Lost and Found (Twist of Fate #1)(32)

“That must have been tough,” I said.

Bennett was quiet for a long time and then his gaze shifted to mine again. “He reminded me of you.”

I stiffened at that.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t say that to upset you, Xander,” Bennett began, but I shook my head to stop him.

“No, it’s okay,” I said. “What happened with Colin?”

“It took me a long time to get through to him, and there were a lot of times where I wanted to give up. But I kept remembering that he’d lost everything… that he was… lost. It was a year before I finally found something that helped us connect.”

“What was it?”

“Legos.”

“What?” I asked in surprise.

Bennett smiled. “Legos. He was obsessed with them. Well, not just Legos, but anything he could use to build things.”

I laughed at that and wondered how the hell Bennett had managed to figure that out. But he continued before I could ask.

“Anyway, once I had that connection with him, he started talking more. He was a really bright kid, but losing his dad… he’d understood that he was gone, but he hadn’t accepted it.”

I ignored the tension that began running through me as Bennett’s story started to hit too close to home. I could tell Bennett knew how his words were affecting me, because he’d stopped playing with the stick and his attention was focused solely on me.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Do you want me to stop?”

I shook my head. “No, tell me what happened to him.”

“I spent years being his big brother, even after he was too old for the program. I was in my final year of graduate school when he graduated from high school. Guess what I gave him for his graduation present.”

Bennett’s smile did crazy things to my insides and my earlier tension drained away. “What?” I asked.

“A trip to Legoland in California.”

I laughed and shook my head. “God, I’ve missed you, Bennett,” I said softly. I realized my mistake when I heard Bennett let out the tiniest of whimpers. I should have said I’d missed his antics, but in truth, that was just a part of it. My brain had clearly decided this was going to be one of those situations where I was going to say exactly what was on my mind… just like my comment about Aiden touching Bennett so damn much and me not liking it.

I cursed myself, but luckily, Bennett stepped in to pull us back from the quagmire of shit I’d just thrust us both into.

“You would have loved Legoland, Xander,” he said with a smile.

“Oh yeah, why?”

“All those tiny cities made out of Legos… you would have felt like Godzilla, short boy.”

I chuckled. Bennett had teased me mercilessly as kids when he’d had a growth spurt when he was twelve and had grown a couple of inches taller than me within a matter of months. I hadn’t caught up to him until we’d turned fourteen.

“What happened to Colin?” I asked, more to get us back on topic because the thought of our height difference now was reminding me how perfectly we’d fit together against that damn tree.

“I still talk to him every week and try to have dinner with him once a month. He’s studying architectural engineering at MIT.”

“Wow, that’s incredible.”

Bennett smiled and began playing with the stick again. “He’s an amazing kid.”

I wanted to tell Bennett he was amazing, but I managed to hold my tongue. “So is that why you’re working with these kids?” I asked, motioning to the tents behind me.

He nodded. “After I got my MBA, I began working for my dad’s company. They had a foundation that worked with certain charities, but I could tell it was originally only created to help the firm’s public image. The foundation basically just threw money at some of the big-name charities and that was it. After I met Lucky, I saw the potential for the foundation to do some real good… for it to help people in an everyday kind of way. Does that make sense?”

“It does,” I said. “You wanted to see the money doing good.”

“Yeah,” he responded. “And not just the money. But people helping other people. Hands-on stuff. Kids like Lucky don’t just need money handed to them… they need this,” he said as he motioned towards the lake with his stick. “Experiences, education— they need to know there’s more out there. That the lives they were born into aren’t the lives they’re stuck in.”

I studied him for a moment and said, “Like you?”

He jerked his head up. “What?”

“You know what I’m talking about, Benny,” I said softly.

He swallowed hard and then looked away. I moved closer to him and used my hand to force his chin around so he was looking at me. “People always thought I was the one trapped by my circumstances. A gardener’s son. The scholarship kid. But none of them really knew, did they, Benny?”

Bennett shook his head. I let my fingers trail along his jaw as I spoke. “You had every toy and gadget a kid could ever dream of having, but all you really wanted was what I had.”

He closed his eyes and carefully withdrew from my touch, but he didn’t move away from me. “I know we aren’t supposed to talk about him, but you weren’t the only one who lost him, Xander.”