“Lizzie, he’ll come around. This is a lot for a guy to come to grips with. Guys are possessive. I know Sawyer would have a hard time with it, and can you just imagine what my brothers would do if they found out I was doing something like that? I’d be banished to a high tower under lock and key. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but guys are funny about that stuff.”
Lizzie’s shoulders slumped. “Is it really that much to come to grips with? I mean, obviously I knew in my heart that no guy would want to date a girl who did this, but I thought what Blue and I had was stronger. I thought it was different, and real, and could weather anything.”
“You’re my two best friends in the world, and I would bet anything that you’ll figure this out.” Sky shook her head. “But I still wouldn’t tell your parents.”
“You know what? I kind of want a clean slate. If I’ve already lost Blue, what else really matters? I think I’m going to tell my parents, just to get it all out in the open, and I might as well talk to the Food Channel Network. At least then I’m doing something other than thinking about all the ways I ruined the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Chapter Nineteen
BLUE DID A week’s worth of work in one day in Lizzie’s kitchen. He loved her so much. How could he have thought that he could work around her things all day, smell her perfume, walk the same floors she walked, without that love blooming bigger, digging deeper? He had to get past his issues with this Naked Baker shit, because nothing was worth losing Lizzie.
Hadn’t he lied to her, too, when he’d said he wanted to be the man she trusted with her secrets? Obviously he’d done a shitty job of being a stand-up boyfriend. She’d opened herself up to him with courage and conviction. She’d trusted him—and only him—the same way she had on their date when she’d told him that she needed him to be strong, because she knew she couldn’t be. And he’d been too wrapped up in anger and hurt to see her confession for what it was.
Now, as he finished leveling the oven, he realized what else he’d been too blinded by his own emotions to recognize. She’d been going through all this alone this whole time. She’d worked at night to pay off her debts and help Maddy without any support from anyone. She’d kept it a secret, and while that might have been wrong in his eyes, who was he to judge her? She was stronger than anyone he knew. She’d needed a solution, and she’d done just what she’d said. She’d figured it out. Alone. Without the support of friends or family. Or him.
He’d acted like an ass, and they had a lot of crap to work through. He had a lot of crap to work through. He still wasn’t sure he could deal with knowing strangers watched her in those sexy videos. He wasn’t even sure if he could handle his family and friends finding out she made them. He was a jealous bastard, and that realization made him feel even more like an ass. He didn’t matter now. What mattered was apologizing to Lizzie and letting her know that she wasn’t alone anymore—something he should have done the moment she’d told him. But hell, he was only human.
Blue was gathering his tools when Lizzie came through the kitchen door later that evening. Her jeans were torn at the knee, and she had dirt all over her hands and streaked across her cheeks. His heart squeezed at the sight of her, and his protective urges sent him rushing to her side.
“What happened?” He wanted to take her in his arms and kiss away the pain and loneliness he saw in her eyes, but knew he shouldn’t. Instead, he ran a dish towel under warm water to clean her up.
“I slipped on the hill at the cemetery when I was dropping off flowers.” She toed off her dirty shoes and dropped her flower tote to the floor.
He tried to concentrate on wiping the dirt from her cheek instead of on the sadness in her eyes, but damn if his heart wasn’t aching too badly after everything they’d said to each other. He felt sick over their situation and all the hurtful things he’d said and the way she’d so forcefully told him that she regretted being close to him. Now, standing so near, cupping her cheek in one hand as he cleaned her face and saw all the emotions he’d been wondering if she still felt, he could barely hold his feelings back. He wanted to drop to his knees and apologize a hundred times over, but she obviously needed help right now.
“Are you hurt?”
“No, just annoyed.” She reached for the towel and rested her hand over his. “You don’t have to…”
“I want to.” Their eyes held, heat filling the space between them, despite the harshness of their earlier argument. She was already too big a part of him to let the fissure between them grow any bigger. But for the first time in his life, Blue felt unprepared. He had no idea how to get from this terrible place they’d landed back to where they belonged. He finished wiping her face and knelt to check out her knee, taking a moment to regroup.
“Your jeans are torn pretty badly.”