Page 59 of Without You

“Maybe. Maybe not. You and I were barely friends, Brody.”

“If you were so afraid of her, why’d you let me take you home that night?”

“Because the alternative of either riding home with a drunk Tate or staying there overnight with her and her friends was worse. Even though you and she weren’t together anymore, I knew whatever threats she’d doled out to me earlier were still possible.”

“But she and I weren’t together then.”

This is where it gets even more awkward and he’ll likely be more upset. I wince and open my mouth to respond but he guesses the reason on his own. “She blamed you for me breaking up with her.”

I nod and give him a little shrug. “Yeah.”

“You getting hurt was my fault.”

“No, it wasn’t. You can’t take blame for someone else’s bad behavior.”

“Yeah. It was. I saw you at prom that night and you looked so damn beautiful. I couldn’t stop staring at you. I knew she saw me, and I made up some lie about looking for someone. But, even being caught staring at you didn’t stop me from continuing to look for you. You were always this light that seemed to draw me in, Katie. I remember how you didn’t smile often and whenever I got you to smile at me I felt like puffing out my chest. But that night, you were full of smiles and I didn’t want to look away.

“I heard you about it not being my fault, but you have to know that I’m going to feel guilt over this. That night of prom, I wasn’t a good boyfriend to Mallory because I couldn’t take my eyes off the gorgeous blonde in the sexy as fuck blue dress and she turned that on you. Then the night of the bonfire, a night that was supposed to be fun for everyone, you didn’t want to stay because they were still being jerks to you?”

I scrunch my nose. This entire conversation is fairly mortifying. I was bullied. Picked on. And dredging up the memories isn’t exactly pleasant. “Pretty much. Mallory had kind of let up. A little bit, anyway. But, she was still sure that I was the reason you broke up with her.”

“You want to know what’s really crazy? First of all, when I told her I wasn’t feeling it she acted like she didn’t care. But second, I kind of did break up with her for you.”

“Huh?”

“I knew it wasn’t right that I was looking at another girl and after prom I couldn’t stop thinking of you, so I told her we needed to break up. She had no right to treat you that way. You didn’t deserve it.”

“It’s fine. Until you reminded me of it, I had forgotten. Besides, remember that’s the summer that she found out she was pregnant so she relaxed her hatred for me.”

He scoots his chair over, his legs spread on either side of mine. “It’s not fine. And I get what you’re saying that it’s not my fault, even if I can’t help but feel that in a roundabout way it was. Thank you for finally telling me about it. Tonight we were out there in his truck and all I could think about was the bonfire and wondered what had happened. I gotta admit, the possibilities running through my head were pretty scary.”

“I’m sorry.”

He gives me an odd look. “Why are you apologizing?”

“Because I can’t help it?” I laugh lightly and we link hands. “It’s a habit, I guess. But now that it’s out in the open and we know that we both had crushes on each other in high school, but never acted on them, we can move forward, right? The past is the past, right?”

“Right. I’m sorry for bringing it up, and also if I was a little demanding earlier but it drove me crazy to think that you had been hurt.”

“It was a long time ago,” I remind him.

He shrugs. “Doesn’t matter whether it’s today or fifteen years ago.”

My heart feels like it could explode right out of my chest. “I like you, too, you know?”

He gives me that crooked grin that I love so much. “Do ya now?”

“Ehh. Just a little bit.”

“Little bit? Let’s see what we can do to change that to quite a bit, shall we?”

Without warning, he pulls me from my seat and throws me over his shoulder. I squeal with delight and grip the back of his shirt. “Brody!”

He slaps me on the butt.

And I don’t mind one bit.

I also don’t mind when he flops me over on the bed, his big, strong body climbing over me immediately.

---