He laughed, a bitter sound, one she hadn’t heard from him before.
“Really? Okay, let’s go to almost two weeks ago. I had called it off with Liz and was ready to tell you everything before I walked into my office that night.” Her stomach lurched again. “So don’t tell me it’s not a competition. If you had ever looked at me the way you looked at him, you would have seen right through me. You would have known. It took a Goddamned fever to make you delirious enough to see clearly, and even then it was only because I was there and he wasn’t.” He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and when he looked up at her, her heart staggered a beat. She’d been so focused on her own retroactive hurt that she never thought about it from his perspective, what it must be like to love someone from afar and watch her fall for someone else.
“Do you see it? When you look at me now, do you have any doubt how I feel?”
She shook her head. Of course she had no doubt. But that didn’t change what still ate at her, that he would have let fear keep them from what felt undeniably right if she hadn’t opened her mouth and turned a fake kiss into something more real than she’d ever felt before.
“But if my ‘delirium’…” Okay, maybe the finger quotes were a little much, but this was the part she couldn’t get past. “If I hadn’t asked you to kiss me, you would have been some stupid martyr and never told me how you felt? You would have done the same thing this week, letting me believe you were with someone else?”
Jamie raked his fingers through his hair. “You would have gone to that party, and everything would have been different. You would have chosen him.”
“You don’t know that, Jamie. After that night, I chose you, and you pushed me away. I know you needed a friend more than anything when your parents were splitting, but I could have been both. I could have been your friend, and I could have been more. But you can’t use what happened a decade ago to fuel that same fear now. It’s not fair—not to you or to me.”
He raked his hand through his hair.
“But you never told me that, B. You never told me how you felt.”
God. He was right. She’d been plenty vocal about her crush on Spencer a decade ago, and the night of the reunion she’d done everything short of skywriting her intentions to finally act on it. Here she was, casting this blame on him, and she’d done the same thing. Hadn’t she? She’d lied to herself, willing her feelings for him to bury themselves somewhere deep, and in doing so, she’d lied to him, too.
Jamie stood with a start, something alight in his eyes, but it didn’t comfort her. It scared her. She stepped back when he approached because she wasn’t about to let him kiss away the anger and the hurt. She wasn’t ready for that, but she knew if his lips got close enough she’d be a goner.
…
Damn it. How could he not see it? Ten years ago, ten days ago, three days from now—in every scenario Jamie was the same guy, the interruption to the regularly scheduled program. But he was never, not for Brynn at least, the first choice. He wasn’t a choice at all. He was her fallback, the standin. She was more than ready to give herself to Spencer in every way until a meddling B&B-owning couple demanded that they kiss. She was right to ask the question. If they hadn’t kissed ten years ago—if they hadn’t been pressured to put on a show for Dora and Frank—would they ever have?
“How do you know it’s really me you want if you don’t see things through with him?” he asked. “You need to go to L.A.”
She groaned. “I can ask you the same thing, Jamie. How can you be sure? You were actually with someone else. I was just chasing after a chance at being happy after you convinced me the Brynn and Jamie ship had already sailed. But guess what? I’ve found it where I didn’t know I could. With you.”
He cupped her cheeks in his palms. She pressed into one of them like a reflex, and it gutted him.
“I’ve always known it was you, Brynn. I was an idiot about it more than once, and yes, I may have been less than honest. But it’s because there’s always been this other person hanging between us.”