Authors: K. Ryan
I'd watched Brennan from across the club, despite the blinding, flashing lights, and I couldn't help but feel jealous. Jack got to know him, talk to him, see him...all I got was a few stolen glimpses from over Bennett's shoulder. What would it be like to see him? For him to know me? Would he feel the way Sean did? Or would he still only see me as the stupid, reckless girl who'd falsely sent his younger brother to prison?
I glance over at Bennett, who's too engrossed in texting to really notice much else, and sigh. Maybe 10 more minutes, 20 tops, and we'll be able to sneak out of here with little to no fanfare. It would be nice if—
The next song starts playing over the surround sound and I nearly choke on my laughter.
"
You're just too good to be true/Can't take my eyes off of you..."
By the time the song reaches it's crescendo, doo-wops and all, with Frankie Valli professing how much he loves his baby, my shoulders are shaking with laughter so hard I can't stop it.
Bennett nudges me in the side, but I still can't stop. The list of reasons why I shouldn't be thinking about him right now are just piling up: 1) He's a distraction when I should be concentrating on looking for an opening to get out of here 2) He went to a fight last night sponsored by the Gianottis and only mentioned it
after
he left 3) I've already spent the entire night glancing at my phone, waiting stupidly for any sign of contact...
"Rae," he stage-whispers, his face filling with disbelief. "
What
is the malfunction?"
Taking a tiny sip from my champagne glass doesn't help either. The laughter just won't cease. It certainly doesn't help when the next song starts with that smooth, blue-eyed singer crooning,
"Fly me to the moon/Let me play among the stars..."
"Rae," Bennett whispers again, a little more exasperated this time, "Zip it."
Finally, I just can't take it anymore and despite the fact that Bennett's hovering over my shoulder, I slide my phone out of my clutch to send a quick text in spite of everything.
You'll never guess what song is playing right now.
Jack's reply comes swiftly and that's mostly in part because he's currently sitting in Bennett's Prius, albeit parked a safe distance away, with nothing better to do:
What's that?
Sinatra.
Not even two seconds later, he texts back:
Shocking. They played the Four Seasons yet?
Yep,
I reply with a sly smile.
I don't get a chance to see what he replies because Bennett snatches my phone right out of my hand. As he scrolls through the brief text exchange, his eyebrows inch higher and higher up into his hairline. When he hands back my phone, he doesn't say anything, but his expression already says it all.
"How much longer do you think we should stay?"
That's my lame attempt at deflecting whatever it is he might say instead and Bennett's dark eyes study me carefully for a few beats before they narrow ever so slightly.
"I don't know..." he starts slowly, but trails off when his phone buzzes in his back pocket. Seriously, he doesn't have a leg to stand on about texting during this thing, but then again, neither do I.
"You've gotta be kidding," he mutters under his breath and shakes his head.
"What?"
He doesn't respond, choosing instead to fire off a frenzy of text messages. Each new text earns another curse under his breath and finally, I manage to get his attention long enough to tear his eyes away from his screen.
"Benn? What's wrong?"
He closes his eyes for just a moment and when they open again, they flash with a scarily intense mixture of frustration and disbelief.
"It's Aiden," he whispers in my ear. "I don't know what's going on, but all of a sudden, it's like he suddenly decided to switch teams...or at the very least, straddle the laps of both."
"What?" I frown and glance around us just to make sure he isn't drawing any unnecessary attention our way. Unfortunately, I catch the mayor's eyes and immediately look away.
Bennett shakes his head again and stares at his phone. "I just don't understand. Why did he even start this with me if he wasn't sure? I'm not gonna be someone's guinea pig. I'm just not."
"Benn..." I don't know what else to tell him. All I know is that I feel like we're being watched now and Bennett is very close to making a scene. A big, fat, attention-getting scene.
"I mean," he shoves his phone in the back pocket of his suit pants as he speaks, his voice shaky and rough, and he pushes his free hand through his hair. "I should've known this was gonna happen, right? It was too good to be true. I should've known."
