Chapter 20 #2
I shook my head. “No, you can’t. Because then …”
“Then?”
“Then I’d have to wonder why you treated me like crap for years,” I said, the words spilling faster than I could stop them.
“I’d have to make sense of that version of you.
The one who made me feel so small. Like I was ridiculous for ever thinking I was enough to even matter to you.
I’d have to believe I was just some stupid girl who couldn’t even make it past a second date with twelve different guys in a month. ”
Josh blinked. “Nine. Technically eight.”
“You’re correcting me right now?”
He sighed. “That year you came home from college …” His voice quieted.
“I was a jerk. And I’ve told you that. But I didn’t say I was sorry.
Not really. And I am. I’m so sorry for how I treated you, Brielle.
I toyed with you, and I teased you because I didn’t know how to deal with how I felt.
You were braver than I ever was. You showed up for your feelings. I hid from mine.”
My heart thudded painfully in my chest.
Josh gave a slow, almost-shy smile. “I think I’ve had a crush on you for a long time. Stupid, right? Like we’re back in school again.”
“It’s not stupid,” I said, barely above a whisper. “But …”
I looked at him. He was so close. Too close. And every part of me wanted to lean in, to say yes, to crash into this like it was something safe instead of terrifying.
But it was terrifying.
God, I wondered how his lips would feel against mine.
It would be all too simple.
It would be all too wonderful.
There was no hesitation between us. The only thing that was rolling through my entire body was lust for him that had never been sated from the moment I’d first known I loved my best friend’s brother.
There was also fear.
What if he shoved me away again, just like he had all those years ago? What if he laughed in my face, just like he had before? He could.
This could all be a lie.
All the feeling and emotion was rising up inside me. I was a bundle of fear and hope and excitement. I wasn’t sure what I should be feeling, and my body was already deciding for me.
“Are you crying?”
I shook my head, though his thumbs were already wiping away silent tears. “I’m not.”
“There’s evidence to the contrary.” He chuckled, and then his smile turned downward. “What did I do now?”
“Nothing.”
“I must’ve done something.”
“No,” I insisted. “You haven’t. You haven’t. I just keep waiting …”
His hand drifted from the side of my neck to my shoulder and down until he grasped my hand.
I stared down at it, feeling numb and also like I had been electrocuted, unable to move.
“For what?”
I snapped my attention back to his face. “For you to laugh at me.”
“What?”
“For you to say, Just kidding, like you did when I was in high school. Or maybe that this will last until the morning, and then you’ll say that it was a mistake.”
He was already shaking his head. “No, no, no, Bri. Nothing between us will ever be a mistake.”
“But it has been.”
“I was the mistake. Never you. I’m so sorry I ever made you feel that way.”
“Will you again?” I asked.
He didn’t answer right away.
“He’s not ready to date someone like you,” he’d said about his friend.
But what about him?
Did he deserve me?
Did he think that he did?
“No,” he said. “I won’t. I promise.”
Something inside of me needed to hear those words. “You sure?”
“I want to be. Yes, I am.”
“How can you be positive now?”
“Because I’m not the same person I was before.
You know that. Since I was in that accident, I have been running around, trying to live as much life as I possibly could, and yet everywhere I went, it was the oddest thing.
I went to Thailand. I went to Italy. I went to just about anywhere I could afford to, and when I ended up at one of the historical buildings or saw a person eating gelato on the side of the street, I thought of you.
I thought of you all the time and the stories you’d probably be telling me as we traveled together. ”
“It’s been years.”
“So?” he insisted. “Doesn’t mean I fucked up any less.
Doesn’t mean that I haven’t had plenty of time to recognize that I have been looking for our story in every experience and every relationship I tried to create on my own, but it doesn’t work that way.
It doesn’t mean that when I looked at you then or now that I don’t want to imagine what you taste like. ”
I didn’t think it was possible, but I hissed.
I wanted him to find out.
I stared at him.
I needed him too. Maybe too much. Maybe more than I should, but he was sitting right in front of me, and … maybe I needed a bit of life in me too.
Maybe I needed a little bit of him.
Maybe all of him, if he would actually give it.
“Maybe we just need to get this out of our systems. Maybe that is all this is. Then we can move on.”
He nodded, still staring at me, as if he couldn’t pry his eyes away. “Yeah, that could be it. But Brielle…”
“What?” I asked, waiting for him to finish what he was about to say.
He just smiled, shook his head. “Nothing.”
I kissed him like I meant it. He kissed me like he did too.