“Oh.”
“Hey,” he said quietly.
Her hands shook, and she had to battle back the surge of excitement and hope she felt. This meant nothing, she told herself sternly. This meant nothing. “Hey.”
He walked in, crowding her. She took a step backward, but he countered, so they were standing incredibly close. “You lost something. I wanted to return it to you.”
Return...
Uh-oh.
Sure enough, he dangled her bracelet in front of her eyes.
She bit her lip. “Okay. So. You’re mad, and that’s fair.”
“Not mad. Confused. Very, very confused.”
“Also fair.”
“You’re Anne.”
“Yes.”
“The Anne who’s been driving me around for months.”
“Correct.”
“You talked to me. You told me things. Hell, I told you things.”
“I know.” She’d told him more things as Eve, actually. “I know.”
He braced his fists on his hips. “Did it ever occur to you that you should come clean about that? Maybe when we slept together the first time? Or the second time?”
“Yes.” She winced. “I mean, it did occur to me.”
“So...”
When she was silent, his nostrils flared. “Eve, I need you to start talking.”
Be honest. With yourself and him.She finally found her voice. “I liked you.”
He froze. “What?”
“I liked you. I’ve always liked you.” His silence, oddly enough, made her brave. She took a step toward him. “It was a childish crush at first, yes. You don’t remember, but when I was in college I—” She blushed. It had only been a few years ago, but she felt incredibly young and foolish now, even remembering it. “I tried to kiss you.”
His face was blank. She lifted her chin. “I didn’t mean to hide who I was when I first started driving you. It happened. And I realized my crush on you wasn’t childish anymore. It was a full-blown adult crush, and I didn’t want it to stop. I liked talking to you. I liked being with you.” Now that she’d started being honest, she couldn’t shut up, even knowing how much pain and awkwardness was going to come when he gently rebuffed her.
That was okay, though. She could handle rejection. If she had to crawl into her shell for a bit in order to handle it, that was fine too. She’d live, and that was what was important. “I know you don’t feel about me the way that I feel about you, and that’s okay. I’m sorry for not telling you.” She subsided, waiting.
He didn’t speak for one beat, two. Finally she grimaced. “I’ll go. I—” She stopped when he grabbed her arms.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
The gravelly words made her shiver, and she grasped for the most reasonable, pragmatic, nonromantic interpretation of those words that she possibly could.
She wasn’t going anywhere... because he was justifiably angry at her?
She wasn’t going anywhere... because it was really late at night?
