“I don’t want to do this right now,” she says, her tone tight.
“I know.” My voice catches. “But I need to.”
I need to.Why the hell did I say that? Why am I making this about me?
Because it is about me. And about her. Aboutus.
She turns then—slowly—and when her eyes meet mine, they’re glassy with…
God, with everything.
Anger. Sadness. Disgust. Maybe worst of all, disappointment.
She crosses her arms. “Go on then. Rip the rest out.”
I swallow hard. She’s so beautiful, and the love I have for her is like an ache in my heart.
This isn’t how I wanted to say it.
But there’s no perfect way to tell someone you’re in love with her…and with someone else.
“It was so long ago,” I begin, voice raw. “I was just a kid. Stupid and young and so fucking scared of what it meant to want Jake the way I did. Then he died. Or I thought he did. I grieved, and I went on.”
She doesn’t blink. She barely breathes.
“I buried it, Sienna. Deep. So deep I didn’t even know how much I missed him until I saw his face again. And then…” I rub the back of my neck. “I had to know. I had to know if he felt something, anything. Whether it would have made a difference if I’d said anything then.”
She tightens her arms across her chest. Her mouth trembles for just a second before she presses her lips together. “I saw the kiss.”
“It wasn’t planned. It was like the past caught fire in the present and we both got burned.”
“But you enjoyed it.”
I can’t lie to her. Hell, she saw us. “I did. So did he.”
“And you still love him,” she says, flat, emotionless.
“I don’t know what I feel,” I say, and the honesty guts me. “Seeing him again opened something I thought I’d sealed off. But Sienna?—”
She turns like she’s about to walk away again.
“I loveyoutoo.”
She freezes.
I take a step closer, not touching her. Not yet. “I know how it sounds. And I hate that it sounds like I’m asking you to compete with a ghost from my past. But this thing with you—it’s real. It’s not a placeholder. It never was.”
She turns to me slowly, eyes flashing now. “Then why do I feel like I was just holding space? Like the second he came back, everything between us didn’t matter anymore?”
“Oh, baby,” I say. “I didn’t fully understand the whole thing with Jake myself until it was staring me in the face. But what we have matters, Sienna.Youmatter.”
Her breath shudders. “So what do you want now, Brett? You want us both?”
I don’t hate that idea.
But I can’t ask that of Sienna. Or of Jake, for that matter, if he even wants to be with me.
“No.” My voice drops, serious. “I want clarity. And I want to stop running from things that hurt. I want to figure out what all of this means, and I want you to know where I stand. I’m not going to lie to you. I won’t pretend Jake’s return didn’t shake something loose in me.”
