Page 15 of Friends with Benefits

* * *

Two hours later,I realized my mistake.

I should have left them after dinner, gone back to my apartment, and locked the door behind me. That would have been the smart option. But no, now I was stranded in my own special version of hell.

Ember stripped off the t-shirt she was wearing over a camisole. It wasn’t a designer label—Ember dressed more for comfort than for style, but she could have worn a potato sack and looked sexy as hell. I drank thirstily to keep from staring too hard.

“I thought I was a good girlfriend,” she was saying. “I helped with his schoolwork. I treated him to dinner when he visited or when I went down to visit him. I took care of presents for his mom and sisters when it was their birthday or his parents’ anniversary. I always helped tidy and organize his place when I stayed over. I don’t get it. I thought he loved me.”

The raw pain in her voice chilled all the heat I’d been stewing in ever since I had made our fourth round of margaritas. I shook my head to clear away the thoughts of her stripping off the rest of her clothes.

Get it together, Wilder.

“You know I’ve never thought highly of Chris. He was never good enough for you. So take my opinion with a grain of salt. It sounds like you mothered him. Not that it’s an excuse for what he did to you. But a man should be able to take care of his own shit, not make you do it.”

At my words, she blinked rapidly, and I hoped she wasn’t going to cry.

She took another sip, then inhaled deeply. “I can’t believe you said that.” I opened my mouth to apologize, and she shook her head before I could get the words out. “Don’t apologize. You’re probably right. You know he never did any of that stuff in return? He wasn’t like you. He’d never come over if the twins were here. He’d always make some sort of excuse. If he hadn’t dumped me, me having to be here for them 24/7 would have made him bail.”

I couldn’t say she was wrong, so I didn’t say anything.

“I guess deep down, I knew we weren’t going to last, but I dunno. I kept holding on because I thought if I was better, then maybe I could change things. Maybe if I was good enough, he would see that and stay.” She shook her head. “It sounds stupid.”

“You’re right; it is stupid. You shouldn’t have to change yourself for any man. You’re an amazing person. Guys would kill to be with a woman like you. So, fuck him if he didn’t realize how good he had it. I can promise you he’ll come to his senses. He may not let you know it, but he’ll think about you one day and remember what a great thing he had and how he gave it up. He’ll regret it.”

“You think so?” she asked.

“Oh, I know it,” I said, hoping she couldn’t hear the gravity in my voice.

A lengthy silence followed, and I was distracted by all of the ways this could have gone differently. If I’d pushed a little harder, made my move after she’d gotten settled with her sisters, maybe I would have had my chance before she’d met Chris. Now, I was so thoroughly in the friend zone, I doubted I’d ever find a way out.

“What if I’m bad in bed?” she blurted, and I choked on a sip of my margarita. The tequila burned my throat as it went down.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I demanded. Maybe I was hearing things because fuck if I was going to have this conversation. I needed to be much, much more wasted to listen to the details of their sex life.

“He met someone else. If he was…satisfied, he wouldn’t have been looking.” Her cheeks were as red as her hair.

We were having this conversation. Fuck it.

There were things I wanted to say to her that I’d been putting off for way too long.

“Sex is easy to come by—even good sex. It’s the people that come along with it that make it interesting. You can have the best sex in the world with someone you don’t give a damn about, but when it’s with someone you care about, it’s different. Better. Easier. You come harder, faster.”

“I never came with Chris.” She flushed as soon as she’d said the words. “I mean, I did, maybe a quarter of the time. It felt good even when I didn’t, but most of the time, it either took too long, and he got frustrated, or he didn’t care enough to get me off after he was done.”

I pressed a hand to my heart. “Angel, that’s a tragedy.”

She lifted a shoulder. “I’ve read that’s normal for a lot of women. Sometimes it just doesn’t happen.”

“That’s not what I’m hearing from what you’re saying. If he didn’t care enough to take care of you, too, then he was a selfish lover, period.”

And a fucking idiot.

But we were both fucking idiots. Because as much as I wanted to say something, tell her how much I wanted to be the man to take care of her, I knew I couldn’t.

“Maybe.”

“Definitely. Any guy would love to be with you, Ember. They’d kill to make you come.”