My sympathies are with him. They really are. But right now we have a much larger issue to deal with because my best friend is currently pacing in a roomful of people with both hands in his hair, muttering obscenities to himself, and looking for the nearest window to jump out of.
"Benn," I start as calmly as I can and put a hand on his arm to get him to stop moving. It doesn't work. "Just hold on until you can actually talk to him, okay? Everything gets lost in translation with texts anyway and you won't know for sure until you talk to him."
"Oh right," he put his hands on his hips defiantly and then promptly waves a pointed finger at my clutch, where my phone is safely tucked away. "Like you're any better with your...your...whatever the hell it is you're doing with him."
"I'm not doing anything. And neither are you. At least not until we get out of here."
That doesn't really help either because he just goes right back to pacing and trying to tear his hair out. My hands immediately leap up to his in a futile effort at prying his hands away from his beautiful hair, but he just shrugs me off.
"Wow," I try instead. "You must be really far gone if you don't even care about your hair right now."
"My hair is the least of my worries, Raena. The very
least
," he bites out. Then the pacing resumes and his hands tear right through his hair again. "I just...I'm an idiot, right? That's what happened here. I got my hopes up. Put all my eggs in one basket. Put the cart before the horse...oh great. Just great."
"What?" I frown.
Bennett just points to something over my shoulder and I wince when my eyes follow the gesture. Yeah. Just great. My sister is slinking right toward us in all her mayor's daughter glory. I'm pretty sure her ivory off-the-shoulder dress cost more than my car—definitely not off the rack, that's for sure. Not to mention everything else about her tonight is in prime attention-seeking mode from her sleek, shiny dark hair all the way to the red polish on her toes. I guess it just runs in the family.
I suck in a deep breath at that last thought. That's not fair to lump her in with the rest of them. She's still my sister, even if I hate her father. Even if she still doesn't know.
"Rae," she whispers harshly and then looks over her shoulder. Sure enough, the mayor is observing this exchange like a hawk. "What's going on? Why is Benn freaking out?"
"Hello to you, Zero," Bennett snarls, baring his teeth and everything. God, he really is a drama queen.
Luckily for everyone involved, Lucy chooses to just ignore him and focuses on me instead. "Dad's pissed."
I huff out a laugh. "No shit. Let me guess, he sent you over here to tell us to keep it down."
Her pretty chocolate eyes darken and her eyebrows knit together. "Well...maybe."
I shake my head, but still manage to steel my gaze right on my sister. If my eyes find the mayor, all bets are off because I won't be able to keep the animosity from pouring out of me.
She looks over her shoulder again before asking, "What's wrong?"
"Oh. Just nothing," Bennett answers for me and his hands lift up to the ceiling as he speaks. "Nothing but my pathetically miserable life."
Lucy's lips part to reply, but he doesn't let her get that far.
"It looks like my boyfriend decided he no longer wants boyfriends. No...he's on the hunt for a girlfriend now, that two-faced, spineless, dickless son of a bitch!"
"Oh Jesus," Lucy mutters under her breath and her lips pull apart in a wince as her eyes dart around us.
Yeah. People are definitely staring now. And whispering.
"Um, Benn," I murmur gently as my hands find his shoulders. "Maybe bring it down a notch. Just until we leave and then you can rant and rave all you want. Trust me, I'll be right there with you."
"I think Dad wants you guys to go, like," she glances over her shoulder again, "ten minutes ago."
Why would he want us to stay? We're making a scene at his big fundraiser, like he needs the extra money anyway, and that just cannot be tolerated. Unacceptable. And of course he'd send my sister, the good one, the sweet one, to do his dirty work for him. At least I wear my role as family disappointment well. The fact that it
still
cuts me off at the knees, knowing what I know, knowing that he has no real hold over me anymore, I just...I just don't have time for that right now.
