks Daphne when she calls to tell the teen about Stephanie being in the hospital.

  “Fairgood? Like that one country guy who sasha x kasha let sing on that one track,” Daphne asks.

  “Yes, like Colin Fairgood, the country singer, who let sasha x kasha sample the chorus of a huge hit he wrote before they were even born.” Tess rubs at her temple and tries to remember if she also thought the acts she loved “let” older and more established singers on their tracks when she was Daphne’s age. “And yes, pretty much the only thing I could find out about him is that he’s cousins with Colin Fairgood.”

  “No, I never heard of him,” Daphne answers. “And…um…what does this have to do with Stephanie having to be put in a medically induced coma?”

  And that’s how Tess ended up having to awkwardly explain that Stephanie, who’d been living under-the-table, paycheck to paycheck, had been transferred to Ohio Valley Health’s most expensive VIP suite. By a preternaturally handsome and apparently wealthy man.

  Claiming to be her husband.

  “Did Stephanie ever mention being married?” she asks Tess after describing her bizarro meeting with Galen Fairgood over Stephanie’s unconscious body.

  “Um, no,” Daphne answers, her voice careful. “But I guess it’s not completely impossible. She disappeared for a few years before Mr. Perreault died.”

  Mr. Perreault—that was what Daphne called Lady’s husband. Both before and after her adoptive mother’s death. From what Tess could tell, he’d been more of a reluctant guardian than any kind of parent to her before Lady’s death. He’d not only refused to give the girl his wife adopted his last name, there had also been no invitations to start calling him Dad before his own death three years later.

  “Mr. Per never talked with me about her dropping out of college. But I heard a few people whispering about how she ran off. She was plain gone all the way up until I turned twelve. And she didn’t come to his funeral after he killed himself. One day she just showed up at the girls’ home I was placed in after he died and said it was time to go. We went to Disneyworld, then we took a whole lot of buses to come to you.”

  Tess frowns. This wasn’t exactly the story Stephanie had given her when she showed up out of the blue at the shelter for teenage mothers where Tess worked and lived above in a small apartment.

  Then again, she’d been so shocked by their sudden appearance, she hadn’t asked too many questions about how or why they came. She’d just assumed that Stephanie, at the age of twenty-four, had made a logical decision to bring her guardianless sister to Tess in Ohio.

  But Stephanie’s story is getting a complete rewrite after her husband shows up out of the blue.

  “Well, this guy is not only footing the bill for everything, according to the nurse I talked to, he was also the first person to come through when she landed in the emergency room, and he hasn’t left her side since they brought her back from surgery. I can’t find much about him on the internet, but everybody is catering to him at the hospital like he’s some kind of VIP. And it’s obvious he plans to be there when she wakes up.”

  “Wow, he swooped in and took care of everything. That’s so intense.” Daphne just turned fifteen a few weeks ago. Maybe that’s why she sounds more impressed than creeped out. “It’s like a dream come true. Like a movie or something.”

  “Yeah, it’s something,” Tess mutters, keeping her tone noncommittal. She doesn’t want to upset Daphne any more than she already has. It had taken her hours to talk her out of cutting her East Coast summer short when she learned Stephanie was in the hospital. And it’s better that she stay put and make the most of her trip.

  But Tess fell for a supposed dream once, and it had quickly turned into a nightmare with far-reaching consequences.

  “I’ll keep you posted,” she promises before hanging up.

  “What do you mean she’s decided to live with you?” Tess asks a few days later when she gets Galen Fairgood’s call, informing her that not only has Stephanie woken up, she’s lost nearly a decade of memories and has somehow decided to go home with him—the husband Stephanie never mentioned.

  “She should come live with me,” Tess insists. “She can stay in Daphne’s room until she gets back.”

  “And what happens after her little sister gets back?”

  Tess narrows her eyes. He is calling Daphne her little sister. That meant he doesn
’t know what their real relationship is, even though “his wife” is awake. Stephanie really has lost nine years’ worth of very important memories.

  “I don’t know, but we’ll figure something out. I run a shelter, so that’s pretty much my whole life philosophy. If someone is in need of a bed, I’m going to provide it.”

  “Ouip, I’m aware of the work you do, and I know you’re probably wanting to help Stephanie out,” he says, his smooth Cajun accent resonating on the other side of the phone. “And just so you know, if she had chosen you, I would have done whatever it took to make sure you all were as comfortable as could be. But much to my surprise, she chose me.”

  Much to Tess’s surprise too. “So we’re not going to talk about the fact that she was suffering from a traumatic brain injury and a serious case of amnesia when you gave her that so-called choice?”

  Tess does nothing to keep the hostility out of her voice. But Galen Fairgood sounds as agreeable as a Sunday morning congregation when he replies, “You are right about that, Ms. Malloy. She is suffering. She does not remember our life together in Louisiana, and she might feel differently about coming home with me when her memories come back. But until then, I don’t think either of us want to upset her any further. And forcing her go to your apartment might make her angry. After all, she did choose me.”

  Okay, Tess has to admit he has a point. She’d learned early on during her work with teenage mothers that giving and respecting choices was the main part of the gig.

  “Okay, can I at least see her?”

  “Of course. I’m sure she’ll want to see you just as soon as I get her settled in with all her things from her apartment. I’m having it packed up as we speak. Give me a few days, and I’ll have you over for a visit. Daphne too, when she gets back from Boston.”

  His proposal sounds reasonable enough. Generous even, under the circumstances. But… “How did you know Daphne was in Boston. I never told you that.”

  Silence. Then he says, “I’ll be in touch about your visit.”