She went back to chopping chocolate.
You’re on your own, buddy.
“I met her the day after the—uh, after she and Dan broke up. She needed someone to help her out, and I gave her a place to stay. It’s kind of a long story.”
May’s father had lowered his ne
wspaper while Ben was speaking. “How about you tell us the short version?”
Ben cast his eyes at the ceiling, trying to figure out how to bowdlerize the story on the fly without being actively dishonest.
He settled for “I’m in love with your daughter.”
The knife clattered when it hit the cutting board, then fell to the floor, landing an inch from May’s foot.
“Oh Christ—” he said. At the same time, Allie said, “Mom, the bacon’s starting to smell done,” and May said, “You’re what?”
“Can I pick that up?” The knife really was wicked sharp, and if May stepped on it—actually, he couldn’t even think about that. He dropped to his knees and crawled past her, took the knife by the handle, and crawled back to his former position.
“You’re what?” May had moved. She stood directly above him, arms crossed, whip-mouth activated.
Ben sat back on his heels, short of breath from crawling. “In love with you.”
First there was a long pause. Then everyone started talking at once.
Nancy: “—understand what this is all about. Is he saying that after you had that incident with Dan, somehow you met Ben? And stayed with him? I’m not—”
Allie: “—tell them the part about how you got robbed, because otherwise it doesn’t make any sense how you were—”
Bill: “—women really need my help with this? Because—”
Ben started talking, too, tuning out all the other voices and May’s father’s slow passage around the table, in order to focus on May. “I’m sorry I left,” he said. “I botched that, but I think I needed to, actually, because it was seeing my father that made me realize—”
May held up her hand, palm out, and said, “Whoa.”
“—she mean you were robbed? Like by a mugger? I warned you about those men, May, but neither of you ever listens to me, you only—”
“—not a regular mugger, Mom, he was a specific mugger. Remember how we were getting all those phone calls from sleazy—”
“—let you all handle this, and if you need me I’ll be down in the—”
“—a lot of damage that I can’t gloss over, but that doesn’t mean—”
“EVERYBODY SHUT UP,” May said.
Everybody did. Nancy looked a little shell-shocked, whereas Allie had gotten some color back in her face. May’s father paused with one foot into the living room.
“I’m moving to New York,” she said.
Then the smoke alarm went off.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
It took a few minutes to get everything sorted out. May pushed her mom out of the kitchen into a seat at the table, where her dad had resumed his customary chair. Allie shoved the bacon away from the burner and turned off the stove. Ben, being the tallest, reached up to unscrew the smoke alarm and pull the battery out.
His reaching exposed a slice of bare skin right above the waistband of his jeans, and May had to admit to herself, she loved that particular slice of skin. And the battered hand that wrapped around the smoke alarm—she loved that, too.
And that he had come back for her.