“Starving.”
“Good. Pancakes coming up. And there’s fresh coffee,” he says, gesturing towards a freshly brewed pot.
“Amazing.”
I pour myself a cup and take a seat on one of the tall bar stools by the kitchen counter, sipping the strong cup as I breathe in the pungent aroma. As I watch, Ben starts pouring batter onto the freshly buttered griddle, which crackles and sizzles. He expertly stacks a small pile of pancakes on a plate, adds some fresh strawberries and a drizzle of syrup, and hands it to me.
“So, what’s with the five-star breakfast service?” I ask, gladly taking the plate from him.
“I guess you could call it a half-thank-you gesture, half-apology gesture,” he says, continuing to add batter to the griddle as he makes another batch of pancakes for himself.
“A thank you gesture?”
“For what you said to me yesterday,” he says, keeping his eyes on the griddle. “About love not having to be like it’s out of a storybook. I guess I’ve gotten caught up on that idea in the past, which then makes me feel like I’m not going to get true love. Or whatever,” he adds, scraping a pancake off the griddle.
As he says the words, I see a flicker of his ‘tortured artist’ look, as I like to call it, pass across his face. I suspect it takes a lot for Ben to open up to me like this, so I decide not to push the topic. I said everything yesterday. And he clearly understood.
“And the apology part?” I ask.Is he going to apologize for the kiss?I hope not… Because that would mean that he thinks there was something wrong about the kiss. And it felt so right—to me, anyway. I hold my breath, waiting for his answer.
“Well, that’s for the live stream fuckup,” Ben says, taking the seat next to me as he digs into his pancakes. “I really felt like shit about that, Lace.”
“It was an accident,” I reply with a shrug. I pause for a second, wondering if I should address the elephant in the room. And then I decide to go for it: “I thought you were maybe going to apologize for the kiss,” I say, looking down at my plate, suddenly feeling shy.
“Should I be?” Ben asks.
“I mean… No. I don’t think there’s anything to apologize for. It felt right, in that moment,” I stumble out my reply, my cheeks burning red hot.
“Just in that moment?” Ben asks, stepping toward me.
I continue staring down at my plate.
“Lace, look at me,” Ben says.
I glance up and meet his gaze, serious and unflinching.
“I want to make sure I didn’t take advantage,” he continues. “I know you were upset. But it just felt—”
“Right,” I finish the sentence as we lock eyes.
“Yeah,” he says with a small smile and a nod. “So, you won’t mind if I…” His voice trails off as he leans down toward me, bringing one hand lightly to my waist and the other one to my cheek, and plants a kiss, soft but lingering, on my mouth.
“I don’t mind at all,” I say breathlessly as he pulls back from me smiling.
“Good,” he says. “I got kinda worried when you dashed off to bed right after. Like maybe you’d thought I’d crossed a line.”
“You didn’t cross a line,” I answer honestly. Because that’s really how I feel.
Neither of us seems to want to address the fact that a linehasbeen crossed. Ben is still technically my stepbrother.EXstepbrother, I remind myself. Even if my dad and Ben’s mom were only married for a few months, officially that’s how Ben and I were first connected in this world. But now, that connection is very different. And does that tiny piece of the past really matter now? It was so long ago.
“Good.”
Ben takes his own plate of pancakes and sits down next to me. There’s a brief moment of awkward silence as he starts eating. Our conversation feels only half-finished to me. In my mind, there’s more to be said.
What are we doing? Where is this going?What’s next?
But Ben seems perfectly content with leaving things as is. Unsaid. So, I pivot.
“I heard from my editor and publisher, Alyssa. She’s been texting me all morning, talking about my ‘viral hit’ and how we need to leverage it for the book publicity.”