His lips thinned as he closed his mouth. He knew the answer to that question. He just didn’t want to say it any more than I wanted to hear it.
“That’s what I thought. You’re fooling yourself if you think I would ever be anything but a consolation prize. She’d always be in the back of your mind.” I attempted to duck under his arm, but he shifted to the side, blocking me.
“How long?” he growled.
“How long what?”
“You said if Mia only knew the half of it. So tell me how long you’ve wanted me.”
My mouth was locked and loaded to fire the scripted answer I had been telling myself for years, but that was when I realized I didn’t even have it in me to lie anymore. Quarry had admitted that he wanted something between us. I wouldn’t be able to fight him off alone. I needed all the guilt in the world to have my back in this one. Luckily for me, the overwhelming weight I’d been carrying since I was a kid was finally good for something besides threatening to break me.
“Before I met Mia? I had been in love with you every day since we first met,” I answered.
He held my stare with gentle eyes and then asked for my deepest, darkest, dirtiest secret. “And for how long after you met Mia?”
My chin quivered as I fought to keep the truth safely trapped in the confines of my mind—where, if I were a stronger woman, it would have stayed for all of eternity.
I wasn’t a stronger woman though. I was a woman who was irrevocably in love with the only man her dead friend had ever loved.
“Every single day,” I admitted. “Every. Single. Day.”
I was vaguely aware of Quarry’s mouth landing over mine. I even went willingly into his arms as he lifted me off my feet. It wasn’t as frenzied or desperate as it had been before.
It was slow and apologetic.
Comforting and consoling.
Deep and compassionate.
And it only made me feel guiltier—because it made me feel so much better.
Quarry continued to kiss me even as the tears fell from my eyes. His thumbs stroked back and forth across my cheeks, wiping them away as his mouth made unspoken promises I knew he could never keep.
When my eyes dried, he released my mouth long enough to climb from the ring with me still securely held against his chest.
Ten minutes later, the gym had been locked, my car had been moved to the back parking lot, and I was in the passenger’s seat of his car on our way back to our apartment.
There was no more discussion.
The radio was blaring on the way home, but with the truth of my deception hanging between us, it was the most frightening silence I would ever experience.
I KEPT MY HAND ANCHORED to her thigh on the drive home. I was afraid that it was the only thing keeping her from disconnecting from me all over again.
“Every. Single. Day.”
Her words echoed through my mind.
When she’d made that announcement in the ring, I’d felt like I’d taken the worst beating I could ever experience within those ropes. How had I never seen that she was in love with me? With the exception of our drunken night, she had never been flirty. But, then again, I wasn’t sure I would have noticed. We lived together. So it wasn’t like she had to go out of her way to spend extra time with me. She didn’t have to make up reasons to stay up late bullshitting with me or text me just to say hi twelve times a day. That was expected in our relationship.
She didn’t have to think of creative ways to touch me. She had always been a hugger. I didn’t count how often her arms found their way around me. I just loved it when they did.
I was a funny motherfucker, so of course she laughed at my jokes.
We spoiled each other with gifts every chance we got. And, well, Liv just spoiled me in general.
There hadn’t been a chance to flirt. But maybe that was what our relationship had been all along, and precisely why I’d missed all the signs.
“Every. Single. Day.”
Fourteen years.
Fourteen years she had experienced the torture I had been living for the last four months. I couldn’t imagine how she had lasted that long.
Maybe there had been subtle clues I should have seen.
The way she dropped her entire life to make sure mine was running smoothly.
The way she took care of me as if the small things like the way I ate or if I was getting enough rest mattered more than anything else.
The way I knew without a shadow of a doubt that she would always be there for me. Unconditionally. Forever.
Okay, so maybe they hadn’t been so subtle and I was just a blind dumbass.
“Every. Single. Day.”
God. She loved me.
When we arrived at our apartment, I folded her hand in mine and walked up the sidewalk. She didn’t try to stop me, but she didn’t exactly tuck into my side the way I would have liked, either.
I unlocked and opened the door. Then I paused before walking inside.
“Nothing changes,” I whispered, bending to kiss her forehead.
Her eyes closed, but it wasn’t in rapture. Her lids were pained, and when they fell, it set off a chain reaction, crumbling her face all the way down to her chin.