“I’m fine.”
He didn’t sound like even he believed it, but I played along.
“Then maybe I’m not fine. Maybe I need to know you’re okay so I can be okay.”
“I said I’m fine. Do you want it in writing?”
“I want ten minutes. Let me take you home or to wherever it was you were going.” I paused and held his gaze, trying my best to give him the puppy dog eyes. I mean, he worked with animals. It had to work. “Please.”
Blue let out a sigh and opened the car door. He slid inside and buckled his seatbelt, then motioned for me to start driving. He didn’t say a single word. It seemed he was determined to let me do all the heavy lifting in this conversation.
“I probably should have had some kind of speech rehearsed, but mostly I just want to apologize for what happened.” I glanced at him, taking in as much of his profile as I could beforeturning my attention back to the road. “I’m sorry if you felt pressured to break your rules. We should have respected your boundary, and I’m sorry you were hurt because of it.”
Blue still didn’t say a word, and his continuing silence made me squirm in my seat.
“Is there any way that we can make it up to you?”
That made him scoff, which was something at least.
“Fuck. Okay then.” It killed me that he wouldn’t even look at me. I’d spent three years daydreaming about what it would be like to have a real shot with him and it had barely come true before it all got blown to smithereens. My heart twisted in my chest, grinding like broken glass as I gripped the steering wheel.
I’d dreamed of what it would be like to tell him how I felt. Of what might happen after, but none of that was going to happen now. Blue didn’t want to be my friend, let alone be something more. The weight of missed opportunity crushed my heart into dust.
His building came into view, and I could see from his body language that he was getting ready to bolt. Time was up. He’d given me ten minutes to apologize, but there was so much more I wanted to say to him. Which—what was I waiting for? I had nothing to lose. Blue wasn’t currently speaking to me. He probably wouldn’t talk to me ever again. Hell, he might change his name and move to a different country to get away from me.
This was my last chance.
“I’m sorry you were hurt, but I’m not sorry I got to be with you.” I pulled into a parking spot at the curb and shut the car off. He started to reach for the door handle, and panic gripped me. He couldn’t leave yet.
“I’m not sorry I got to be with you because I’ve been in love with you for three years, Blue.”
He stopped. Went dead still, and my mouth ran away with me.
“I’ve loved you since before that first scene. We met at Lukas’s, remember? He had a mixer to launch his new company. We’d all done scenes with him or knew him through other people in the industry. I think he invited everyone he could think of. You were there in this little white crop top, and your hair at the time was this electric shade of blue. I’d seen your work and was a little tongue-tied when we first met.”
Blue’s hand fell away from the door, but he still didn’t turn to look at me. Even if I’d had a good look at Blue’s face, he was a master at keeping his emotions locked down. I just had to hope that whatever I was saying was making a difference.
“You were so smooth and so cool. You had everyone eating out of the palm of your hand, and when Lukas called me a couple weeks later to ask if I’d be interested in a scene with you, I couldn’t say yes fast enough. And yeah, it was magical. I’ve dreamed about it for three years, but it’s more than that. After we were done, we went out to eat. We went to this little diner, and you told me how you wanted to work with animals. You told me about your shitty family, and you told me all these things that I still remember. Like how you listened to nothing butYellowcardfor an entire year and how you ordered a burger with mushrooms by mistake, but instead of sending it back, you just picked the mushrooms off. I spent three years thinking about you, Blue. And I think maybe it screwed with me that after three years of thinking about it, you were within arm’s reach, you know. But I never should have let you compromise your boundary like that. All it did was hurt you, and I’m so so?—”
The world stopped spinning. Air neither left, nor entered my lungs, and I didn’t dare move unless it turned out to be a dream. Blue had turned toward me and slanted his mouth over mine. His hands were on me, cupping my face, and until his tongue prodded at the seam of my mouth, I remained frozen. Then it was like all my circuits came online all at once.
Pulling him closer, I twisted in my seat more to improve the angle of our bodies. His lips parted for me, and my tongue slipped inside, tentative at first, but reassured by the little moan he made when our tongues brushed up against each other. This kiss might have been hello; it might also be a goodbye kiss. It might mean forgiveness, or it might be just so he could walk away with no regrets, but to me, this kiss was everything. It was breath and life and oxygen. It was hope. It was three years of pent-up emotion pouring out of me in hopes that he might taste the truth of my words.
I’d loved him for years. He was all I dreamed about. He was like this unobtainable thing, this object of my affection. An obsession that I kept in check by sheer willpower and a heavy dose of respect for his boundaries.
Blue kissed me like the world might end if he stopped. The drastic change in circumstance made my head spin a bit, but I wasn’t ready to question why or how he went from ready to bolt to sticking his tongue down my throat.
Did we have to talk about what was happening? Yes, but later. Later when fireworks weren’t going off in my head and when my heart wasn’t racing. Maybe sometime when I couldn’t feel my pulse throb in my dick and when I could get a proper breath. When I wasn’t drowning in the feel of his mouth on mine and the way his fingertips dug into me. When the world was spinning again.
By the time he pulled away, I was empty of air, but full of hope.
“Three years?” Blue asked. “You’ve liked me the whole time?” He sounded like he didn’t believe a word I’d said, but that he wanted to.
“Since the moment I laid eyes on you.”
He looked away, then back at me, his eyes downcast making him seem a little sheepish. “Do you want to come in? I think we should talk.”
The knot of fear and anxiety that I’d been walking around with loosened a little, but it didn’t disappear like I thought it might have. My anxiety had been a solid ball of dread in the pit of my stomach since I walked out of Asher’s place and I thought that it had all been because of how things went down with Blue, but it was still there. It wasn’t as big now, but it hadn’t gone away.
