Page 140 of Faking the Pass
He went on. “You were planning to move to L.A. to pursue acting, and I was committed to go to Washington. I felt like I had so much to prove back then. I wanted—needed—to prove that I was just as good a player as Wilder was, that I wasn’t a loser. I couldn’t letanythingstop me from being the player I wanted to be. I couldn’t afford the distraction. You were the biggest distraction ever.”
“And what about now?” I asked. “You still say that—that you don’t want any distractions. Why did you even come tonight? I can’t imagine a bigger distraction.”
“I haven’t said that in a while, Starfish,” Presley said. “Not sure if you’ve noticed. I’ve spent pretty much every available minute with you since you got seasick.”
Now that he mentioned it, that was true.
“So you’ve been planning all those outings because… youwantedto be with me?”
He smiled. “I think we can safely say everything I’ve done since I found you sleeping in my bed like fucking Goldilocks has been because I wanted to be with you… even if I didn’t admit it to myself at first.”
Presley began rubbing my calves, and I had to bite my lip to suppress a moan of pleasure.
“What I didn’t have any way of knowing back in high school was that I’d never meet anyone like you, no matter how many years went by… and that I’d never stop thinking about you.”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple rising and falling. “I just hope I didn’t ruin my chances with you by being such an idiot back then.”
I leaned forward, sinking my hands into his hair and pulling his head toward me.
“You were an idiot,” I whispered against his lips, completely unable to keep myself from moving closer to them.
“And all this time I’ve thought I was, too,” I admitted. “Because everything inside me told me you felt the same way about me that I felt about you. But then you just vanished from my life, you wouldn’t even talk to me, and I knew I’d been wrong.”
“You weren’t wrong.”
Presley rose from the floor and crawled onto the bed, easing me backward so that he hovered above me.
“I wanted you every bit as much—probably more,” he said. “Which is why I couldn’t let myself stay friends with you or be anywhere near you, really. Graduation day was the biggest relief of my life because I didn’t have to be tortured by seeing you every day.”
He dropped down to his elbows so that his face was right above mine.
“I’m so sorry, Rosie,” he said softly. “If I could go back in time, I’d do it all differently. I would have held onto you and never let you get away.”
He punctuated that astonishing statement with a kiss. A deep, drugging one that promised a return of our honeymoon bliss—plus interest.
It felt amazing. And it sounded too good to be true.
Randy’s cruel words rushed back into my brain, dashing the smoldering fire building inside me with a bucket of cold water.
I turned my head, breaking the kiss. “Presley…”
“Yeah? You okay?”
I nodded. “I need to ask you something.”
He blinked and drew back so he could see my face clearly. “Yeah?”
“At our wedding… well, someone said you looked like a man being led to execution.”
“Who the fuck said that?” Presley asked, his face angry. “Not one of my idiot brothers? If it was, they were making a bad joke, which is nothing new.”
“No, no,” I assured him. “No one who was there. Someone who saw the video. Anyway, I was just wondering… you know, if that’s how you felt. If you regretted our deal that day but it was too late to back out or something.”
Presley’s large hands bracketed my face, holding me in place so I couldn’t look away from him.
“I didn’t even think about our ‘deal’ that day. All I could think was that I had the most beautiful wife in the world and that I was the luckiest bastard who ever lived to be standing there beside you.Thatis how I felt that day. And I’ve felt that way every day since then.”
“Presley,” I whispered.
