Strangers with Benefits (Siren Publishing Classic) (34 page)

Despite the fact the sun had set, she slid her sunglasses over her eyes and drove.

Den only attempted to speak once. “You’re driving too fast.”

She didn’t say a word, only turned up the volume a decibel below death metal concert.

By the time she pulled in front of his house, she turned the volume down. “You can tell them to come on out.”

He didn’t reply, just got out of the SUV and slammed the door.

Asshole better not have scratched her door or she was going to punch him in the arm. The bad one.

The kids came out with a pep in their step that let her know the donuts had been delicious and the high quantities of sugar would leave them restless for half of the night.

When they arrived back at home, Sidonie knew she was supposed to iron their uniforms, but she really didn’t feel like doing anything. She climbed into bed with the sandy swim suit on and fell into a restless sleep.

Of course, she woke up in the middle of the night to shower and change her bedding before she stripped off every inch of skin she had left. As she ironed clothes at three fifty in the morning, Sidonie thought about Den. He was probably sleeping, while she had a terrible night’s rest to show for her stupidity.

Damn it. She had fucked up. Royally. It wasn’t his fault she couldn’t keep her heart out of it. He was a man, there was little expectation that sex would translate to love. It was what it was.

And now, she had alienated the one man that had truly ever understood her.

The one man that helped her to understand herself.

Even if it had to end, as all good things did, they could have been friends.

Just friends.

Open Mouth? Insert Foot

The moment Den called their arrangement asinine, he knew he had made a mistake. One that she wasn’t going to give him the chance to rectify. She turned the music up to an ear-splitting level and drove at warp speed to avoid saying another word to him.

He had fucked up.

And she wasn’t likely to give him another chance.

What had he done?

He knew what she tried to do the minute she opened her mouth. And he’d let her.

That night, he paced his bedroom until the carpet had a worn path in it from his dragging feet. His parents didn’t say a thing, but they watched him get angrier and angrier, mentally in a fucked up place.

How the hell had he gone from being a heartbeat from what he wanted one moment and in another breath further away than he’d been before they met altogether?

Damn, he’d fucked up.

Damn, damn, damn!

And his pride goeth before the fall…

After a really bad night spent with the stuffed octopus she’d given him, he pushed the thing to the top of his closet in the hopes that his mother wouldn’t know he was so pathetic in love that he slept with a child’s toy.

Of course the fact that he had made him mad as hell. He was angry enough to punch something, but found the effort less than satisfactory when he busted the knuckles of the only good hand he had left.

As he hopped and tried to shake the pain in his phalangeal joints off, his mother knocked at the door. “Veera? Are you okay?”

“Uh, yeah, Ma. Just stubbed my toe.”

“You know I wasn’t born last night, Dennis. I have an ice pack. Open the door and get it for your hand.”

He sighed. It was hard having his parents under his roof for an extended period of time. He almost felt like time had gone back fifteen years in a handful of days. “I can’t get away with nothin’ when you’re around, can I?”

“I know you better than you know yourself, boy.” His mom chuckled at the other side of the door. “You know, at first I thought you were going to marry your ex… what’s her name? Anyway, do you know when I realized that relationship was going nowhere?”

“No.”

“The night she cooked dinner for us when we first met.” That was in the early stages of their relationship, maybe six months in or so.

“Really? Why?” He was truly curious.

“Because she couldn’t cook worth a damn. Who can’t boil pasta? Your dad and I had to get takeout when we left your apartment. But that Sidonie? Yeah, that was some good chili, no lie it was better than mine.” There was no way he could respond to that, anything he said was going to be a slight to one of them.

Might as well keep his mouth shut. He opened the door a bit and let his mom stick the ice pack through the small gap.

“Thanks, Mom.”

“Don’t thank me just yet. You need to talk to your dad.”

“Why?” He wondered if his dad had any further problems that they hadn’t told him about.

“Both of you have a penis and you’d probably listen to his advice before you took mine.”

His mom was right. Not that he was sexist, but his mother wouldn’t get it. Not totally, and his father might not totally either, but his dad had a better chance at understanding.

“I’m headed to the grocery store in your truck, just so you know.”

“Stop spending your retirement money on a grown man’s groceries, Mom.”

“Grown man? I know you slept with that octopus last night.” His mother scoffed. “Looked just like you did when you were a baby.” She reminisced and he felt three feet tall within an instant.

Den shook his head and sighed. “Mom, you sure know how to hit a man where it hurts.”

“Me?” she scoffed. “Your dad was the one that told me, don’t get it twisted.” Twisted? Since when did his mom use slang?

He heard her laughter all the way out of the door.

While he sat on the bed, he decided to watch something on TV but he had no idea what was even on. The channels at this time of day were kind of scanty as he had no desire to watch talk shows and less desire to watch soap operas.

But he settled on ESPN, even though the talk show was less than appealing. In fact, he was downright bored. The only time he watched TV was when a game was on or he wanted to catch the highlights of the game after he came back from duty.

His father tapped on the door. “Want some company?”

“I guess so.” Although he had little desire to be bothered with talking about the farce that he’d reenacted with Sidonie the night before.

“Sounds like you don’t want to talk to your dad right now.”

“It’s not that, Pa.”

“Then what’s it like?” His father looked at the busted knuckles on his left hand and the discarded ice pack.

“I messed up.”

