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That anger and resentment receded with each moment I got to spend with my mom, Swiss and my little brother. You couldn’t be around them without your heart filling with hope. That maybe real love—that fairy-tale, Hallmark, Disney type of love—existed after all.
I’d never seen my mother truly alive.
Especially at Christmas.
So there I was, sabotaging it by playing games. By making my mom’s eyes light up when I turned up at her door with a boy in tow.
He was everything most parents wanted their daughter to bring home…. Clean cut. Neatly pressed shirt. Blue eyes. Impeccable manners. He wouldn’t let me carry a bag, insisted on addressing my mom and Swiss as Mr. and Mrs. Carter. He didn’t even blink at Swiss, the muscled, menacing outlaw biker. He took it in stride, not showing an ounce of the breeding that would’ve urged him to look down on people in motorcycle clubs.
He played with my brother, held him with experience—explaining that his sister had two kids he adored—and all in all acted like the perfect guy.
My mother lapped him up like I knew she would.
Swiss was a little more hesitant. Not just because he was crazy protective—which he was—but because he was an outlaw biker who wasn’t impressed with square jaws, pleases and thank yous and pressed shirts. I presumed there was some kind of alpha male test he was conducting on Bennett. A test that he invariably failed. Because Bennett, although he opened doors for me, pulled out chairs for me and treated me with the utmost respect, was not a badass alpha. He was a rich kid from a respectable family who summered in the Hamptons and interned on Wall Street during the winter break.
Swiss had got all this out of him like he was conducting an investigation. Bennett had offered all of the information freely, the ultimate parental pleaser. Unfortunately, Swiss was not that kind of parent.
And that was just the beginning.
My mom and Swiss’s nice house in the New Mexico desert was kind to him. Albeit it with Swiss’s steely glares and harder than necessary handshakes.
It was when I took him to the Sons of Templar compound for Christmas dinner that I baptized him by fire.
He did not deserve it. He may have been from a wealthy, WASPY family who didn’t believe in global warming and reminded me too much of my own upbringing, and he may have been in a rich frat and had friends named Chad who I wouldn’t leave my drink alone with, but he was a disturbingly decent guy.
We’d been on three dates. Actual dates where he’d picked me up from our house and everything. My roommates had legitimately thought we were being robbed when he rang the doorbell and no one had ordered food or was waiting on a package.
He took me out for dinner and paid each time, making it clear that it was because he picked the restaurant and arranged the date, so it was his responsibility, not because he believed I wasn’t capable of providing for myself. He asked my fuckingpermissionto kiss me. After the second date.
He was an odd mix of the conservative first son belonging to the rich frat at an Ivy League, but he was also liberal when it came to dating and things like consent.
I appreciated it. And it might’ve even worked for me,hemight’ve even worked for me, if I hadn’t met Elden. If I hadn’t been kissed fiercely by a man who didn’t ask for permission or forgiveness. Who didn’t give a fuck about the new rules of dating. All he cared about was claiming.
Except he didn’t.
Claim me.
Not physically.
And that should’ve made the progressive, liberal, feminist in me happy. It should’ve made me even more grateful to have found what passed for a decent guy in college. Especially after everything I’d been through thus far. He was the safe, comfortable route. I figured I deserved the safe and comfortable route.
Yet I was bringing Bennett home. For Christmas. Knowing we were having Christmas dinner at the club. Knowing that Elden would be there. I was using this nice boy who genuinely liked me, who genuinely thought I was a nice girl, and I was throwing him to the wolves.
I felt sick over it. Guilty. I had lain awake in my bedroom, tossing and turning, trying to convince myself to pull the plug on things before it got ugly.
I’d lain awake, tossing and turning … alone, because Bennett was staying in the guest room. Mom had beensohappy to let me know that after a long fight with Swiss which she ended by using her, and I quote, “womanly wiles,” Bennett would be staying in my bedroom.
I’d been horrified yet tried to hide it. As mentioned, Bennett was a gentleman, so I needn’t have worried. He’d barely gotten to second base. He’d made it clear he was happy to go further … if I wanted. But I didn’t. It felt vaguely like I was kissing a cousin. His lips were too soft, too moist, too hesitant. I’d barely been able to respond to the bumbling affection that did nothing to turn me on. I should’ve stopped it right there, knowing my body and needs well enough to understand he was the opposite of what I wanted.
But I’d kept pretending I was interested, just, “not ready,” for the, “next step.” He’d been respectful, patient and so sweet my teeth hurt.
Not because I had some master plan to bring him home and use him as a pawn in the twisted game I was playing with Elden… That happened organically, after I’d continued dating him because I was trying to force myself into a more acceptable role.
Luckily, Bennett was such a respectable guy that he gently declined my mother’s offer of him putting his stuff in my room, saying he’d be more comfortable in the guest room, as his own mother wouldn’t have heard of such a thing.
This response should’ve made Swiss gloriously happy, but I swore I heard him mutter, “pussy” under his breath.
Both Mom and I had stared daggers at him, but Bennett either hadn’t heard or was polite enough to pretend he didn’t.
