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“Enjoying each other?” She offered, and I was grateful for it.
I nodded. “I never would have believed it.”
Nell chuckled, and when the sun's light darted across the screens above us, her strawberry-blonde hair flashed crimson.
“I wasn’t that terrible back in the day, was I? That you would have been horrified to find out you ended up sleeping with me?”
“I wouldn’t have been horrified,” I corrected.
Maybe it was the fact that we were in this place where I used to come as a child when I needed to feel like I wasn’t alone or when I was able to lose a few hours and forget about my life at home.
Or maybe it was just the fact that it was Nell. But I found myself with an uncontrollable urge to talk to her, to be honest with her in a way that I hadn’t really been honest with anyone outside of Jourdan.
“You wouldn’t have?” She cocked her head to the side, genuine curiosity dripping from her voice.
I shook my head. “No. I would be damn proud if you want the honest truth about it.”
Her eyes lit up. “Blake Whitlock, did you used to have a crush on me?”
An amused, feral grin tugged up the corners of her lips, and I felt one of my own begin to match it.
“I absolutely did.”
I leaned forward again, pressing a kiss to the top of her nose, and she giggled. The sound, unlike her in so many ways, sent tiny bolts of electricity zipping through me.
“There’s no way that Mr. Silver Spoon himself had a crush on me.” She argued, rolling onto her side and propping her head in her hand as she regarded me with narrow eyes.
I opened my mouth to protest, but she continued drowning out anything I had been about to say.
“And before you get all,we both led the same privileged lives,” she bobbed her head from side to side as she lowered her voice in an imitation of mine. “I’m aware that my family is also wealthy. But even if we went to the same school, and our families were of the same,” she paused, considering her words, “ilk, it doesn’t mean that you and I had anything in common. You weren’t exactly someone who would have been interested in the girl with paint perpetually splattered on her uniform that hung out with the kids that were there on scholarships.”
The words were on the tip of my tongue, but a lump had risen in my throat, and I wouldn’t let them pass.
What would she think if I told her the truth?
With a sigh, I realized there was only one way to find out, and I was more than a little curious about how she would handle the news.
“You do know thatIwas there on a scholarship, don’t you?”
Confusion flickered across her delicate features, followed by disbelief.
“No, you didn’t,” she scoffed, her brow furrowing. “My brother and your other dumb little friends never would have spoken to you if you were. You went on trips with them. You went to an Ivy League school, you…”
“I went on trips that I worked my ass off to pay for,” I corrected, a blush of embarrassment rising into my cheeks, and I was suddenly very glad for the dimness of the room. “And even then, your brother ended up covering a lot of shit for me.”
Her eyes danced back and forth as they darted over my face, and I knew she was searching for any lie. But there was none to be found.
“My mom worked three jobs to make up for what the scholarship didn’t cover,” I continued on, the words suddenly bursting out of me like a damn had given way. “We lived in the West Bronx.”
I searched her face as I spoke, and when I said the name of the neighborhood I had grown up in, one of the poorest in the city, her eyes widened with recognition. I continued speaking, terrified that, at any moment, that recognition would turn to pity.
“She had been engaged once to my dad. He died when she was pregnant with me, but when they had first met, they had always talked about sending me to a private school and giving me a life better than what they had.” A lump rose in my throat once more, and my voice became thick with emotion.
“After he died, she only kept going for me. She never remarried, never even really dated. Not that I knew of, anyway. The reason I started doing what I do now, it was all because of her. To care for her.”
“Where is she now?” Nell asked, her deep brown eyes soft.
“Gone. She passed away three years ago.”
