“Yeah?”
“Make a decision and stick to it. She needs someone who’s consistent.”
“Have you really known I’ve been in love with her since we were kids?”
“I’m your twin. How would Inothave figured that out?”
“Scary.”
“I’m going back to bed. I have two more hours before I have to get up to catch my flight.” Without so much as a goodbye, the call ends.
I sit there, staring at my phone. My thumb hovers over the photo album app, and I open it. A flood of pictures from the Cupid’s Crawl fills my screen. In all of them, Blaire looks happy and carefree. She looks…in love. Maybe she just needs time to fully step into that feeling.
I toss the covers aside, pull on a pair of sweatpants, and head down to her room.
CHAPTER 13
Blaire
Isit on the floor, among a sea of unfolded laundry—is it dirty? Is it clean? It’s anyone’s guess—a pile of empty junk food wrappers, and enough used tissue to keep Kleenex stock in good standing. All I’ve managed to do in my exhausted state of anger is move the mess around. To make matter worse, I can’t even crawl into bed to hide from it, because my sheets are still in the fucking washing machine.
It’s stupid to be mad at Thatcher’s confession.
The truth is, it’s not even him I’m really mad at. I’m mad at myself, because I forgot all about the big deal I made out of my first kiss that summer I turned twelve until he brought it up. I blew him off, convinced he was joking. That maybe he wanted to pull some type of prank on me. But instead of taking a chance on him—a boy I knew deep in my heart would never do anything to humiliate me—I decided to kiss stupid Tommy Benson—a boy whodidhumiliate me the first change he got.
“Blaire, can I come in?” Thatcher asks from the crack in the door.
“It’s best not to disturb a crime scene until the investigation is complete, but sure, yeah. Come on it.”
“I thought you were packing,” he says, scanning the room.
“I put the raccoons in charge.”
“We don’t have raccoons in Alaska.”
“Well, that is very disappointing news,” I admit, deciding whether I can handle a raccoon-free existence should I choose to make this crazy leap and move to Caribou Creek. The thought only makes me feel crazier, considering I’ve gone from getting on the next available flight back to Chicago, to moving to a foreign country and assuming a new identity, to taking the biggest, scariest risk of all and seeing where this thing with Thatcher might go.
Because I think a part of me has always loved him, likereallyloved him. I was just too afraid to admit it.
“Please don’t go,” Thatcher says, moving effortlessly through the mess to join me on the floor. “At least, not yet.”
“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” I say, meaning it. “I just…I just freaked out. It was a totally stupid freak out, too. Of course it’s not your fault I almost married a man you’ve never even met. I know you didn’t like him—Raelyn told me—but that doesn’t mean it was your responsibility to save me from my own bad decisions.”
“I’m sorry, too.”
“If you mean for lying to me about the Cupid Crawl, I already know Raelyn signed us up. She didn’t even bother denying it.”
“If you’re going to be mad at me for not telling you I was in love with you for twenty years, you’ll have to be mad at her too. Apparently, she knew this whole time.”
I just laugh because of course everyone knew what I was too blind to see all these years.
“I guess I was just too afraid to see what was right in front of me this whole time. Real love is scarier than kinda-sorta-it’ll-do love.”
I know now Spencer didn’t really love me. Just like I didn’t really love him. It was the idea of this perfect relationship thatkept us going. One we were never going to have. Had it not been for the fake flowers, I might still be making the biggest mistake of my life. But it’s really Thatcher, who was willing to drag me out of bed when I was at my lowest, who’s shown me what true love is all about.
“Can I ask you a question?” Thatcher asks, nudging me with his shoulder.
“What?”