“How?”

“She got mad at me when I said something I shouldn’t have.”

“You told her you loved her?”

Yeah, like she was receptive to even admitting she liked him, let alone more. “Nope. Didn’t even get that far, she wasn’t even willing to hear it.”

“I know what that feeling was like.”

“Do you?” His parents were like the ebb and flow of water, natural and effortless.

“Of course. Your mom didn’t fall into my lap. I had to work damn hard to get the chance to be with Jihn. She didn’t just look at me and immediately fall in love.”

“I didn’t know all of that, thought y’all were steady after the first date.”

“Of course not, boy. She was a ten when I looked at her and I was a five, so getting that date wasn’t easy. But I proved to her that no man would love her as fiercely as I could. Any woman that goes gaga without knowing ya? You wouldn’t likely want her anyway.”

True. “I really messed up, didn’t I?”

“Nah. She wouldn’t have gotten so hot under the collar if she didn’t feel somethin’. Now it might not be the same feelins you have, but any is better than none. It gives you somethin’ to work with.”

Wasn’t that the truth? But how was he supposed to get her to admit that she had feelings for him?

“You look confused.”

“I kind of am. I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

“Be visible and let her know that you aren’t going away, even if she acts out. That’s just a cry for attention.”

“No way.” He had cursed her out in her car none the less, no way would something that simple work.

Heck, she probably would ignore a billboard, she was so angry with him.

“Yeah. Even your mom has been known to act out from time to time. Keeps me on my toes trying to keep up with her.” His father chuckled.

“I’ll bet.” He knew his mother was a pint sized handful, capable of foiling men twice her size if need be.

His dad coughed and rubbed his hand over his thigh, a blatant tell heralding impending mischief. That could only mean one thing. His father had a scheme up his sleeve. “As I recall, her son, Mark?”

“Yeah, what about him?”

“He mentioned a lacrosse game this Friday at his school. Might be worth taking a look at. Seemed like he was inviting you to come on down. Leastways, that’s how I’d take it.”

They both looked back at the TV and not another word was said between them until his mother returned an hour later with bags upon bags that she only had to crook a finger for his dad to lug inside without complaint.

He didn’t do anything for a few days, hoping he wouldn’t have to be the one to break down, but after seeing her several times weekly? It was odd to look at his phone and realize she wasn’t going to be the one to extend the olive branch.

Masculine pride sucked sometimes.

That Friday, he showed up at St. Andrews and took an upfront bench in the field seating on the home side. He’d brought his parents, as they loved to watch their own machinations unfold.

He didn’t see Sidonie until the game started and the handful of people in the stands sat down. Then he noticed her just a row away on the other end of the bench.

Den had no plans on speaking to her. More than likely, she would have a thing or two to say and he could preserve a smidgeon of pride.

The ball went into play and he watched Mark catch it and lob it down field. The players took off and his mom, bless her heart, went crazy.

“Go Mark!” His mom even shook a sign that had the boy’s name on it. The sign did double duty and had “Go Katie” on the back side.

Sidonie looked over and when she did he waved with his good arm and shook a pompom.

She narrowed her eyes and went back to watching the game. But he knew that she stole glances in his direction whenever she could.

He knew because his eyes never left her.

It became a cat a mouse game. She would look over in covert ways, but he caught her most of the time. There was the one time she sneezed and he barely realized that she watched him as she wiped at her nose with a napkin.

He cheered based on cues from his parents, who enjoyed the game based on the hollering that came from their direction. He’d hold up the pompom and drop it again, but that was the extent of his cheering skills.

At the thought of cheering, he remembered how Sidonie cheered him on that first night and the lesson that ensued. He looked away then and allowed the game to distract him enough for his erection to subside. When he looked back, she was gone, her seat empty as if she had never been there to begin with.

When the game was halfway in, he stood up and stretched his back, but stopped looking for Sidonie. Once she was ready to rail at him, she could find him. No need to help her with that.

He went to the bathroom and arrived back at his seat just before the game resumed. Den took his seat next to his mother and grabbed the funky pompom she’d given him before the game started.

“Why are you here?” He heard from behind him, and the tone was filled with a heavy dose of irritation.

“Same reason as you are I would suspect.”

“I’m here to watch my son play. And you?”

“I’m here to watch my friend play, especially when I promised him that I would come.”

“When did you talk to Mark about the game?”

“Remember the picnic at the beach? You were right there.”

“I don’t recall that.” She hissed.

“Well, you have this tendency to get lost in thought sometimes. Maybe that’s why.”

“I would have heard him invite you.”

Yeah, right. The woman was too intelligent to stay in the same realm as mere humans. That’s why sex with her was so amazing. It was the one time he was guaranteed to have the entirety of her attention on him. “Well, you didn’t, no skin off my nose. Good game, right?”

Sidonie hissed, “You are about to work my last nerve.”

That would be interesting. Den found he didn’t know the measure of a person until they were angry. “Better find some for rent then, ’cause you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

Booyah.

He had a little jolt of self-satisfaction after watching her sputter and eventually stop making the attempt to speak altogether. Instead, she turned her head back to the game.

She was still seated on the empty row behind his, but he closed the gap when he stood up and over the seat so they could sit side by side.

Sidonie tried to stand, but he clapped a hand onto her knee. She collapsed back to the seat as if he stolen her bones and shivered.