Page 51 of Devanté
“Nope. She’s a girl.” Blake paused then toyed with the cloth napkin artfully wrapped around the silverware to her left. “You know, I think I should be more upset about all of this than I am. I came home the other day and she was in my house. I’d never met her before. Now, Devin is working with her in an attempt to help her career and his.” Her sculpted brows pushed together and her lips pursed. “It sounds like…”
“Bullshit?” I quizzed, knowingly. Blake could sniff out a hint of bullshit from a mile away.
“Exactly.”
“Why the hell are you with him if you think he’s fucking around and you don’t even care? That doesn’t sound like a Blake thing to do, to be honest.”
“Oh? And what’s a Blake thing to do, Devanté?”
“Leave him. Be with or without whoever you want.”
“Even if that means being alone?” She asked, holding my gaze. I found myself wandering around the golden flecks in her eyes instead of answering her. I blinked a few times to scrub the magic from my eyes.
“Yeah. Even if it means being alone. Alone is better than being with a motherfucker who doesn’t value you.”
“You’re right and it’s a damn shame.”
“Why is it a shame? You know I’m always right.” I smiled at her and she rolled her eyes before flipping me off. “Miss Remington, you’re in one of the most exclusive restaurants in the city and you’re flipping me off? Can’t take you nowhere.” I feigned disappointment. It coaxed out a beautifully bright laugh from her that made me laugh too.
“Nope, you can’t take me any-fucking-where. I’m a problem, but you knew that.” She tossed a sexy ass smile my way and I caught that shit with both hands.
“You’re definitely a problem in that dress tonight.” My stare dripped all over her body, slipping between her generous breasts then moving up her neck back to her face.
Her eyes dropped to the linen-covered table. Her black fringe of lashes hid her eyes but I still saw the way she lifted the apples of her cheeks. “Can you stop looking at me like that in public? People are going to think that…”
“That I love you? That I’m your man? That the things I want to do to you in and out of that dress shouldn’t be uttered in public? You’re probably right. They’d be right too.”
“You do realize that I’m in a relationship, right? I told you that.”
“You did. I told you that you’re in the wrong relationship. I’m not here to mince words, Blake. I want to explore things with you that I was too scared to do in high school and college.”
“You have not liked me that long, Devanté.”
“I have.” My throat filled with memories of being a teenager and falling helplessly in love with the girl who called me her brother every day. Of wishing I could be as confident with her as I was with everyone else.
With everyone else, I was a peacock, proud to show off. With Blake, I was filling my stomach with bright blue feathers, terrified she would see me for who I was. Just a nervous kid who didn’t know how to express his true feelings.
The look in her eyes said she was shocked. How could she not have known? I spent so much time staring at her and wishing I had the courage to lean in and pull her bottom lip between mine. I’d stopped everything I was doing to watch her laugh and catch the rays of sunshine she pushed into the air.
I swallowed decades of pining, ignoring the needles scraping the sides of my esophagus. My chest was hot and my palms were slick but I reached over and took Blake’s hand in mine. The need to feel her skin overwhelmed the nerves.
“I always have, Blake. That’s why I couldn’t be with Gabi in college. She wasn’t my type.”
A sad laugh fell from her lips as she watched the way I stroked her hand. “She seemed like your type, Devanté. Not me. I am the antithesis of what someone like you should be with.” She hid it well but the pain in her voice reached out with sticky tentacles and grabbed my heart.
“What?” A frown wedged itself between my brows. “The antithesis? No. It’s you, Blake. It’s always been you. Whenever I pictured my first girlfriend or the first time I had sex, you were the standard. I’d never even kissed you…not for real, but I held every woman against the impact you left on me. I still do. That’s why every other interaction is empty. Nobody is you but you.”
I waited for what seemed like forever but I knew it was only a minute or two. I needed to hear what she had to say because I laid my heart on the table. I creased the spine and let the pages fall open. My truth bared for her eyes only. Every chapter and paragraph.
Her chest rose and fell in shallow, quick motions that fascinated me. I made her feel like that. I made her breath fall away to nothing so quickly that she had to gasp for her next inhale.
I hadn’t even been inside of her.
Yet…
“I-I don’t know what to say, Devanté.”
“Tell me how you feel,” I said.
