Page 114 of Secrets on Ice

“Wait, hey, no you’re not,” he argues with me, as he reaches out and taps the empty side of his bed. “Come, sit, I think you and I need to talk,” he says calmly.

I do as he asks and walk around his bed and hop in beside him.

He's quiet for a second as he takes his glasses off, folds them, and sets them on the nightstand.

“Firstly, you are not a bitch,” he says. Debatable. “And secondly, you’re not using me. I was exactly where I wanted to be.”

“You were?”

He nods. “I’ve always liked you, Em. Always.”

Oh. His confession surprises me.

“And if I’m being honest with myself and with you, that day, which feels like a lifetime ago, when I asked you to choose me and not Kevin. I always kind of hoped one day you would.”

Oh. I did not know that.

“And then that night on the beach in Maine, you did, for a moment. And once I tasted you again, I was addicted.”

This was not at all how I thought this conversation was going to go.

“But …” he says, “I was being selfish.”

He thinks he was being selfish? I shake my head. “No, it was me. I was the selfish one. I used you for my own need, and if I’m a little honest, for revenge because I knew how much Kevin hated you.”

“Feeling was mutual.” He chuckles.

I laugh, and it breaks some of the tension.

“He would have hated you even more if he’d known you’d taken my virginity,” I tell him. “He thought he was my first.”

“He never knew, all these years?”

I shake my head. “We had just got back together, and I knew if he had known it would have been the end. Looking back, I should have told him. But I’m glad it was you and not him.”

This makes him smile. “I’m glad it was with you too.”

Wait, what?

“That we slept together?” I ask him.

He frowns. “No, that you were my first.”

“What? You were a virgin?”

“Um, yeah. I thought you knew.”

I shake my head. “No. I thought you were experienced.”

“No.”

This makes me laugh. “All these years and I had no idea.”

“Really?”

“You always had a girlfriend.”

“Yeah, but I never went all the way with them. I was kind of waiting for you,” he confesses.