"Maybe we should leave," Bennett mutters. "I don't want to be around all these stupid people anyway. They all have their heads shoved so far up their asses they don't know which end is up."
When a nearby partygoer snapped his head in our direction at that last comment, Bennett just sneers, "Yeah. That's right. I was talking about
you
."
"Alright, Benn," my hands move up to his shoulders to turn him toward the exit. "Time to go."
On second thought, I swivel back around to Lucy just to make sure. "Hey, you're still opening the store tomorrow, right?"
Please,
I plead silently to her,
be responsible. Just this once.
"What?" she frowns, like she'd honestly forgotten she was on the schedule for tomorrow. Seeing as how I was the one who'd made the schedule, I suppose I can see how that might happen. "Oh right. Yeah. I'm opening."
"You sure?"
"What?" she puts her hands on her hips again and purses her lips into a tight line.
"I'm not going to get a text at six in the morning telling me you're too hungover to open, right?"
She pauses for just a moment and her eyes drop to the champagne flute in her hand, but it's long enough for the true meaning of my words to really sink in. When her eyes find me again, they're a dark cloud of annoyance with a little bit of hurt mixed in there too, but she's not going to break my resolve that easily.
"No," she answers evenly. "I'm not. Just...just take care of Benn."
Bennett's still muttering to himself and staggering a little like a drunken sailor as I gently push him out of the banquet hall and into the lobby, where, thankfully, the exit is finally in sight. I can't get us out of here fast enough, but by the time we've cleared the lobby and are making our way through the parking lot to get to his Prius, Bennett's walk suddenly straightens, his hysteria wanes, and his hands fold calmly into his pockets.
"Wait a minute," I stop right in my tracks, despite the fact that my knee screams a little from the impact. "What's happening?"
Bennett points to himself with a sly grin. "I just Keyser Sozed those snobby bitches."
"What?"
He jogs ahead of me a little and then takes on an awkward limp with one foot turned to the side, shuffling through the parking lot with a flashy, cocksure grin on his face.
"And just like that," he murmurs as the limp subsides. "He's gone."
"Oh my God," I shake my head. "I should've known..."
"Well," Bennett waggles his eyebrows. "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."
I'm still trying to decide if I should strangle Bennett now or later when I slide into the backseat of Bennett's Prius. He follows suit, that sneaky, Joker-esque smile still on his face as he glances at Jack, who's waiting patiently in the passenger seat.
Jack spares me a glance over his shoulder and then grins at Bennett. "I take it the plan worked?"
"Did it ever," Bennett flashes him a victorious grin as they bump fists and I just shake my head one more time. Then he holds out a hand and says in his best Benicio del Toro accent: "Hand me the keys, you cocksucker."
Jack just laughs and tosses him the keys.
"Enough with the
Usual Suspects
crap, okay? Seriously."
"Well, Clamato, I'm sorry," Bennett eyes me from the rearview mirror. He doesn't look sorry at all. "I
had
to make it look real. I know you thought you knew the plan, but I didn't want to take any chances. We needed a diversion to get out of there and I created one. Besides," Bennett jerks a thumb Jack's way, "blame it all on him."
Jack's hands fly up in defense. "Hey. I just gave him the idea. I didn't have anything to do with the rest of it."
"Yeah, yeah," I grumble from the back seat. "Is there anything else in our plan I don't know about?"
"Nope," Jack tells me with a sympathetic smile. "That was the only deviation. Promise."
The worst part of all this is that I actually believe him.
And maybe, dare I say it, I actually trust him too.
THE HARDWOOD FLOOR creaks underneath my three-inch heels and I tip-toe as quickly as I can up the stairs to head right for the mayor's home office. This part, as far as I know, was always in the plan. Since we left the fundraiser pretty early, nobody's going to be showing up here for another couple of hours, so we've got ample time to get in, find something we can use, and get out. No staff and definitely no mayor and his wife will be making an appearance for awhile.