Page 77 of Never Let Go

“Hope?”

“My brother’s fiancée. Porter. You remember him, right?”

She nodded slowly. “I think so, but what does his fiancée have to do with us?”

“More than you might think,” I admitted grudgingly, finally sliding my hands into my pockets. “I’m the idiot in this scenario, not you, but I also didn’t have anything to do with us being set up with each other at Sight Unseen.”

“But you work there.” She tucked her chin in low and shook her head at me. “Do you honestly expect me to believe you didn’t know?”

I slid my phone out of my pocket and held it out to her. “I don’t expect you to believe it from me, but maybe you will if you speak to Hope. Take it. She’s waiting for your call.”

Shelby frowned as she glanced at my phone. “Call me crazy, but I’m not inclined to let your brother’s fiancée talk you out of trouble with me.”

“Shit, I didn’t think about it like that.” I shot her a sheepish smile. “Look, Hope works at Sight Unseen too. She’s my boss, actually. You and I were a ninety-seven-percent match, so the system would’ve put us together anyway, but Hope isn’t only Porter’s fiancée. She’s also my friend and she has been for a long time.”

My heart slammed against my ribs. Everything rode on her believing what I was saying, and it was true, but I needed her to know that. “After that first meeting you and I had, I told her about you and I admitted that I used to have a huge crush on you.”

Shelby’s eyes widened and I could see her pulse thrumming under her jaw. “Maybe we should dance.”

I yanked my hand out of my pocket and extended it toward her again immediately. This time, she took it and I helped her up, feeling my skin sing where it came in contact with hers. I’d never felt anything like it with any other woman, and it made my heart pound even harder.

Because for the first time, it was really sinking in that this was Amanda. My Amanda. The girl I’d spent weeks obsessing over and looking forward to meeting, and it’d been Shelby all along. I almost groaned out loud when I pulled her to me once we reached the dance floor, and I held her as close as I dared, feeling the heat of her against my abdomen as I swayed us gently from side to side.

“Hope saw your profile when your application came in,” I said quietly, speaking against those floral-vanilla-scented locks that flooded my brain with memories of all the times I’d smelled it in the dark and how much I’d wanted the woman it belonged to.

My cock twitched in my pants, but this was not the time for that. With strict purpose, I focused my mind on what needed to be said instead of how good it felt to have her soft curves in my arms again. “It was very soon after I’d told her about you, and between her and Porter, they’d set me up on three awful dates before you and I went out the first time.”

“That was true?”

“Everything I told you was true. Hope asked me to give her one last chance to set me up. She begged me, but she was acting a little weird and I felt like I owed it to her to give it one last try.”

“Why would you owe her anything?”

I cringed. “I may have set her up with Porter last year without telling her it was him. It was a whole thing, but it’s also a story for a different day.”

“So she set you up with me without telling you?”

“Yep.” I adjusted my grip on her lower back, daring to tug her just a little bit closer. “I won’t lie. I was very tempted to look you up on our system once I realized how much I liked you, but I didn’t do it. There was too much going on with the inheritance, and moving, and stuff, and if the reveal date had been even a week later, I probably would’ve given in.”

“But you didn’t?”

“I didn’t,” I promised. “I had no idea that Hope had set me up with you until I saw you take that white rose from Adam at the reveal, but when I saw you, Shelby…” I trailed off, dragging in yet another deep breath and closing my eyes. Jesus. Talking about my feelings really doesn’t come naturally to me.

“When I saw you, I was so fucking relieved because, deep down inside, I think I wanted it to be you all along. I meant what I said that day in your office. I was seeing someone and it was going really well. I really liked her, and if you hadn’t been Amanda, I still would’ve tried to make it work with her, but after seeing you again, I realized that a part of me would always have belonged to you.”

“Is that true?”

“Yes.” I opened my eyes again, pulling my head back so I could look into her brilliant blues. I saw the disbelief swimming in them, the hurt, and the doubt. “Porter thinks it’s because you’re the one who got away, but he’s wrong.”

“He is?”

I nodded. “It’s because I’ve always known that it was you. I’ve always known that you and I belong together, and now that I’ve found you again, I’m never letting you go. Or at least, not without a fight.”

Her gaze flicked from one of my eyes to the other, her teeth worrying her lips as she processed what I’d said. “Why did you try to get me to talk to Hope?”

I smiled. “She said she’d help me and that if you didn’t believe me, that she was in the office. She’s working tonight and she’s on her computer. A computer that has access to the Sight Unseen system. She’s willing to do a video call with you to show you the logs.”

“How do I know those logs haven’t been manipulated?”