Page 36 of Guarded Love

"Like you and Knox?" Her question is pointed, and I know she's not just talking about hockey anymore.

"Something like that." I meet her gaze. "I would say we trust each other wholeheartedly. Sometimes the people closest to you are the hardest to communicate with."

"I wouldn't know about that." She tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "Communication has never been my issue."

It doesn’t take a million guesses to figure out what she’s referring to. "Maybe it's been mine," I admit quietly.

"That's...honest."

"You wanted real."

"I did." She fiddles with her pen. "I just didn't expect it to apply to...everything."

"It wasn't supposed to, but sometimes things just...spill over."

Her eyes flick up to mine, bright and intense. "Like that night?"

We both know exactly which night she means. "Yeah," I say, because there's no point in pretending otherwise. "Like that night."

"You never said anything. After."

"Neither did you."

"You pulled away," she reminds me, a hint of that familiar fire returning to her eyes. "Hard to say anything after that."

"I panicked. It wasn’t my finest moment."

"That's putting it mildly." Her words have bite, but there's something else there too. Hurt, maybe. "You kissed me like...like that, and then just—nothing. For years."

"It wasn't nothing," I say without thinking. "Not to me."

She stares at me and I wish I knew what she was thinking about. For a moment, I think she might get up and leave. Instead, she closes her notebook slowly.

"Then what was it?"

The question feels like a trap, but I'm tired of dodging. "Complicated."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the truth." I run a hand through my hair, frustrated. "You're Knox's sister. My best friend’s sibling. There are lines you shouldn’t cross."

This time she rolls her eyes and I see the fire growing within them. “Sounds like a bullshit excuse to me.”

"Is it?" I lean forward in my chair and allow my hands to hang between my legs. "You think Knox wouldn't have had something to say about it?"

"Knox doesn't control my life," she shoots back.

"No, but he's important to both of us." I move my hands and rub them against my jeans in an attempt to do something that would help me organize my thoughts. "And it wasn't just that. You were a freshman. I was a sophomore. The timing was?—"

"Spare me the logistics, Dalton." She raises her voice slightly and I know it’s only a matter of time before we begin to draw attention to ourselves in this quiet place. She must sense it too because she looks around before she returns her gaze to me. "If you weren't interested, you could have just said so instead of making me feel like I'd imagined the whole thing."

"That's not?—"

My words die on my lips when her phone vibrates on the table. Willow breaks eye contact first, reaching for her device. She unlocks her phone and her expression shifts as she reads whatever's on the screen. A small smile appears on her face and for some reason, that has me concerned.

"Everything okay?" I ask, unable to help myself.

"Yeah," she says, still looking at her screen. "I got accepted into something."

---