Need Me (Broke and Beautiful #2)(60)

“She needs to stay,” Ben shouted, loud enough to make both of his friends jump.

Russell gestured at him with his beer. “Why, Ben? Why does Honey need to stay?”

For me. She needs to stay for me. Even if I don’t see her, at least there will be a chance I might see her. At least I’ll know she’s there. Selfish, selfish thoughts. He couldn’t be selfish anymore when it came to her. He’d done enough. “School, for one. She . . . she can’t just start over somewhere else.”

“Actually, she can.” Louis lifted a dark eyebrow. “It’s called a transfer.”

“That’s something a professor should probably know,” Russell observed with a smirk.

Ben gave him a cursory middle finger. “What about her friends?”

“They’ll miss her. A lot. But she can make more,” Louis said, leaning forward. “Give her a f*cking reason, Ben. She’s five blocks from here, man. Go get her.”

“You think it’s that easy?” Ben’s fist clenched with the need to hit the table. “This isn’t like you and Roxy. I didn’t just f*ck up once. I had three strikes, and I used them all. One when I accused her of coming on to me for a better grade. Two when I showed up here with someone else. The letter makes three—” He shook his head. “I don’t have any strikes left. The game’s over.”

“Far be it from me to knock a baseball reference, but—”

“Wait.” Ben’s hand came up to quiet Russell. An idea had just winged through the fog surrounding his brain. Dots were connecting, stars aligning. A weight pressed down on his chest as tiny squares sewed themselves together into a patchwork quilt. It could work. This idea. This. Idea. Not to get them back together. He wouldn’t give himself a moment’s hope she would ever let him hold her again. Touch her, kiss her. But he wouldn’t be part of the reason she gave up and went home. No way. Never.

There might be a way, however, to keep her here. He thought back to her essays, the ones he’d read so many times the last three days that his vision had blurred. Above everything in this world, Honey valued being part of a team. Surrounding herself with people she could help. She loved her hometown so much because it was a community. Her community. Could he create that for her in New York City?

It was selfish to desire any kind of proximity to her, so that couldn’t be why he pulled this idea together. It had to be for her. It would be for her. An apology. A solution. An expression of how he felt about her, if nothing else.

He looked between Louis and Russell. “I need your help.”

“You’ve got it,” they said at the same time.





Chapter 21



“WHERE DID YOU say we’re going?”

Honey pulled her legs up onto the hard, plastic subway seat, unconcerned about taking up too much space, since she, Roxy, and Abby were the only souls left on the 7 train headed to Queens. Her roommates were behaving . . . strangely. To say the least.

“There’s a new Mexican place we want to try,” Roxy said without skipping a beat. “Abby had a craving for an enchilada.”

Abby gave her a serious look. “And guacamole.”

Honey played with the zipper of her leather boot. “We can’t get that in Manhattan?”

“Where’s your sense of spontaneity?” Abby asked her. “We had to learn to fend for ourselves when you left. Procure our own meals. There was a few minutes there where I didn’t think I was going to make it.”

“You’ve turned us into major food snobs. Look at us. One week without your cooking and we’re riding an hour on the train to get decent Mexican food.” Roxy made a sound of disgust. “I used to eat all my meals from food trucks.”

“Maybe,” Honey drew out the word, “if you hadn’t hidden my cooking utensils, I could have made us enchiladas from scratch.”

“No idea what you’re talking about,” Roxy said.

Abby, avoiding all eye contact, started to whistle.

Honey gave them both the stink eye. She’d been back in New York for three days, and slowly but surely, her possessions had started to disappear. One morning, she’d woken up and reached for her phone on the nightstand to find it gone. A search of the apartment had yielded no results. Then her favorite pair of Converse had vanished from her closet without a trace. When she’d asked Abby if she’d seen them, the leggy brunette had shoved a Saltine cracker into her mouth and given a helpless shrug.

At first, Honey thought maybe she’d been imagining their twitchy behavior whenever she walked into the room, but this afternoon had confirmed her suspicions. When she’d returned home from a meeting with her counselor at Columbia, they’d been lying in wait for her in the living room. Roxy had thrown her worn-in jean jacket at her and hustled her out the door, each of them sending what they thought were discreet text messages at their sides. Honey had an apprehensive feeling about this little adventure, but she was going along with it because she felt guilty.

Despite her assurances, they expected her to fly back to Kentucky at any second. If she’d been able to maintain an upbeat attitude, she might have convinced them to the contrary, but Ben was still there, blocking the positivity trying to push its way through. Returning to New York, going back to school, had clobbered her in memories, but she was working her way through it.