Page 58 of Rebound

Ben sat down beside him and rested his head against Thomas’s shoulder. “It was?”

“Interesting.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked, not wanting to push.

“I think Kenzie is finally warming up to me,” Thomas said. “But I worry Dakota is a lost cause.”

“Why?”

“He’s cheating on his husband. He was sleeping on Kenzie’s couch until she threw him out.” Thomas closed his eyes and leaned his head back, and Ben turned, dropping a kiss below his ear. “I need to talk to Jennifer and we have to talk to the kids. They have a really skewed perception about what’s happening between us.”

“How long until your divorce is final?”

Ben honestly didn’t care. He knew the legality of Thomas’s marriage was a technicality and had no bearing on anything between them. But he had the suspicion the date meant something to Thomas. That it would bring him closure and maybe allow things between them to move forward in a more serious way.

“A few weeks is all. My birthday actually. The tenth of May.”

He did some math on his fingers and made a mental note to not forget Thomas’s birthday was coming up.

“A double celebration, then,” he said.

Thomas nodded and scooted into the corner of the couch, taking Ben with him and arranging him so Ben was half on top of him.

“That can’t be comfortable.”

“It’s exactly what I need right now.” Thomas closed his eyes and let out a long breath, the rise and fall of his chest moving in time with Ben’s own breaths. “What about you? How is your morning? How was your week?”

Ben hadn’t wanted to have the conversation, but he didn’t want to avoid it either.

“It’s a little heavy,” he admitted.

“I’m strong enough for it,” Thomas whispered, stroking fingers through his hair.

Ben closed his eyes and settled against Thomas’s chest, listening to his breaths and his heart. “I have a lot of messy feelings about my ex-boyfriend.”

“I have a lot of messy feelings about my ex-wife.”

“I feel like sometimes…I think that what happened with us was my fault.” Ben paused, and Thomas didn’t answer, instead giving him space to think and speak. “Lara assures me that’s not the case, though.”

“It’s not.”

“But I let it go on.”

“You tried to have a relationship with someone who didn’t care about you and didn’t respect you,” Thomas countered. “Trust that I know what that looks like because I was in it a lot longer than you were. You can’t change people like that.”

“I didn’t want to change him. I just wanted him to want me. To like me.”

“Something he’s clearly not capable of, so it would have been a change.”

That stopped him, and he took time to think about the truth of Thomas’s words. He hated to admit it, but something about the simple words Thomas had just said caused everything else to click into place—the things Lara had tried to force him to make sense of, the tangled mess of his own feelings that surrounded Cody, and the way their relationship evolved and ended.

“Oh,” he said softly.

Thomas huffed out a gentle laugh and tightened his arms around Ben’s back. “Did something in there resonate with you?”

“All of it,” he admitted, pushing himself out of Thomas’s hold so he was sitting upright. “Like, the whole thing turned a spotlight on how I felt about it.”

Thomas matched his sitting position, one eyebrow raised in question. “And?”