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“Saturday night was our first date,” I said, my tone smooth and placating.
He stepped back and nodded, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “Okay, so, what… you worked your way through every single girl between here and Bluffton and you decided to make Aria the next rung on your ladder? You couldn’t have started with Layla or Lyndi before coming so close to home?”
I flinched, pain searing through me. “It’s not like that.”
“No? Tell me what it’s like, then. You were right there with me keeping dudes like you away from my sister, and nowyou’rethe one I have to worry about?”
I chose to let his “dudes like you” comment slide, but it nagged at the self-doubt I still carried. “I wasn’t being protective of her in the same way you were back then. I just couldn’t admit it.”
His brows flew up. “Oh, I see. So you’ve felt this way about my sister since we were in high school, and you’re just now telling me? Is that what I’m hearing?”
“Yeah. That’s what you’re hearing.”
“Wow,” he said, drawing out the single syllable until he ran out of breath. He charged up to me again, and I stiffened, waiting for a blow that didn’t come. He must have thought better of it because he backed up, pacing away from me.
I stood there, my boots growing roots into the concrete. He needed to think about it, so I’d give him the time to do so. Paul was a good man. He knew me better than anyone. Yes, I’d lied to him about feelings that I hadn’t even allowed myself to acknowledge. But he had to know I would never do anything to hurt his sister.
“You know what the worst part about this is?” he asked, turning back to me, glowering with such a force that I felt it hit my chest from five feet away.
“What?”
“It’s that you know how much she trusts you. How much we all trusted you. And you’re going to hurt her anyway.”
I shook my head so hard I thought it was going to fall off. “That’s not going to happen.”
“How do you figure? Did you really think preying on my little sister, given the way she’s always felt about you was a good idea? You can’t even bother to make it past the first or second date because you’re not a one-woman man. What makes you think Aria deserves to be treated like that?”
That brought me up short. “Wait, back up. Given the way she’s always felt about me?”
“I’m not an idiot, Will. I’ve seen the way she looks at you. But I always thought it was a crush. And I thought I knew you well enough to know that you would never take advantage of her like this.”
“Take advantage—Paul, do you hear yourself?” Again, my voice was calm, but inside, I was reeling. “I would never take advantage of Aria. Does it occur to you that maybe if we’ve both felt this way for so long, it could be real?”
He dismissed my question with a wave of his hand. “No. Because if what you had was real, you wouldn’t have spent the last decade with a million different women. How much could she possibly mean to you?”
“That’s rich coming from the guy who proposed to one woman while being secretly in love with another.”
This time, I really thought he’d hit me. Instead, all the air puffing up his chest exploded out of him in a rush. His eyes searched my face for a long moment, then he hung his head.
Again, I waited. I could practically hear his brain working overtime to process this conversation, and there was no part of me that wanted to interrupt him.
When he looked up again, pain reflected in the depths of his green eyes. He raised one hand, his finger stabbing the air. “You lied to me. Every day that you didn’t tell me how you felt about her, you lied.”
“I did. And I’m sorry for that.” My voice was hoarse, new anguish settling deep within me. “But I’m not sorry for loving her. I’ll never be sorry for that.”
Paul bit his lip and looked away, then lifted his wrist and checked his watch. “I have to go. I can’t do this right now.”
Without another word, he brushed past me, and my whole body stung from the slight contact. But I let him go. He’d either come around or he wouldn’t. But I was sure of two things—every word I said about loving Aria was true, and I was sincerely sorry for lying to him about it. Now, it was up to him to decide if he believed me.
