But it was good he’d stopped me.
This wasn’t something I wanted to tell either. Not now. Not ever.
With a soft laugh, I shook my head, surprised with myself for starting down that path. Irritated that he’d been the one to draw me back when it should have been me.
I propped my elbows on my lap and leaned my forehead into my palms. My fingers rubbed into my skin, massaging my brow. I knew what story to tell. It was the one that I told myself meant the most, which was a bold-faced lie, but it was easier to clutch to it as the cause of all my pain than giving acknowledgment to the others.
For one last moment, I let myself contemplate telling a lie instead. I believed I could get away with it, but I also believed that, if I couldn’t, the consequences would be significant.
And what would happen if I told the truth? I sort of wanted to find out.
With my mind made, I dropped my hands to my lap and sat back. Composed. “There was a boy I grew up with. A boy who changed everything. And don’t stop me this time because this is real.”
He nodded for me to continue.
“Our mothers were friends. Our families got together a lot. Holidays, summers, vacations. We probably should have thought of each other as brother and sister, and maybe he did…” I trailed off for a moment, wondering if that had been the case for Hudson. “Anyway, I never did. My mom believed we’d get married one day, and maybe that’s why I did too. It had been bred into me to be his bride, and so it was natural to fall in love with him.
“All through high school, I crushed on him, putting myself out there, waiting for him to make a move. Watching as he went through girls like they were tissues.”
“Girlfriends?” Edward asked. “Or just lovers?”
The difference was relevant.
“Lovers,” I said quickly. “Never a girlfriend. Which was why I held out hope. I mean, I wasn’t the only girl fawning over him. He was super attractive, lean and gray-eyed. He came from mega money and everyone knew he was the guy who’d take his inheritance and quadruple it before he was thirty—which he did. He had the serious thing going for him. He was scary smart and controlled and calculating and strategic. Always a step ahead of everyone else.”
“So you have a type.” His smug smile made me lightheaded while at the same time want to kick him in the balls.
I gritted my teeth. “The type that likes to fuck with my emotions, yeah. I guess I do.”
“What’s his name?”
I paused, about to give it. But his wanting to know, even if I couldn’t guess why, made it valuable information. “It doesn’t matter,” I said.
“I’ll decide if it matters.”
“No, actually, you won’t. This is my story—” I corrected myself at his brow raise. “A true story, but totally mine, and that means I’m the one who knows what details are significant and which ones aren’t. His name is not.”
His jaw flexed, and for the first time ever, I felt him warring for control.
“We’ll leave it then,” he said, handing me this one win. “For now.”
It was impossible not to be pleased with myself, and I didn’t bother to hide my grin. “As I was saying, he wasn’t popular in the way popular kids usually are, but people knew him. Girls knew him. And if they weren’t scared of him, they were into him.”
“I imagine some were both.” Like you with me, his tone said clearly.
I ignored the pointed remark and went on. “I didn’t care about the other girls, though. Because he was mine. I was the one he grew up with. I was the one who knew him—well, as much as he let anyone know him. I was the one he had a nickname for when he never had one for anyone, including his siblings. By all rights, he was mine.”
“What did he call you?”
“Ceeley.” That wasn’t technically true—Ceeley hadn’t been a nickname that Hudson started, my mother had. He’d simply adopted it, probably because he’d heard me called that more than Celia for much of our younger years. It was a relevant detail to omit, but I was who I was and that meant I reveled in slipping in something that Edward would never know to counter.
“Original,” he huffed. “I thought you said he was sharp.”
“We were kids,” I reminded him. Asshole.
I took a breath, hearing my own words echo in the room, letting them sink in for both of us. “We were kids,” I said again, “and it was a kid crush, and by the time I graduated high school I realized that it wasn’t going anywhere, and I needed to move on.”
I got up, wary that I hadn’t been given permission, careful to portray that I didn’t believe I needed it, and wandered around the back of the couch to the bar. When Edward made no protest, I crouched down to examine the contents of the wine fridge.
“I wasn’t what you’d call studious. I had good grades, and I was smart, but I didn’t get into it the way a lot of the preppy kids did, and, having spent all my teen years believing I didn’t have to grow up and do anything except marry my friend, I had no real plan for college.” I pulled out a Malbec and stood. “I liked art and literature. I could study those anywhere. So my only real requirement for choosing a school was that it be far from wherever he was going to be. He was staying east, so I went west. UC Berkeley.”
I had to rummage through three drawers before finding the corkscrew, which was only annoying because Edward had chosen to watch me search rather than stand up and help me.
“No, no, don’t get up,” I said sarcastically when I began the awkward job of removing the cork. “I’ve got it.”
I did have it, and I didn’t actually want him helping me. I especially didn’t want him close to me. I preferred him over there, with a distance between us. It wasn’t something I was willing to give up just so he could open up my wine.
When the struggle was over and the cork had eased from the bottle with a satisfying pop, I plucked a wine glass from the rack and poured. Then I turned back toward Edward, resting my ass on the bar as I took a swallow.
I let the taste register as I decided what to say next. It had a black-cherry flavor, full-bodied with a hint of chili. “Nice,” I said, because I wanted to prove I could give a compliment even if he couldn’t.
He didn’t react except to prompt me. “Berkeley?”
“I met a guy there. Dirk.”
“His name was Dirk?” He didn’t hide the mockery in his inflection. That had been Hudson’s reaction, too, if I remembered correctly.
I really did have a type.
“Dirk Pennington,” I said, unfazed. “He was…” I searched for how to describe a man I’d barely thought about in a decade. “I don’t know, he was a good guy. He was nice. Genuine. Sweet.” I played up the adjectives with my vocalization, throwing them in the face of a man who wouldn’t see himself in any of them.
“In other words, boring.”
“A lot of women find the good guys more attractive than the bad.”
“But not you.”
My stomach flipped at his accurate pronouncement. I despised that he saw that about me even more than I despised that it was true, so, of course, I became overly defensive. “I really liked him! We were good together.”