2. Ben

Iset the book down on my end table once again, sighing when I hear her voice saying the words in my head.

I’ve been waiting so long. Five long years. Stephanie went away to college and I knew she needed to do it. Knew she needed to get out of this town and find herself away from the judgemental eyes of the people around us.

Then I waited. And waited. And waited. But by the time she was graduating from college, she was already famous. Or infamous as the case may be.

And all because of this book.

I pick it up and can’t decide whether I’m more proud of her or I want to pitch the damn thing across the room. If she hadn’t written this thing, she might have come home to me and we might be married right now and looking forward to our life together and building our family.

Instead, I’ve reread it about a million times. Until I had to buy another copy because the first one fell apart.

“Hey, Ben!” My best buddy comes tearing in my door, not even bothering to knock. “What are you doing in here? We’ve got to get going. I promised Angela that we’d meet her at the movies. She’s got a friend she wants you to meet.”

I groan and scrunch my lips up. “I’ve told you two over and over again that I’m not interested. Listen to me and realize that I’m serious”

“Come on, man,” he wheedles. “Just meet her. Angela said she’s super-nice and really pretty.”

I roll my eyes. “Next she’s gonna say that she’s got all her own teeth and she’s fun to be around.”

“Man, you could meet the girl of your dreams.”

I shake my head. “I already did. She just never came home so I could tell her.”

He groans and smacks my shoulder. “You need to get over her. She’s not coming back. The woman’s fucking rich as hell and so damn famous that they named a road after her here. Even if she did trash the place.”

“Yeah. I don’t know about that. But I can’t just let her go. She’s mine. She’s always been mine and she’ll always be mine. I just never got the chance to tell her that. But if she ever comes back, I intend to.”

He shoots me a sad, sorry look. “Dude. She’s not coming back. This place was never good for her. She could go anywhere in the world. What the hell would bring her back here?”

I want to say me. But I honestly don’t know.

I lift my eyes to the photo that I had framed and now hangs over my desk. Her sapphire eyes look so serious. Of course, she always looks serious. Her soft, short blond curls glisten like gold coins in the sun. She’s still pale and there are still the same number of tiny freckles that dot her nose and there’s still that tiny beauty mark that sits right beside her right eye, disappearing when she laughs and smiles.

Her curves have rounded out since I saw her for the last time. Her full breasts are gently rounding over the top of the little white blouse that she’s wearing. Her vivid blue glasses sit on the tip of her tiny nose, slipping down while she’s talking. She’s wearing a little mini-skirt that teases the top of her rounded thighs and a pair of low boots with little silver chains on them. Her thick thighs and legs are covered by some kind of holey stockings that let her soft skin show through, teasing any man with red blood in his veins.

And I’ve got a lot of fucking blood in my veins when it comes to her.

My desk phone rings and I pick it up. “She’s coming,” a voice whispers into the receiver.

“What the hell are you talking about?” My mother gasps.

“Benjamin Bartholomew Henry! What have I told you about using that kind of language?”

I cringe and my head drops. “I’m sorry, Mother. You just surprised me, that’s all.” That and I have no idea what the woman’s talking about so I’m just a smidge frustrated. But she huffs out a breath.

“Fine. I’ll forgive you because I know how much you need to hear this.” She pauses dramatically and I swear under my breath, wishing my father hadn’t encouraged her love of the damn theater. She loves her dramatic license. “She’s coming home.”

I suck in a breath and try and control my annoyance which is spiking with every damn word. Why the hell can’t she just say it without all this…

“Stephanie Marlowe.”

Two words and I suck in a shattered, unbelieving breath. Two words that make my heart kick and grind back into life.

Two words that mean more than any two words on this planet. Two words that mean I have a chance to get back what I lost so many years ago.

Dazed, I hang up the phone, barely noticing the squawk as I rest the phone on the cradle.

All I can think about is her. My eyes lift to the picture on my wall. My best friend. The woman I love more than anything on this planet.

The one woman who owns my heart and always will.

I shudder, my eyes closing. I need a plan. Because if this is my last shot. My one and only shot for love. I have to make it work. Have to make it count.

There’s no other option. I need Stephanie Marlowe more than I need to breathe, to eat.

She is and always has been my everything.