“Maybe they knew they weren’t who he really wanted.” His eyes locked with mine, then darted away. He swallowed, hisAdam’s apple bobbing once. His fingers tapped against his thigh twice before he stilled them, then he leaned forward slightly, his eyebrows raised, waiting.
Cade’s knee stopped moving, and my brother glanced between us, his features rearranging in real time—his eyes widening, mouth parting, and a slow awareness creeping over his face.“Oh my god, Stel. You don’t know.”
“Know what?” My voice came out sounding like I’d just sucked on a helium balloon.
“That this idiot—” Colin jerked his thumb at Cade “—had the biggest crush on you.”
I stared at my brother, then at Cade, then dragged my gaze back to my brother. “Excuse me?”
“Yeah.” Colin was grinning now, clearly enjoying being the one to deliver the information. “I used to give him so much shit about it.” He glanced at Cade, who had suddenly become very interested in the condensation sliding down his glass.
“Colin,” Cade said quietly, a warning in his tone.
But Colin was on a roll now, and when he got this way, nothing could stop him. The only thing he might love more than music was gossip. “I told him he was barking up the wrong tree. No offense, Stel, but you only date tattooed lowlifes with bad attitudes. Meanwhile, Cade’s a sweet little puppy.”
My mouth was completely dry. The other night, he’d admitted to wanting me, but he’d been careful about how he’d phrased it. No timeline. No origin story. Hearing that it wasn’t a recent thing did something strange to my center of gravity.
I focused my attention on Cade, the man I’d been hung up on for the last year, even though I would have rather died than admit it to either of us. “You had a crush on me?”
“Yes,” Cade said simply.
“For how long?” I asked, taking a step forward without meaning to.
Cade shifted in his seat, his eyes searching mine. “Does it matter?”
Did it?
Yeah. I guess it did.
Because wanting someone’s body was easy. Bodies were simple. I’d had plenty of sex with men I didn’t give a damn about. That was biology, impulse, boredom, or even self-sabotage. But if Cade hadcaredabout me—if this had been more than a passing thing for him—that rewrote the whole story.
It meant I hadn’t just been convenient. That this wasn’t just physical. I’d been chosen.
“Tell me.”
He sighed, his shoulders dropping as if he’d been hoping I wouldn’t ask. “Since I was fifteen and you picked me up from the dock that night.”
I frowned. “What night?”
“The nor’easter our sophomore year. My old man dropped me off at the docks and went back out into the storm, not giving a shit that I didn’t have a way home. I don’t know how you knew where I was, but you showed up wearing that ridiculous yellow raincoat you claimed was ironic, yelling at me to get in the fucking car.”
The memory dropped into place, sharp and clear.
I’d been eighteen, living in the studio apartment above my parents’ garage, working odd jobs while I tried to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. My friend Marcy had been hooking up with one of the guys who worked at the marina, and she’d seen Cade’s dad practically toss him off his boat. Since she knew Cade and my brother hung out a lot, she’d called me.
I’d grabbed my keys and some dry clothes, no questions asked.
The wind was howling, flinging sheets of icy rain against the windshield of my shitty little Honda Civic as I drove across town. Even now, I could still feel the sting against my face as I’d stepped out of my car.
Cade had been standing under the cover of the bait shack’s overhang, soaked to the bone in a thin hoodie, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, his shoulders curled in on themselves.
I’d marched straight up to him, fury snapping under my skin, and shoved a towel and a sweatshirt at his chest. “Get in the fucking car, Cade. I don’t want your death on my hands.”
He’d frozen, mouth half-open, eyes wide and unblinking.
I caught that same widening of his eyes now, that same pause in his breath—there for a heartbeat, then gone.
He shook his head, as if brushing off whatever thought had surfaced. “I started liking you before that,” he continued quietly. “But that day? That was when it stopped being just ‘my best friend’s older sister is hot’ and turned into, ‘oh, I’m in real trouble.’ You were the only person who ever seemed to give a fuck. And you looked at me like I wasn’t a screwup or a burden. Like I was … someone worth rescuing.”
