Blurred Lines (Love Unexpectedly #1)(71)

I pull back slightly, searching her face to make sure she’s getting it, but she still looks confused, so I kiss her again, more slowly this time.

“Ben?” she says when I pull back.

“You recently pointed out that I haven’t had a serious girlfriend for as long as I’ve known you,” I say roughly. “Don’t you want to know why?”

She hesitates, then nods.

I gently kiss her mouth before continuing. “It’s because I fell in love with this incredible girl my freshman year. Only I didn’t know how to be in love, so I did the only thing I could to keep her close. I became her friend. I became her best friend, and buried all of my own feelings so deep that I didn’t even recognize them, because her feelings were all that mattered, and she wanted this other guy.”

I take a deep breath and force myself to continue. To be brave like she was. “But when I touched you, Parker…I slipped up. All those long-buried feelings bubbled up and…you get what I’m trying to tell you, right?”

She wipes her eyes. Nods.

I smile at her. “Those sure as hell better be happy tears.”

She smiles back. “The happiest. I love you, Ben. I should have said it the second I came in the door.”

I laugh. “You probably should have. But I should have said it all those years ago.”

She leans against me, her finger tracing the shape of my mouth as though memorizing it. “Tell me now.”

I bend my knees a little so we’re eye level. “I love you, Parker Blanton. I’ve loved you for the longest time.”

Her answering smile is my everything.

“I love you, too, Ben Olsen.”

“New house rule,” I say. “You have to say it every day.”

“I make the house rules,” she says, tapping a finger to my mouth. “And I decree that you have to say it every day.”

I wrap my arms around her, lifting her off the floor. “Does this mean I get to see you naked again?”

She laughs, and I love the sound of it. “Depends. Are your sheets clean?”

I sling her over my shoulder, ass in the air, and move toward the stairs. She slaps at my back with her palm. “That wasn’t an answer.”

I grin as I take her up the stairs.

My sheets totally aren’t that clean.

Turns out, she doesn’t care.





Epilogue


Parker


EIGHT MONTHS LATER

“Ooh, I know!” I say, pointing excitedly at the karaoke book. “We could do this Disney song.”

Ben gives me a disgusted look. “We could. I could also hang myself with the cord of this microphone—”

“Well, you pick a song then,” I say impatiently.

“Would you chill out?” he says, flipping through the ten trillion pages of the song list. “We have, like, four people in front of us.”

“Not if we cut.”

“That only works if it’s you and Lori trying to cut in front of a group of horny dudes. And seeing as Lori has her tongue down Drake’s throat, I don’t think she’s going to be singing anytime soon.”

“God, I can’t believe she’s getting married on Saturday,” I say as I look over to where my friend is making out with her soon-to-be husband.

Yep, that’s right. Lori is marrying a guy she’s known for less than a year.

I’m a bridesmaid, along with her sister, and…wait for it…Eryn.

The girl is still a total weirdo, but one of my favorite people ever now that I’ve trained her not to say everything that’s on her mind.

“How about this one?” Ben asks, nudging me.

I glance down. “Um, no. Also, to save us time in the future, every time you want to do a duet version of ‘Baby Got Back,’ it’s always no. It was no back when we were just friends, it was no when we were friends with benefits, and it’s no now that we’re…”

I break off and he raises his eyebrows. “Now that we’re what? Lovers?”

I wrinkle my nose. “I was going to say boyfriend/girlfriend, but that seems woefully inadequate, huh?”

He tugs me toward him, wrapping his arms around me, and I give a happy sigh because every day I think I can’t love him any more, and every day I wake up loving him so much it takes my breath away.

“How about we’re best friends…in love,” he says.

I kiss him happily. “That’s cheesy.”

“Does it ever bother you?” he asks thoughtfully. “That we spent all those years preaching to the world about how wrong they were about guys and girls not being able to be just friends, only to find out that we were the blind ones?”

“Does it bother you?” I ask.

His lips nuzzle my neck, completely oblivious to the fact that we’re in a crowded karaoke bar. “Not a bit. Never been so happy to be wrong.”

Our kiss gets a little more passionate than either of us plans on, and a couple behind us clears their throats loudly.

“We’d like to see the book when you’re done,” the guy says in a pointed voice.

Ben shoves the book at him without ever breaking contact with my lips.

When we finally break apart to breathe, my eyes scan the room as we continue to wait our turn for the stage.