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With just a handful of words, she stunned me into silence.
She’d been there? I thought Seth had told her I’d talked him into breaking up with her, and that’s what she meant when she said she knew everything before she slammed the door in my face. I had no idea she’d heard our conversation. I wracked my brain, clawing through my memories, trying to think back to everything I’d said.
Fuck. I probably did say all those things.
I definitely remember telling Seth he didn’t belong with someone like Audrey, who had just started a business and had a life she loved here. She’d always gravitated toward things that gave her stability and comfort, and she wouldn’t have been happy with a life on the go. I positioned it like he was meant for bigger things to feed his ego, because he wouldn’t have listened to me any other way.
That sloppy seconds comment, though. Jesus Christ. No wonder she’d shut me out so thoroughly. I didn’t mean a word of it, but she couldn’t have known that.
Seth had been taunting me when he wanted to know if I planned to ask her out. I made a mistake early on when I admitted to him that I didn’t think of her as a friend. He came so close to blowing me off and asking Audrey to leave the island for good. Not necessarily because he wanted her to go with him, he just didn’t want anyone else to be with her either. So I said some nasty shit to keep him from suspecting how I really felt.
This was so screwed up. I’d always assumed I’d pissed her off because I’d interfered in her relationship. How could this have gone so wrong for so long? I raised my knuckles to my teeth and bit down as I paced in front of her. Tears still rolled down her beautiful face.
“I…” Goddamn it. I didn’t even know where to begin.
“Don’t say anything.” She turned, her body springing forward, ready to run. I caught her around the waist. “Let go of me, Wes. I don’t want you to explain. I just want to go home.”
“It’s not what you think. I promise.” I held her back tight against my chest, desperation burning through my veins. “Please listen to me, baby. All I’m asking is for five minutes.”
Vicious shards of ice speared the concrete, breaking apart on contact and scattering splinters across the parking lot. She pushed out of my hold to face me. Bitterness hardened her voice and replaced her tears. “I heard everything you said. You can’t excuse any of it.”
“I only said those things so he wouldn’t know that I’m in love with you.”
Her mouth formed a perfect O. She snapped it shut and began vehemently shaking her head. “No, you aren’t.”
“I am.” I couldn’t hold back my smile. She’d deny that the sky was blue if winning an argument about it was on the line. “I’ve been in love with you for over a decade, maybe longer. It feels like I’ve loved you my whole life.”
“You’re just saying that because I’m mad at you.” She crossed her arms. “Seth gave you his blessing to ask me out, and you made it perfectly clear why you had no interest.”
“Seth hadnotbeen giving his blessing. He was testing me because I let it slip that I thought of you as more than a friend.”
She paused as if considering, and hope gripped my chest. She pursed her lips. “If you loved me so much, why didn’t you ask me out years ago?”
I scrubbed a hand over my face. This was not something I wanted to get into right now. Even though I didn’t have particularly warm feelings for my brother on the best of days, I didn’t want to come off like I was trashing him or their relationship. But she’d been functioning under a cloud of misunderstanding for long enough and deserved to hear the whole of it.
“I was going to ask you out after you graduated.” My lips thinned as I ground my teeth, still irritated with both Seth and myself all these years later. “You’re probably going to think I was an idiot, but the age gap between us at eighteen and twenty-one felt a hell of a lot wider than the one between us now at twenty-seven and thirty. It didn’t seem right to ask you out while you were still in high school.”
Her eyes widened, and I could see her doing the rewind in her head to when Seth did that big promposal a month before graduation. “If you intended to ask me out, then why didn’t you say anything to Seth? Because he—”
“He knew.”
“What?” Her skeptical expression crumbled. If Seth had been here, I would’ve laid him out for it. “What are you saying to me right now?”
I tilted my head back and sighed as I stared at the constellations, hoping my ancestors would grant me a little insight into navigating this conversation without hurting her any more than I already had. “My brother is…”
“A jerk?”
Yes, but not something I needed to voice at this time. “He’s competitive. Always has been. With me especially. Maybe because we were the middle kids. Who knows. But we were both young and dumb back then. I think he saw going out with you as a win over me. I’d like to believe it’s because he didn’t realize how serious I was about you. Guys at that age aren’t exactly known for expressing their feelings.”
“Cool.” Her bottom lip quivered. “So, you’re saying the guy I dated for five years was only with me so he could win some stupid-ass competition with you?”
“No, baby. It might’ve started that way, but then he fell in love with you.” I trailed my fingers over her jaw, rubbing my thumb over the dry tears on her cheek. “How could he not?”
She bit her lip and toed at a loose piece of concrete. “I turned him down the first three times he asked me out.” She looked up at me with those gorgeous baby blues and damn near sent me to my knees. “Because I was waiting for you.”
“I’m sorry.” I closed my eyes, pressing my forehead against hers. “There isn’t a day that’s gone by where I haven’t wished I could go back and do it all different. Not a single day.”
She exhaled and took a step back as snow began to fall softly around us. “How can you think you still love me after all this time? You don’t even know me anymore.”
